Vanity Fair was first published in 1848, with the subtitle A Novel without a Hero, reflecting Thackeray's interest in deconstructing his era's conventions regarding literary heroism. The story follows the lives of Becky Sharp and Emmy Sedley amid their friends and families during and after the Napoleonic Wars.
Ulysses, first published in February 1922, is considered to be one of the most important works of modernist literature, and has been called "a demonstration and summation of the entire modernist movement".
Treasure Island, first published in 1883, is an adventure novel, narrating a tale of "buccaneers and buried gold".
It is traditionally considered a coming-of-age story, and is noted for its atmosphere, characters, and action.
"To the Lighthouse" is the most autobiographical of Virginia Woolf novels. It is based on her own early experiences, and while it touches on childhood and children perceptions and desires, it is at its most trenchant when exploring adult relationships, marriage and the changing class-structure in the period spanning the Great War.
Three Men in a Boat, first published in 1889, is a humorous account of a two-week boating holiday on the Thames, taken by three English gentlemen. The book was initially intended to be a serious travel guide, with accounts of local history along the route, but the humorous elements gradually took over and turned it into a comic novel. Surprisingly ...
This Side of Paradise tells the story of Amory Blaine, the only child of wealthy parents, whose journey from adolescence to adulthood follows him from prep school through to Princeton University, where his literary talents flourish, in contrast to his academic failure. A sequence of love affairs with beautiful young women are fatally damaged by the collapse of his family's ...
The War of the Worlds (1898) is a science fiction novel, telling about a conflict between mankind and an extraterrestrial race. The novel has been both popular and influential, spawning half a dozen feature films, radio dramas, a record album, various comic book adaptations, a television series, and sequels or parallel stories by other authors.
The Time Machine is a science fiction novel (1895) about time travel by way of using a vehicle that allowed its operator to travel forwards or backwards in time. The novel has since been adapted into three feature films, two television versions, and a large number of comic book adaptations.
The Sea-Wolf, first published in 1904, is a psychological adventure novel. The book's protagonist, Humphrey van Weyden, is a literary critic who is a survivor of an ocean collision and who comes under the dominance of Wolf Larsen, the powerful and amoral sea captain who rescues him...
The Mystery of Edwin Drood is the final novel by Charles Dickens, unfinished at the time of the author's death.
Though the novel is named after the character Edwin Drood, the story focuses on his uncle, choirmaster and opium addict, John Jasper, who is in love with Drood's fiancee, Rosa.
The unfortunate girl has also caught the eye of a ...
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, originally published in 1894.
The plot of the novel The Lost World (1912) describes an expedition to a plateau in the Amazon basin where prehistoric animals still survive, led by a charismatic leading character Professor Challenger. The novel also describes a war between indigenous people and a vicious tribe of ape-like creatures.
The Great Gatsby (1925) follows a cast of characters living in the fictional town of West Egg on prosperous Long Island in the summer of 1922. The story primarily concerns the young and mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his quixotic passion and obsession for the beautiful former debutante Daisy Buchanan and explores themes of decadence, idealism, resistance to change, social ...
The Age of Innocence (1920) won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for literature, making Wharton the first woman to win the award. The novel is noted for its accurate portrayal of the East Coast American upper class, and for the social tragedy of the plot.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) is a novel about a young boy growing up along the Mississippi River, set in the fictional town of St. Petersburg. Tom Sawyer is more than a boyhood adventure story, it is a tale of maturing, a novel whose principal subject is the moral, psychological, and intellectual development of a youthful main character.