Drácula es una novela publicada en 1897 por el irlandés Bram Stoker, quien ha convertido a su antagonista en el vampiro más famoso. Se dice que el escritor se basó en las conversaciones que mantuvo con...

Candide, ou l'Optimisme (1759) is a French satire by the Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire, English translations of which have been titled Candide: Or, All for the Best (1759); Candide: Or, The Optimist...

While Homer's existence as a historical person is still a topic of debate, the writings attributed to the name have made their mark not only on Greek history and literature, but upon western civilization...

Frankenstein or, The Modern Prometheus (or simply, Frankenstein for short), is a novel written by English author Mary Shelley that tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates...

Middlemarch, A Study of Provincial Life is a novel by the English author George Eliot, first published in eight installments (volumes) during 1871–2. The novel is set in the fictitious Midlands town of...

Widely regarded as Dickens’s masterpiece, Bleak House centers on the generations-long lawsuit Jarndyce and Jarndyce, through which “whole families have inherited legendary hatreds.” Focusing on Esther...

King Lear is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare. It depicts the gradual descent into madness of the title character, after he disposes of his kingdom giving bequests to two of his three daughters...

One of the great heroines of American literature, Isabel Archer, journeys to Europe in order to, as Henry James writes in his 1908 Preface, “affront her destiny.” James began The Portrait of a Lady without...

Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero, commonly known as Quo Vadis, is a historical novel written by Henryk Sienkiewicz. Quo vadis is Latin for "Where are you going?" and alludes to a New Testament...

Sybil, or The Two Nations is an 1845 novel by Benjamin Disraeli. Published in the same year as Friedrich Engels's The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, Sybil traces the plight of the...

Othello, The Moor of Venice is a tragedy by William Shakespeare based on the short story "Moor of Venice" by Cinthio, believed to have been written in approximately 1603. The work revolves around four...

Agnes Grey is an 1847 novel written by English author Anne Brontë. The novel is about a governess of that name and is said to be based on Brontë's own experiences in the field. It was Brontë's first novel....

Cyrano de Bergerac est l'une des pièces les plus populaires du théâtre français, et la plus célèbre de son auteur, Edmond Rostand. Librement inspirée de la vie et de l'œuvre de l'écrivain libertin Savinien...

Kim, aka Kimball O'Hara, is the orphan son of a British soldier and a half-caste opium addict in India. While running free through the streets of Lahore as a child he befriends a British secret service...

A Midsummer Night's Dream is a romantic comedy by William Shakespeare, suggested by "The Knight's Tale" from Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, written around 1594 to 1596. It portrays the adventures...

The novel represents Twain's first attempt at historical fiction. Set in 1547, it tells the story of two young boys who are identical in appearance: Tom Canty, a pauper who lives with his abusive father...

Black Beauty is Anna Sewell's only novel, composed in the last years of her life between 1871 and 1877 while confined to her house as an invalid. The story is told in the first person as an autobiographical...

Le Fantôme de l'Opéra est un roman fantastique français de Gaston Leroux publié en 1910. Le roman est inspiré par une histoire d'amour de l'ancien opéra et par des rumeurs qui ont couru sur de prétendus...

Romeo and Juliet is a tragic play written early in the career of William Shakespeare about two teenage "star-cross'd lovers" whose untimely deaths ultimately unite their feuding households. It was among...

Hamlet is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601. The play, set in Denmark, recounts how Prince Hamlet exacts revenge on his uncle Claudius, who has murdered...

Hardy's masterpiece traces a poor stonemason's ill-fated romance with his free-spirited cousin. No Victorian institution is spared — marriage, religion, education — and the outrage following publication...

The Picture of Dorian Gray is a philosophical novel by Oscar Wilde. Dorian Gray is the subject of a full-length portrait in oil by Basil Hallward, an artist who is impressed and infatuated by Dorian's beauty;...

Sister Carrie (1900) is a novel by Theodore Dreiser about a young country girl who moves to the big city where she starts realizing her own American Dream by first becoming a mistress to men that she...

"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is a short story of speculative fiction by American author Washington Irving. Written while Irving was living abroad in Birmingham, England, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"...

Emma is a comic novel by Jane Austen, first published in December 1815, about the perils of misconstrued romance. The main character, Emma Woodhouse, is described in the opening paragraph as "handsome,...

Widely regarded as the precursor of the modern mystery and suspense novels, The Moonstone tells of the events surrounding the disappearance of a mysterious (and cursed) yellow diamond. T. S. Eliot called...

Jane Eyre, the story of a young girl and her passage into adulthood, was an immediate commercial success at the time of its original publication in 1847. Its representation of the underside of domestic...

Regarded as the first work of unalloyed naturalism in American fiction. The story of Maggie Johnson a young woman who, seduced by her brother's friend and then disowned by her family, turns to prostitution.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) is a novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells the story of a girl named Alice who falls...

The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (of York, Mariner Who lived Eight and Twenty Years all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great...