Mary Shelley (then Godwin) and Percy Bysshe Shelley were visiting their friend Lord Byron in Geneva one rainy summer. With the weather against them, they decided to spend their time writing ghost stories for each other. Frankenstein is Mary Shelley’s submission to their contest, later published anonymously in 1818.
Mary Shelley · Horror · 30 ch
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was the first collection of Sherlock Holmes short stories Conan Doyle published in book form, following the popular success of the novels A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of the Four, which introduced the characters of Dr. John Watson and the austere analytical detective Sherlock Holmes. The collection contains twelve stories, all originally published in The Strand Magazine between July 1891 and June 1892. Narrated by the first-person voice of Dr. Watson, they involve him and Holmes solving a series of mysterious cases.
Arthur Conan Doyle · Mystery · 12 ch
Dracula is one of the most famous horror novels, responsible not just for introducing the eponymous Count Dracula, but for laying the foundations for many of the common tropes we see in modern horror fiction. Count Dracula isn’t the first vampire to have graced the pages of Western literature—that honor belongs to Lord Ruthven in “ The Vampire,” a short story by John William Polidori —but Dracula is the vampire on which the modern vampire trope is based. Dracula wasn’t as famous in its day as it is today; readers of the time seemed to enjoy it as nothing more than a good story, and Stoker died nearly penniless.
Bram Stoker · Horror · 29 ch
The Great Gatsby is a novel that needs no introduction for a certain generation of American readers. Long taught as required reading in American schools, critics have consistently held it up alongside Moby Dick, Huck Finn, and To Kill a Mockingbird as perhaps the quintessential Great American Novel. Nick Carraway is a young Midwestern man freshly arrived in New York to make his fortune.
F. Scott Fitzgerald · Drama · 9 ch
Jane Eyre experienced abuse at a young age, not only from her aunt—who raised her after both her parents died—but also from the headmaster of Lowood Institution, where she is sent away to. After ten years of living and teaching at Lowood Jane decides she is ready to see more of the world and takes a position as a governess at Thornfield Hall. Jane later meets the mysterious master of Thornfield Hall, Mr. Rochester, and becomes drawn to him.
Charlotte Brontë · Romance · 40 ch
Returning from Liverpool, Mr. Earnshaw brings with him a dirty, ragged, black-haired child called Heathcliff, and sets into motion a tale of destructive passions. The book’s two locations, the genteel Thrushcross Grange and the wild Wuthering Heights, serve as matching backgrounds to the characters of their occupants, as they struggle to gain the upper hand in marriage and power. All the while, the ghosts of the past seem to drive revenge more than inspire forgiveness.
Emily Brontë · Romance · 34 ch
The Picture of Dorian Gray was first published as a serial in Lippencott’s Monthly Magazine, and the publishers thought it would so offend readers that they removed nearly 500 words without Wilde’s approval. Wilde soon expanded it and republished it as a novel, including a short preface justifying his art. Even though his contemporaries considered it so offensive that some argued for his prosecution, Dorian Gray today survives as a classic philosophical novel that explores themes of aestheticism and double lives.
Oscar Wilde · Horror · 21 ch
Crime and Punishment tells the story of Rodion Raskolnikov, an ex-student who plans to murder a pawnbroker to test his theory of personality. Having accomplished the deed, Raskolnikov struggles with mental anguish while trying to both avoid the consequences and hide his guilt from his friends and family. Dostoevsky’s original idea for the novel centered on the Marmeladov family and the impact of alcoholism in Russia, but inspired by a double murder in France he decided to rework it around the new character of Raskolnikov.
Fyodor Dostoevsky · Psychological · 41 ch
Little Women is the classic coming-of-age tale of four sisters on their journey to adulthood. Though today it’s considered a classic, Little Women almost wasn’t written: Alcott wanted to publish a collection of short stories instead, but her publisher and her father pressed her to write a book that would appeal to a wide audience of young girls. The first volume was written quickly and published in 1868; it was a huge success, and Alcott composed the second volume just as quickly and published it in 1869.
Louisa May Alcott · Drama · 48 ch
Treasure Island isn’t just one of the most famous coming-of-age tales in modern storytelling, it’s also the book that invented everything you know about pirates: Peg legs, parrots, treasure chests, tropical islands, Long John Silver, maps marked with an “X,” swashbuckling adventure, and “Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum.” Its brisk pace and easy tone have stood the test of the time— Treasure Island is as readable, enjoyable, and memorable today as it ever was.
Robert Louis Stevenson · Adventure · 35 ch
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is the classic novella of split personality. Stevenson wrote it in just a few days while sick and bedridden, and famously burned the first draft after his wife suggested it should be written as an allegory and not as a story. He re-wrote it in three to six days, and after a few weeks of editing and revision he published what would become one of his most famous and best-selling works.
Robert Louis Stevenson · Horror · 10 ch
The Time Machine is the novel that gave us the concept of—and even the word for—a “time machine.” While it’s not Wells’ first story involving time travel, it is the one that most fully fleshes out the concept of a device that can send a person backwards and forwards in time with complete precision. Time machines have since become a staple of the science fiction and fantasy genres, making The Time Machine one of the most deeply influential science fiction novels of the era.
H. G. Wells · Sci Fi · 13 ch
One of the great American novels, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn tells the story of Huck Finn and his travels with Jim, an escaped slave. Roundly criticised by contemporary reviewers for its colorful and literal language and even banned by several libraries, it sealed its historical importance in part by being one of the first novels to be written entirely in American vernacular. While Huck Finn is, on its face, an adventure tale for younger readers, it’s also a cutting satire and a nuanced examination of racism and morality.
Mark Twain · Adventure · 46 ch
A doctor is released from the Bastille after being falsely imprisoned for almost eighteen years. A young woman discovers the father she’s never known is not dead but alive, if not entirely well. A young man is acquitted of being a traitor, due in part to the efforts of a rather selfish lout who is assisting the young man’s attorney.
Charles Dickens · Historical · 46 ch
Anne of Green Gables established the career of Canadian writer Lucy Maude Montgomery. When Matthew Cuthbert sends away for an orphan boy to help on his farm, he is surprised to instead meet the captivatingly imaginative Anne Shirley. What ensues is one of the most enduringly popular coming-of-age stories, bringing the pastoral beauty of Prince Edward Island to the world.
L. M. Montgomery · Drama · 38 ch
H. G. Wells’ classic tale of alien invasion has to this day never been out of print.
H. G. Wells · Sci Fi · 27 ch
It would be hard to nominate a more well-known character in English literature than that of the austere analytical detective Sherlock Holmes, created by Arthur Conan Doyle in the late 1880s. Holmes, alongside his friend and biographer Dr. John Watson, appeared in two initial novels and dozens of short stories serialized in popular magazines, attracting a devoted, almost fanatical following which continues to this day. The Hound of the Baskervilles, serialized in 1901–1902, was the third novel featuring Holmes and Watson.
Arthur Conan Doyle · Mystery · 15 ch
Mary’s parents fall ill and die, forcing her to be transplanted from India to the English countryside. She arrives at a strange and foreign country manor, where she discovers a long-neglected garden and hears strange sobbing noises at night. Thus begins The Secret Garden, a children’s book with an unusually dense collection of themes, symbols, and motifs.
Frances Hodgson Burnett · Drama · 27 ch
Robinson Crusoe is one of the most popular books ever written in the English language, published in innumerable editions and translated into almost every language of the world, not to mention the many versions created in film, television and even radio. First published in 1719, it can also claim to be one of the first novels ever written in English. Written in the form of an autobiography, it describes the life of the eponymous narrator Robinson Crusoe.
Daniel Defoe · Adventure · 20 ch
Gulliver’s Travels was published in 1726 and is probably the most famous work by Jonathan Swift. It was an instant hit—selling out within a week—and has never been out of print, as well as having been adapted many times. Lemuel Gulliver, an English surgeon on the Antelope, is shipwrecked and washed up on the island of Lilliput, where the inhabitants are less than six inches tall.
Jonathan Swift · Comedy · 41 ch