Shakespeare's best known play and the most quoted work of the English language.

Hamlet's father is dead and he struggles with the desire for revenge. The play uses this backdrop to explore intrigue, incest, desire, and what is important in life.

Regularly included in lists of the greatest works of all time.

A story of the wrongdoings of one generation echoing through the lives of successive descendants. The book served as inspiration or influence for some of H. P. Lovecraft's stories.

Set in 17th century Boston, a puritan community, Hester Prynne gives birth to a daughter, Pearl, after committing adultery. Refusing to name her lover, she is forced to wear the scarlet letter "A" as punishment for her secrecy and adulterous crime. Shamed by the community, Hester attempts to create a new life. Hester Prynne is the first true heroine of American fiction. The Scarlet Letter is Nathaniel Hawthorne's masterpiece.

1895 Best Seller.

One of the most influential anti-war stories ever written The Red Badge of Courage was adapted as a film in 1951 by John Huston. Crane wanted to show what war was like and achieved a ground breaking 'psychological portrayal of fear'. The story follows an archetypical 19 year old recruit in the American Civil War.

A seminal work of Realism, and one of the most influential novels ever written.

"What is remarkable in Madame Bovary is that its mediocre beings, with their earthbound ambitions and pedestrian problems, impress us, by virtue of the structure and the writing that create them, as beings who are out of the ordinary within their ordinary manner of being." - Mario Vargas Llosa, in The Perpetual Orgy

The novel focuses on a doctor's wife, Emma Bovary, as she spirals out of control trying to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland -The book that spawned a plethora of films, expressions and catchphrases. The word "wonderland" itself has been introduced to the English language referring to a marvellous, imaginary place. When Alice falls down a rabbit hole, she finds herself in a fantasy world - talking animals, playing cards and a whole lot of other fanciful, comical and wonderfully absurd nonsense. A story that has been delighting and enchanting children and adults alike for generations.

Emma is the comic novel by Jane Austen that centres around the "handsome, clever and rich", if somewhat spoilt, Emma Woodhouse who fancies herself as a match-maker to her friends. Set in Regency England, comedy ensues as Emma throws herself into the pursuits of love and marriage for others whilst herself remaining apparently immune to the charms of the opposite sex. Witty and charming - quintessential Jane Austen.