Entertainment/Literature - Fiction
and Sixpence – William Somerset Maugham. Based on the life of Gauguin
Ashenden – William Somerset Maugham
The Painted Veil – William Somerset Maugham
Rain – Somerset Maugham
Guy de Maupassant is considered one of the fathers of the modern short story and one of the form's finest exponents. Many of the stories are set during the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s
The Necklace, Boule de Suif – Guy de Maupassant
Tales of the City – series of novels based in San Francisco by Armistead Maupin
Manderley burns down in Rebecca, by Daphne Du Maurier (1907 – 1989)
Jamaica Inn, My Cousin Rachel, Frenchman’s Creek – Daphne Du Maurier
Jamaica Inn tells the story of 20 year-old Mary Yellan, who was brought up on a farm in Helford but has to go and live with her Aunt Patience after her mother dies. Patience's husband, Joss Merlyn, a great big bully who is almost seven feet tall, is the keeper of Jamaica Inn
George Du Maurier – grandfather of Daphne Du Maurier
Svengali – hypnotic main character in George Du Maurier’s Trilby
Ring of Bright Water – Gavin Maxwell
Vladimir Mayakovsky was a Russian and Soviet poet and playwright, among the foremost representatives of early-20th century Russian Futurism
Val McDermid is a Scottish crime writer, best known for a series of suspense novels starring her most famous creation, Dr. Tony Hill
Captain Ahab killed Moby Dick, in the book by Herman Melville
Ishmael – only survivor in Moby Dick
Moby Dick – based on The Essex, which was sunk by a sperm whale
Peaquod sailed from Nantucket, in Moby Dick
Moby Dick was a sperm whale
Billy Budd, Foretopman – Herman Melville
Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life – first novel by Herman Melville
Modern Love – collection of sonnets by George Meredith
The Lark Ascending – poem by George Meredith
Twilight novels of Stephanie Meyer – Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn. Charts a period in the life of Isabella ‘Bella’ Swan, a teenage girl who moves to Forks, Washington, and falls in love with a 104-year-old vampire named Edward Cullen
Fugitive Pieces – Anne Michaels. Second winner of the Orange Prize (1997)
Women Beware Women, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside – Thomas Middleton
The Changeling is a Jacobean tragedy written by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley
Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn – Henry Miller
The Rosy Crucifixion trilogy – Henry Miller. Consists of Sexus, Plexus, and Nexus
Tara estate – home of Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Samson Agonistes – John Milton (1608 – 1674)
“Every cloud has a silver lining” – from John Milton’s Comus (A Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634)
Paradise Lost – written by Milton in 1667
“All hell broke loose” – from Paradise Lost. Contains a reference to ‘His dark materials’, which was an inspiration for Philip Pullman
Paradise Lost ends with the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden
Paradise Regained – John Milton
Lycidas – John Milton. Dedicated to the memory of Edward King
Areopagitica – treatise condemning censorship, John Milton
On His Blindness – sonnet by John Milton. First line – “When I consider how my light is spent”. Last line – “They also serve who only stand and wait”
Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
The American Way of Death – Jessica Mitford
Love in a Cold Climate – Nancy Mitford
The Pursuit of Love – Nancy Mitford
Anne of Green Gables – Lucy Maud Montgomery. Village of Avonlea, on Prince Edward Island. Features Anne Shirley, a young orphan
Anne of Avonlea – sequel to Anne of Green Gables
HMS Compass Rose – ship in The Cruel Sea, by Nicholas Montserrat
Elric of Melnibone is a character created by Michael Moorcock, and the antihero of a series of sword and sorcery stories centering in an alternate Earth
The Eternal Champion is a fictional creation of the author Michael Moorcock and is a recurrent feature in many of his novels
Alan Moore is an English writer most famous for his influential work in comics, including the acclaimed graphic novels Watchmen, V for Vendetta and From Hell. He has also written a novel, Voice of the Fire
Clement Clarke Moore is best known as the credited author of A Visit from St. Nicholas (more commonly known today as Twas the Night before Christmas)
How to Build a Girl – Caitlin Moran. Columnist at The Times
Utopia – Thomas More (1516). Amorat (capital city), Aneda (river)
The Reluctant Vampire, The Vampire’s Revenge – Eric Morecambe
News from Nowhere – William Morris
The Bluest Eye, Beloved, Song of Solomon – Toni Morrison
Rumpole books – John Mortimer
The Pumpkin Eater – Penelope Mortimer
Labyrinth, Sepulchre, The Winter Ghosts – Kate Mosse
Public Property – Andrew Motion
On the Record – Andrew Motion’s poem for Prince William’s 21st birthday
The Pleasure Steamers – Andrew Motion
The Land of Green Plums – Herta Muller
A Very British Coup is a 1982 novel by British politician Chris Mullin
Dear Life, Dance of the Happy Shades – Alice Munro
The Bell, The Severed Head, Under the Net – Iris Murdoch
The Book and the Brotherhood – Iris Murdoch
The Sea, the Sea is the 19th novel by Iris Murdoch. It won the Booker Prize in 1978
Iris Murdoch has been shortlisted for Booker Prize six times
Oxford Book of Humorous Prose – Frank Muir
Norwegian Wood, Kafka on the Shore, 1Q84 – Haruki Murakami
Hear the Wind Sing – first Murakami novel
The Tale of Gengi – a classic work of Japanese literature attributed to the Japanese noblewoman Murasaki Shikibu in the early eleventh century. It is sometimes called the world's first novel
Vladimir Nabokov (1899 – 1977) wrote his first nine novels were in Russian. He then rose to international prominence as a writer of English prose. Lolita (1955) is his most famous novel. Died in Montreux, Switzerland
Signs and Symbols, Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov
“Light of my life, fire of my loins” – from Lolita. One of the novel's characters, ‘Vivian Darkbloom’, is an anagram of the author's name. Literature professor Humbert Humbert is obsessed with the 12-year-old Dolores Haze
The Original of Laura – unfinished novel by Nabokov
A Bend in the River – VS Naipaul. Set in a city that resembled Stanleyville
A House for Mr Biswas – VS Naipaul
Among the Believers – travelogue by VS Naipaul
The Unfortunate Traveller – Thomas Nashe
Suite Francaise – Irene Nemirovsky. Two novellas portraying life in France between June 1940 and July 1941, the period during which the Nazis occupied Paris. Nemirovsky died in Auschwitz in 1942
Pablo Neruda (1904 – 1973) was the pen name of the Chilean writer and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. Neruda was accomplished in a variety of styles ranging from erotically charged love poems like his collection Twenty Poems of Love and a Song of Despair, surrealist poems, historical epics, and overtly political manifestos
Harry Hole is the main character in a series of crime novels written by Jo Nesbo. The series follows Harry Hole, a tough detective who struggles with alcoholism and works on solving crimes on the streets of Oslo
Play up! Play up! And play the game! – poem by Henry Newbolt
PH Newby was the first winner of the Booker Prize in 1969, for his novel Something to Answer For
The Lodger – Charles Nicholl. About Shakespeare appearing as a witness in a court of law
Starter for Ten, One Day – novels by David Nicholls
A Day in the Life of Joe Egg – Peter Nichols
The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
Her Fearful Symmetry – Audrey Niffenegger
Delta of Venus, Little Birds – Anias Nin
Ringwall science fiction novels – Larry Niven
The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, The Fall and Rise of Gordon Coppinger – David Nobbs
The Pope’s Rhinoceros – novel by Lawrence Norfolk
The Highwayman – Alfred Noyes
The Country Girls Trilogy – Edna O’Brien
At Swim-Two-Birds, The Third Policeman – Flann O’Brien
Master and Commander – based on books by Patrick O’Brien
My Friend Flicka is a 1941 novel by Mary O'Hara, about Ken McLaughlin, the son of a Wyoming rancher, and his horse Flicka
Scott Pilgrim is a graphic novel series by Bryan Lee O'Malley
Netherland – Joseph O’Neill
The Wild Geese – Mori Ogai
The Famished Road – Ben Okri. Won the 1991 Booker Prize
The Scarlet Pimpernel – written by Baroness Orczy
The Scalet Pimpernel, Book 2: Mademoiselle Guillotine
The Scalet Pimpernel, Book 3: The Kidnapped King
The Scarlet Pimpernel is set in 1792, during the early stages of the French Revolution
Percy Blakeney was the leader of the league of the Scarlet Pimpernel
George Orwell (1903 – 1950) was born in India. He served as a policeman in Burma, and later served in the Home Guard. Wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four on Jura. Died of TB
Keep the Aspidestra Flying – George Orwell
Down and Out in Paris and London – Orwell’s first book
The Road to Wigan Pier – about coal miners
Homage to Catalonia – George Orwell. Based on his visit to Spain in 1936 to train anti-fascist troops
Animal Farm – George Orwell. Satire on Bolshevik revolution in Russia
Boxer was the carthorse.Together with the pig Napoleon, Snowball leads the animals' revolt against the human farmer, but is driven away from the farm (a comparison to Trotsky) by his former comrade Napoleon (like Stalin) in the later part of the story
Frederick owns Pinchfield Farm in Animal Farm. Supposedly based on Hitler
‘But already it was impossible to say which was which’ – last line of Animal Farm
Burmese Days – novel by George Orwell
Coming Up For Air – George Orwell, features insurance salesman George Bowling
The Clergyman’s Daughter – George Orwell
George Orwell wrote about his ‘ideal pub’, The Moon under Water, in the Evening Standard
The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius is an essay by George Orwell expressing his opinions on the situation in wartime Britain
Nineteen Eighty-Four – published in 1949
Last Man in Europe – original title of Nineteen Eighty-Four
Ossian is the narrator and supposed author of a cycle of poems which the Scottish poet James Macpherson claimed to have translated from ancient sources in the Scots Gaelic Wilfred Owen was born in Oswestry. Killed in action in France one week before the signing of the armistice in 1918
The Send Off – Wilfred Owen
Greater Love – Wilfred Owen
Anthem for Doomed Youth – Wilfred Owen
Dulce et Decorem Est – known as ‘the old lie’. Wilfred Owen
Fight Club – Chuck Palahniuk
Hemingway’s Chair – first novel by Michael Palin
The Museum of Innocence – Orhan Pamuk
Orhan Pamuk novels include The White Castle, The Black Book, The New Life, My Name Is Red and Snow
Christopher Paolini is the author of the Inheritance Cycle, which consists of the books Eragon, Eldest, Brisingr, and Inheritance. The dragon in Eragon is called Saphira
The protagonist of all but two of Sara Paretsky's novels is V.I. Warshawski, a female private investigator
Spencer crime novels written by Robert Parker
Man and Boy – Tony Parsons
Doctor Zhivago – Boris Pasternak. Zhivago's great love is Lara
Along Came a Spider – first novel by James Patterson
Series featuring Alex Cross, an African-American forensic psychologist – James Patterson
Cry The Beloved Country – Alan Paton. About South Africa
GB84, The Damned Utd – novels by David Peace
The Red-Riding Quartet by David Peace comprises the novels Nineteen Seventy-Four, Nineteen Seventy-Seven, Nineteen Eighty and Nineteen Eighty-Three. The books deal with police corruption, and are set against a backdrop of the Yorkshire Ripper murders
Nightmare Abbey – novel by Thomas Love Peacock
Headlong Hall – first novel by Thomas Love Peacock
Gormenghast – trilogy by Mervyn Peake. The series consists of three novels, Titus Groan (1946), Gormenghast (1950), and Titus Alone (1959)
The Tenderness of Wolves – Stef Penney
Amelia Peabody series is a series of mystery novels written by Elizabeth Peters featuring Egyptologist Amelia Peabody Emerson, for whom the series is named
A Morbid Taste for Bones – first novel to feature Brother Cadfael, by Ellis Peters (real name Edith Pargeter). Cadfael is a Benedictine monk at Shrewsbury Abbey
Flambards is a novel by K. M. Peyton. The book and its three sequels are set just before, during, and after World War I. The first three books were made into a television series, Flambards in 1979, starring Christine McKenna as Christina Parsons
The Final Passage, Crossing the River – Caryl Phillips, born in St. Kitts
Songs of the Humpback Whale – first novel by Jodi Picoult
House Rules – Jodi Picoult
Vernon God Little, Lights Out in Wonderland – D.B.C. Pierre
The Shell Seekers, September – Rosamunde Pilcher
Trelawny of the Wells – Arthur Wing Pinero. Rose Trelawny is an actress in a theatrical troupe known as the ‘Wells’
Six Characters in Search of an Author, The Late Mattia Pascal – Pirandello (1867–1936)
The Bell Jar, Ariel – Sylvia Plath
The Bell Jar was published under the name of Victoria Lucas
First line of The Bell Jar “It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York”
The Great Carbuncle, Wuthering Heights – Sylvia Plath
Edgar Allen Poe (1809 – 1849) was expelled from West Point in 1831 for neglect of duty
The Tell-Tale Heart – Edgar Allen Poe
The Raven, The Masque of the Red Death – Edgar Allen Poe
The Premature Burial – Edgar Allen Poe
C. Auguste Dupin is a fictional detective created by Edgar Allan Poe. Dupin made his first appearance in Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841), widely considered the first detective fiction story
The Vampyre is a short story or novella written in 1819 by John William Polidori which is a progenitor of the romantic vampire genre of fantasy fiction
The Essay on Man – poem by Alexander Pope (1688 – 1744)
An Essay on Criticism – Pope
The Rape of the Lock is a mock-heroic poem written by Alexander Pope, first published anonymously in Lintot's Miscellany in 1712 in two cantos
Ramage novels – Dudley Pope
True Grit – novel by Charles Portis
Ezra Pound was the driving force behind several Modernist movements, notably Imagism and Vorticism. The Cantos by Ezra Pound is a long, incomplete poem in 120 sections, each of which is a canto. The section he wrote at the end of World War II has become known as The Pisan Cantos
A Dance to the Music of Time is a twelve-volume cycle of novels by Anthony Powell, inspired by the painting of the same name by Nicolas Poussin. One of the longest works of fiction in literature, it was published between 1951 and 1975. The sequence is narrated by Nick Jenkins in the form of his reminiscences
First novel – A Question of Upbringing
Twelfth and final novel – Hearing Secret Harmonies
The Fisher King – Anthony Powell
Terry Pratchett Discworld novels are set in the city of Ankh-Morpork
The Discworld itself is described as a large disc resting on the backs of four giant elephants, all supported by the giant turtle Great A'Tuin as it swims its way through space
Making Money – Terry Pratchett
The Carpet People – first novel
The Colour of Magic – first Discworld novel
Unseen University (UU) is a school of wizardry in Ankh-Morpork
Truckers, Diggers and Wings make up The Bromeliad Trilogy by Terry Pratchett
Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (1990) is a novel written in collaboration between Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
Manon Lescaut – Antoine Prevost. The story has influenced a number of ballets and operas, such as Manon (1884) by French composer Jules Massenet and Manon Lescaut (1893) by Italian composer Giacomo Puccini
The Prestige is a 1995 novel by British writer Christopher Priest
The Good Companions – JB Priestley (1894 – 1984). Focuses on the trials and tribulations of a concert party in England between World War I and World War II
E Annie Proulx’s second novel, The Shipping News (1993), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for fiction in 1994. Her short story Brokeback Mountain was adapted as a motion picture released in 2005. She won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for her first novel, Postcards
Accordion Crimes – E Annie Proulx
A la Recherche du Temps Perdu (Remembrance of Things Past or In Search of Lost Time) – a semi-autobiographical novel in seven volumes by Marcel Proust. Title taken from Sonnet 30 by Shakespeare. Volume One is Swann’s Way
Marcel Proust fought a duel with writer Jean Lorrain in 1897
Malcolm Pryce writes in the style of Raymond Chandler, but his novels are set on the rainswept streets of an alternate universe version of Aberystwyth. The hero of the novels is Louie Knight, the best private detective in Aberystwyth
The Ruby in the Smoke, The Shadow in the North, The Tiger in the Well, The Tin Princess – Philip Pullman books featuring Sally Lockhart
Alexander Pushkin (1799 – 1837) was killed in a duel with Georges d’Anthes, who was suspected of having an affair with his wife Natalia
Boris Gudonov, The Queen of Spades, The Captain’s Daughter – Alexander Pushkin
Eugene Onegin – Pushkin, concerns the fortune of two couples (Onegin and Tatyana are one couple) doomed to unhappiness. Modelled on Byron’s poem Don Juan
The Tale of Tsar Saltan, The Bronze Horseman – Pushkin
The Tale of Tsar Saltan, of His Son the Renowned and Mighty Bogatyr Prince Gvidon Saltanovich, and of the Beautiful Princess-Swan – full title
V. (1963), The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), Gravity's Rainbow (1973), Vineland (1990), and Mason & Dixon (1997) – novels by Thomas Pynchon
Bleeding Edge – Thomas Pynchon
Confessions of an English Opium Eater – Thomas De Quincy
The Mysteries of Udolpho – gothic novel by Ann Radcliffe
The Gentle Shepherd – Allan Ramsay
The Fountainhead – first successful novel by Ayn Rand. Howard Roark is an individualistic young architect who chooses to struggle in obscurity rather than compromise his artistic and personal vision
John Galt is a fictional character who describes Objectivism in Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged. Although he is absent from much of the text, he is the subject of the novel's often repeated question, ‘Who is John Galt?’, and the quest to discover the answer
The Naming of the Dead – Ian Rankin. Inspector (John) Rebus novel set in the week of the G8 summit in Gleneagles in 2005
Knots and Crosses – first Inspector Rebus novel
Rebus novels are based in Edinburgh. Last book – Exit Music
Where the Red Fern Grows – Wilson Rawls
Dora Jessie Saint, best known by the pen name Miss Read, was an English novelist. She is best known for two series of novels set in the British countryside – the Fairacre novels and the Thrush Green novels
The Cloister and the Hearth – Charles Reade
The Celestine Prophecy – James Redfield
Deja Dead is the first novel by Kathy Reichs starring forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan
Ice Station – Matthew Reilly
Inspector Wexford books – Ruth Rendell
From Doon With Death – first Wexford novel, 1964
A Judgment in Stone – Ruth Rendell
Barbara Vine – pseudonym of Ruth Rendell
All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Remarque. Told through the eyes of a German soldier in WWI
Alexander trilogy – Mary Renault's trilogy of novels about Alexander the Great (Fire From Heaven, The Persian Boy and Funeral Games)
Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys, prequel to Jane Eyre
Interview with the Vampire – Anne Rice
The Vampire Chronicles is a series of novels by Anne Rice that revolves around the fictional character Lestat de Lioncourt, a French nobleman made into a vampire in the 18th century
Samuel Richardson (1689 – 1761) was best known for his three epistolary novels: Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded (1740), Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady (1748) and Sir Charles Grandison (1753)
Illuminations – Arthur Rimbaud
At Risk – novel by Stella Rimington (the first female Director General of MI5)
Scarlett – Alexandra Ripley. Sequel to Gone with the Wind
The Dream Merchants – first novel by Harold Robbins
Mars trilogy – Kim Stanley Robinson. The three novels are Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars
Home – Marylynne Robinson. Winner of the 2009 Orange Prize
Gallows View is the first novel by Canadian detective fiction writer Peter Robinson in the Inspector Banks series of novels
Landscape with Dead Dons – detective novel by Robert Robinson
Fu Manchu featured in a series of novels by English author Sax Rohmer during the first half of the 20th century
Christina Rossetti is best known for her long poem Goblin Market, her love poem Remember, and for the words of the Christmas carol In the Bleak Midwinter
Portnoy’s Complaint, Everyman – Philip Roth
The Plot Against America – Philip Roth. Lindbergh defeats Roosevelt to become president in 1940
American Pastoral, The Human Stain, Nemesis – Philip Roth
Divergent, Insurgent, Allegiant – Divergent trilogy by Veronica Roth
The Casual Vacancy – JK Rowling (born 1965). The novel is set in a West Country town called Pagford and begins with the death of Parish Councillor Barry Fairbrother
Crime fiction novels The Cuckoo's Calling and The Silkworm – JK Rowling, under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith
Grimus – debut novel by Salman Rushdie (born 1947)
Shalimar the Clown, The Moor’s Last Sigh – Salman Rushdie
The Enchantress of Florence – Salman Rushdie
Geordie Sharp is a fictional character featured in a series of military novels written by Chris Ryan. He is a Sergeant in the Special Air Service (SAS)
Scaramouche – a historical novel by Rafael Sabati, originally published in 1921 and subsequently adapted into a play by Barbara Field and into feature films in 1923 starring Ramon Novarro and in a 1952 remake with Stewart Granger. It is a romantic adventure and tells the story of a young aristocrat during the French Revolution
Bonjour Tristesse – Francoise Sagan. Means ‘Hello Sadness’
George Sand was the pseudonym of the French novelist and feminist Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dupin, later Baroness Dudevant (1804–1876)
The Devils Pool, Little Fadette – George Sand
Franny and Zooey – JD Salinger (1919 – 2010)
Glass family featured in a number of JD Salinger’s short stories
Holden Caulfield – main character in The Catcher in the Rye. 16 years old, runs away to New York. Holden Caulfield has ideas of becoming a ‘catcher in the rye,’ a heroic figure who symbolically saves children from ‘falling off a crazy cliff’ and being exposed to the evils of adulthood. Title taken from a poem by Robert Burns
The Catcher in the Rye has never been made into a film
Dissolution – CJ Sansom. Set in the 16th Century during the dissolution of the monasteries, it follows hunchbacked lawyer Shardlake's attempts to solve the murder of one of Thomas Cromwell's commissioners
Nausea – novel by Jean Paul Sartre
Attack, Everyone Sang – Siegfried Sassoon
Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, Sherston's Progress – Siegfried Sassoon's semi-autobiographical trilogy (Sherston Trilogy)
Siegfried Sassoon won military cross in World War I
Dorothy L. Sayers is best known for her mysteries set between World War I and World War II that feature English aristocrat and amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey
Lord Peter Wimsey lived at 110A Piccadilly. Bunter – Peter Wimsey’s manservant
Whose Body? – first Lord Peter Wimsey book
Dorothy L Sayers translated Dante’s Divine Comedy
Ode to Joy, The Robbers, Don Carlos, The Wallenstein Trilogy, Mary Stuart, William Tell – Friedrich Schiller
The Reader – Bernhard Schlink
The Raj Quartet is a four-volume novel sequence, written by Paul Scott, about the concluding years of the British Raj in India. The four volumes are: The Jewel in the Crown (1966), The Day of the Scorpion (1968), The Towers of Silence (1971), A Division of the Spoils (1975). Some of the characters are carried through to a further novel called Staying On (1977)
The Fair Maid of Perth – Walter Scott (1771 – 1832). The maid was Katherine Glover
Heart of Midlothian – Walter Scott. Account of the Porteous riots in Edinburgh in 1736, features the Deans family
Kenilworth, Rob Roy, Red Gauntlet – Walter Scott
Ivanhoe is the story of one of the remaining Saxon noble families at a time when the English nobility was overwhelmingly Norman. It follows the Saxon protagonist, Wilfred of Ivanhoe, who is out of favour with his father owing to his courting the Lady Rowena and for his allegiance to the Norman king Richard I of England. The story is set in 1194, after the end of the Third Crusade
The Lady of the Lake is a narrative poem by Walter Scott,. Set in the Trossachs region of Scotland, it is composed of six cantos, each of which concerns the action of a single day. The poem has three main plots: the contest among three men, Roderick Dhu, James Fitz-James, and Malcolm Graeme, to win the love of Ellen Douglas; the feud and reconciliation of King James V of Scotland and James Douglas; and a war between the lowland Scots (led by James V) and the highland clans
Waverley, Guy Mannering, The Bride of Lammermoor – Walter Scott
Marmion is an epic poem by Walter Scott about the Battle of Flodden Field
The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
Love Story – Erich Segal
Oliver’s Story – sequel to Love Story by Eric Segal
The Book of Dave by Will Self tells the story of an angry and mentally-ill London taxi driver named Dave Rudman
Cock and Bull – first novel by Will Self
Great Apes – Will Self
Umbrella – Will Self
The Golden Gate – Vikram Seth’s first novel
A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
Black Beauty – Anna Sewell. Merrylegs – pony in Black Beauty
Sleuth – Anthony Shaffer
Grantchester Grind – follow-up to Porterhouse Blue by Tom Sharpe. About Cambridge University
TekWar is a series of science fiction novels created by William Shatner and ghost-written by science-fiction author Ron Goulart
The Young Lions, Rich Man Poor Man – Irwin Shaw
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 – 1822) was expelled from Oxford University in 1811 for producing a pamphlet called The Necessity of Atheism. Shelley married Harriet Westbrook, who committed suicide. His second wife was Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. Less than a month before his 30th birthday, Shelley drowned in a sudden storm while sailing back from Livorno to Lerici in his schooner, Don Juan. Shelley claimed to have met his Doppelganger, foreboding his own death
To a Skylark, Ode to the West Wind – Percy Bysshe Shelley
Ozymandius, The Revolt of Islam – Shelley
Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats – Shelley
The Masque of Anarchy – Shelley’s response to the Peterloo Massacre
Autumn: A Dirge – Shelley
Mary Shelley, née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin, and her mother was the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft
The Last Man is an apocalyptic science fiction novel by Mary Shelley, which was first published in 1826
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel written by Mary Shelley about eccentric scientist Victor Frankenstein
Journey’s End – RC Sherriff
The Stone Diaries – Carol Shields
The Triumph of Beauty – poem by James Shirley
We Need To Talk About Kevin, So Much For That – Lionel Shriver
The New Republic – Lionel Shriver
Big Brother – Lionel Shriver
On the Beach – Neville Shute
Neville Shute founded the aircraft construction company Airspeed Ltd in 1931
Astrophel and Stella, The Defence of Poesy, The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia – Philip Sidney, who was killed at the Battle of Zutphen in 1586. Son-in-law of Francis Walsingham
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner – Alan Sillitoe
Georges Simenon wrote 75 novels and 28 short stories featuring Commissaire Maigret. The first novel in the series, Pietr-le-Letton, appeared in 1931; the last one, Maigret et M. Charles, was published in 1972
The Jungle – Upton Sinclair. Dealt with conditions in the US meat packing industry
Oil! – Upton Sinclair. Basis of the film There Will be Blood
Between 1940 and 1953, Upton Sinclair wrote the World's End series of 11 novels about Lanny Budd, the son of an American arms manufacturer
Facade – Dame Edith Sitwell
Martin Beck is a fictional Swedish police detective who is the main character in a series of ten novels by Sjowall and Wahloo, collectively titled The Story of a Crime
John Skelton – 16th century poet, born in Norfolk
By Grand Central Station – poem by Elizabeth Smart
A Thousand Acres is a novel by American author Jane Smiley. It won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was adapted to a 1997 film of the same name. The novel is a contemporary deconstruction of Shakespeare's King Lear
The Accidental – Ali Smith
I Capture the Castle – Dodie Smith
101 Dalmatians – Dodie Smith. Set in London
Lensman series is a serial science fiction space opera by Edward Elmer ‘Doc’ Smith
Gorky Park is a 1981 crime novel written by Martin Cruz Smith set in the Soviet Union. It follows Arkady Renko, a chief investigator for the Militsiya, who is assigned to a case involving three corpses dug up in Gorky Park, an amusement park in Moscow
The Devil’s Tune – thriller by Iain Duncan Smith
The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency – books by Alexander McCall Smith
No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency – started by Precious Ramotswe in Botswana
Tears of the Giraffe – Alexander McCall Smith
In the Company of Cheerful Ladies – Alexander McCall Smith
Blue Shoes and Happiness – Alexander McCall Smith
Not Waving but Drowning – poem by Stevie Smith
Wilbur Smith – born in Rhodesia, wrote two series of novels about the Courtney and Ballantyne families
When the Lions Feed – Wilbur Smith
White Teeth, The Autograph Man, NW – Zadie Smith
On Beauty – Zadie Smith. Winner of the Orange Prize for fiction in 2006. The book is loosely based on Howards End by E. M. Forster
The Expedition of Humphry Clinker was the last of the picaresque novels of Tobias Smollett
The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748), The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751) – Tobias Smollett
Homecomings, The Corridors of Power – C.P. Snow
Strangers and Brothers is a series of novels by C. P. Snow
August 1914 is a novel by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918 – 2008) about Imperial Russia’s defeat in 1914's Battle of Tannenberg
November 1916 is a novel by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the sequel to August 1914. The novel picks up on the brink of the Russian Revolution
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, The Cancer Ward, The Gulag Archipelago, The First Circle – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The Battle of Blenheim – Robert Southey
The Story of the Three Bears – Robert Southey
Memento Mori – Muriel Spark
The Fairie Queen – Edmund Spenser, was unfinished
The Decline of the West – Oswald Spengler
Maus – Art Spiegelman. Graphic novel which tells the story of a Holocaust survivor, with the Jews depicted as mice and the Germans as cats
Fame is the Spur – Howard Spring
Heidi – Johanna Spyri
Last and First Men, Starmaker – Olaf Stapleton
Going Home – first novel by Danielle Steel (Danielle Fernande Dominique Schuelein-Steel), published in 1973
Fernhurst, Three Lives, The Making of Americans, Tender Buttons – Gertrude Stein. Her life partner was Alice B. Tolkas. Stein and her brother Leo owned a large collection of modern art
“A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose” – Gertrude Stein quotation
Tortilla Flat – novel by John Steinbeck (1902 – 1968)
Cup of Gold – first novel by John Steinbeck
Of Mice and Men, Cannery Row, East of Eden – John Steinbeck
Of Mice and Men – the title is taken from Robert Burns' poem To a Mouse
The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck. The Joad family abandon the Oklahoma dustbowl and head for California. Title comes from Battle Hymn of the Republic
East of Eden brings to life the intricate details of two families, the Trasks and the Hamiltons, and their interwoven stories
The Winter of Our Discontent, The Wayward Bus, In Dubious Battles, Travels With Charley – John Steinbeck
Marie-Henri Beyle, better known by his penname Stendhal (1783 – 1842), was a French writer. Known for his acute analysis of his characters' psychology, he is considered one of the earliest and foremost practitioners of realism in his two novels The Red and the Black (1830) and The Charterhouse of Parma (1839). Stendahl was part of Napoleon’s army in the 1812 invasion of Russia
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman – 1759 novel by Laurence Sterne
Apart from Tristram as narrator, the most familiar and important characters in the book are his father Walter, his mother, his Uncle Toby, and Toby's servant Trim
A Sentimental Journey Theough France and Italy – Laurence Sterne
The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses – Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 – 1894)
Kidnapped: The Adventures of David Balfour – RL Stevenson
Catriona by Robert Louis Stevenson is a sequel to Kidnapped. It tells the further story of the central character David Balfour
Weir of Hermiston – unfinished romance by RL Stevenson
The Master of Ballantrae, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – RL Stevenson
Henry Jekyll and Edward Hyde. Set in Edinburgh
Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes – RL Stevenson
The Body Snatcher – RL Stevenson. The story is based on characters in the employ of Robert Knox, around the time of the Burke and Hare murders
Treasure Island – narrated by Jim Hawkins
Ben Gunn – pirate in Treasure Island, longed to eat toasted cheese
Long John Silver – one legged cook aboard the Hispaniola. Owns the Spyglass Inn
Long John Silver is also known by the nicknames ‘Barbecue’ and ‘the Sea-Cook’
Parrot is Captain Flint (buried the treasure)
Robert Louis Stevenson is buried on Samoa
The Help is a 2009 novel by American author Kathryn Stockett. The story is about African-American maids working in white households in Jackson, Mississippi, during the early 1960s
Bram Stoker was better known as personal assistant of actor Henry Irving and business manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London, which Irving owned
Renfield and Mina Murray – characters in Dracula, by Bram Stoker. Published in 1897
Jonathan Harker is one of the main protagonists in Dracula. His journey to Transylvania and encounter with Count Dracula and the Brides of Dracula at Castle Dracula constitutes the dramatic opening scenes in the novel
The Jewel of the Seven Stars – Bram Stoker
The Primrose Path – first novel by Bram Stoker
The Agony and the Ecstasy – Irving Stone. Biographical novel of Michelangelo
Lust for Life – Irving Stone. Biographical novel of Vincent van Gogh
The Origin – Irving Stone. Biographical novel of Charles Darwin
This Sporting Life – David Storey. Tells the story of rugby league player, Frank Machin
In Celebration – David Storey
Detective Nero Wolfe was created by crime writer Rex Stout
Uncle Tom’s Cabin – Harriet Beecher Stowe. Anti-slavery novel published in 1852. Tom is sold to the evil Simon Legree after the death of Mr St Clare. Topsy is a slave girl
The Red Room, The Son of a Servant (autobiographical novel) – August Strindberg, born in Stockholm
The Defence of a Fool, Inferno, Mademoiselle Julie, Dances of Death – Strindberg
Sophie’s Choice – William Styron
Valley of the Dolls – Jacqueline Susann
Perfume – Patrick Suskind
A Tale of a Tub, The Battle of the Books – Jonathan Swift (1667 – 1745)
Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift. One of the conflicts in the book is between Lilliputians who preferred cracking open their soft-boiled eggs from the little end, and Blefuscans who preferred the big end
Gulliver’s first name was Lemuel
Gulliver was shipwrecked on The Antelope in 1699
Houyhnhnms are a race of intelligent horses described in the last part of Gulliver's Travels
Yahoos – creatures in Gulliver’s Travels
A Modest Proposal is a satirical essay written and published anonymously by Jonathan Swift in 1729. Swift suggests that the impoverished Irish might ease their economic troubles by selling their children as food for rich gentlemen and ladies
Jonathan Swift was Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin
Anita and Me, Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee – Meera Syal
Taliesin was a 6th century Welsh poet whose work has possibly survived in a Middle Welsh manuscript, the Book of Taliesin
The Joy Luck Club, Saving Fish from Drowning – Amy Tan
The Magnificent Ambersons, Alice Adams – Booth Tarkington
The Secret History, The Little Friend – Donna Tartt
The Goldfinch – 2013 novel by Donna Tartt
Shadowmancer – a fantasy novel by Graham Taylor. Like CS Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia it is a Christian allegory in the form of a fantasy adventure
Charge of the Light Brigade, Charge of the Heavy Brigade – Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809 – 1892)
The Lady of Shallot – unrequited love for Lancelot. Poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
‘On either side the river lie’ – first line of The Lady of Shallot
‘In spring, a young man’s fancy likely turns to thoughts of love’ – Locksley Hall, by Tennyson
Idylls of the King, published between 1856 and 1885, is a cycle of twelve narrative poems by Alfred Lord Tennyson which retells the legend of King Arthur, his knights, his love for Guinevere and her tragic betrayal of him. Dedicated to Prince Albert
Come into the Garden, Maud – Tennyson
In 1833, Alfred Lord Tennyson's closest friend died. He was Arthur Hallam, fiance to
Tennyson's sister. In Memoriam (1850) is an elegy written in honor of Hallam. It is made up of 133 poems, all written over a 17-year period
Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington – Tennyson
The Eagle – Tennyson
Ulysses – poem by Tennyson
Tennyson was the first to be raised to a British peerage for his writing
The Book of Snobs – William Makepeace Thackeray (1811 – 1863)
Vanity Fair is subtitled A Novel Without a Hero. Features Becky Sharp
Vanity Fair – title comes from The Pilgrim’s Progress
Vanity Fair features Miss Pinkerton’s Academy for Young Ladies
History of Pendennis – WM Thackeray
The Newcomes – Thackeray
The History of Henry Esmond – Thackeray
The Virginians: A Tale of the Last Century is a historical novel by William Makepeace Thackeray which forms a sequel to his Henry Esmond and is also loosely linked to Pendennis
WM Thackeray was born in Calcutta
The Mosquito Coast – Paul Theroux
The White Hotel – DM Thomas
Land of my Fathers – written by Dylan Thomas (1914 – 1953)
“Do not gentle into that good night. Rage, rage, against the dying of the light” – Dylan Thomas
“The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet” – Edward Thomas, an Anglo-Welsh World War 1 war poet who knew Robert Frost. He enlisted in the army in 1915, and was killed in action during the Battle of Arras in 1917
Adlestrop – poem by Edward Thomas
Lark Rise to Candleford: A Trilogy: Lark Rise, Over to Candleford, Candleford Green – Flora Thompson
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S Thompson
Behind the Candelabra: My Life With Liberace (1988) is an autobiographical novel by Liberace's live-in lover of five years, Scott Thorson
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is a short story by James Thurber. The most famous of Thurber's stories, it first appeared in The New Yorker in 1939
Mr MacGregor – novel by Alan Titchmarsh
The Master, Colm Toibin, is about Henry James
Brooklyn – Colm Toibin
The Empty Family – Colm Toibin
Elvish languages – invented by JRR Tolkein (1892 – 1973)
Hobbits – Brandybuck, Frodo Baggins, Gamgee, Meriadoc (Merry), Perigrin (Pippin) Took, Samwise (Sam). Dwarf – Gimli
Bilbo Baggins is 111 at the start of Lord of the Rings
Smaug – dragon that guards the treasure in The Hobbit
The Hobbit was first published in 1937. Subtitle – ‘there and back again’
The Silmarillion comprises five parts
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien served as the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford, from 1925 to 1945 and Merton Professor of English Language and Literature and Fellow of Merton College, Oxford from 1945 to 1959. Born in South Africa
War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy (1828 – 1910). Follows the lives of the Bolkonsky and Rostov families as Napoleon’s armies sweep across Europe. Published in 1869
Battle of Austerlitz is mentioned in War and Peace
“Happy families are all alike. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” is the opening line of Anna Karenina. Published in 1877
Count Vronsky – officer in Anna Karenina
Anna Karenina commits suicide by throwing herself in the path of a train
The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories – Tolstoy
Resurrection – Tolstoy
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen – Paul Torday
The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year – Sue Townsend
Mary Poppins – PL Travers. Published in 1934
Mary Poppins will stay “until the wind changes”
The Road Home – Rose Tremain. Winner of the 2008 Orange Prize
Restoration – Rose Tremain
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist – Robert Trestle
The Chronicles of Barsetshire is a series of six novels by Anthony Trollope (1815 – 1882), set in the fictitious English county of Barsetshire and its cathedral town of Barchester
The Warden – Anthony Trollope. Title character is Septimus Harding. First novel in The Chronicles of Barsetshire
Barchester Towers – second novel in The Chronicles of Barsetshire
The Way we Live Now – Anthony Trollope
Palliser novels are six novels, also known as the ‘Parliamentary Novels’, by Anthony Trollope. The common thread is the wealthy aristocrat and politician Plantagenet Palliser and (in all but the last book) his wife Lady Glencora
Can You Forgive Her? – Anthony Trollope. First of the Palliser novels
The Choir – first novel by Joanna Trollope
A Village Affair – Joanna Trollope
A Month in the Country, Fathers and Sons, First Love, Fortune’s Fool – Ivan Turgenev
Mark Twain (1835 – 1910) was born in Missouri. He may have been the first author to use a typewriter
The Prince and the Pauper – Mark Twain
A Tramp Abroad – Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) – Mark Twain. Tom is brought up by his Aunt Polly. Huck is his friend
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) – Mark Twain. Huck is kidnapped by his father, fakes his own death, and runs away with a slave called Jim
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court – Mark Twain. The novel tells the tale of Hank Morgan, a 19th century citizen of Hartford, Connecticut who awakens to find himself inexplicably transported back in time to early medieval England at the time of the legendary King Arthur in AD 528
Life on the Mississippi – Mark Twain
Breathing Lessons, The Accidental Tourist – Anne Tyler
Sacred Hunger, Morality Play – Barry Unsworth
John Updike's most famous work is his "Rabbit" series (the novels Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit At Rest; and the novella Rabbit Remembered), which chronicles the life of the middle-class everyman Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom over the course of several decades
The Widows of Eastwick – sequel to The Witches of Eastwick, by John Updike
The Poorhouse Fair, Bech books, Couples, Terrorist, The Coup, Gertrude and Claudius, Couples, Villages – John Updike
My Father’s Tears and Other Stories – last work by John Updike
Exodus by American novelist Leon Uris is about the founding of the State of Israel. Published in 1958, it is based on the name of the 1947 immigration ship Exodus
Trinity, Mila 18, Armageddon: A Novel of Berlin – Leon Uris
The Provoked Husband, The Provoked Wife – John Vanbrugh
The Relapse – John Vanbrugh, written in the Bastille
The Three Evangelists series, Commissaire Adamsberg series – crime fiction books by Fred Vargas, the pseudonym of Frederique Audoin-Rouzeau
Paul Verlaine was a French Symbolist poet
Chanson d’Automne – Paul Verlaine
The Mysterious Island – sequel to Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne
Captain Nemo is captain of the Nautilus submarine in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Also known as Prince Dakkar
From the Earth to the Moon – Jules Verne
Gore Vidal wrote The City and the Pillar in 1948, which created controversy as the first major American novel to feature unambiguous homosexuality
Myra Breckinridge – Gore Vidal
Francois Villon is best known for his Testaments and his Ballade des Pendus, written while in prison
‘All is for the best in this best of all possible worlds’ – Dr. Pangloss, in Candide by Voltaire (1694 – 1778) was born Francois-Marie Arouet
Candide begins with a young man, Candide, who is living a sheltered life in an Edenic paradise and being indoctrinated with Leibnizian optimism by his mentor, Pangloss. Candide and his lover Cunegonde travel around the world
Full title – Candide, ou l'Optimisme
Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut. Recounts the adventures of Billy Pilgrim, who sees Dresden destroyed before returning to America
Player Piano – Kurt Vonnegut’s first novel
Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut
Kilgore Trout appears in several of Vonnegut’s books
Bokononism is a fictional religion invented by Kurt Vonnegut and practiced by many of the characters in his novel Cat's Cradle. Many of the sacred texts of Bokononism were written in the form of calypsos
Derek Walcott was born in Castries, St. Lucia. His work is intensely related to the symbolism of myth and its relationship to culture. He is best known for his epic poem Omeros, a reworking of Homeric story and tradition into a journey around the Caribbean and beyond to the American West and London. Walcott founded the Trinidad Theatre Workshop in 1959
Omeros – epic poem by Derek Walcott
The Colour Purple – Alice Walker
Join Me, Yes Man – Danny Wallace
Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace
The Four Just Men – first crime novel by Edgar Wallace
Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ is a novel by Lew Wallace
The Bridges of Madison County – Robert Waller
Castle of Otranto – first Gothic novel. Written by Horace Walpole, the son of the first Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole
The Ice House – crime fiction writer Minette Walters
The Choirboys – Joseph Wambaugh
All the King’s Men – Robert Penn Warren. Inspired the title of All the President’s Men
Billy Liar – Keith Waterhouse, 1959
Billy Liar imagines himself as ruler of Ambrosia
Tipping the Velvet, Affinity, Fingersmith – Sarah Waters
The Night Watch – Sarah Waters. Set in blitz-ravaged London in the 1940s
The Little Stranger – Sarah Waters
Decline and Fall – first novel by Evelyn Waugh (1903 – 1966)
Decline and Fall tells the story of Paul Pennyfeather, student at Scone College, Oxford
Brideshead Revisited, Scoop, A Handful of Dust, Vile Bodies – Evelyn Waugh
A Handful of Dust – the title is an allusion to lines in T. S. Eliot's 1922 poem The Waste Land
Brideshead – home of Marchmain family in Waugh’s book
In Scoop, William Boot is contributor of nature notes to Lord Copper's Beast, a national newspaper. He is dragooned into becoming a foreign correspondent when the editors of the aptly named Daily Beast mistake him for a novelist who shares his surname. The novel is partly based on Waugh's own experience working for the Daily Mail, when he was sent to cover Benito Mussolini's expected invasion of Abyssinia
Men at Arms, Unconditional Surrender and Officers and Gentlemen – Evelyn Waugh Sword of Honour trilogy about World War II
The protagonist of the Sword of Honour trilogy is Guy Crouchback, heir of a declining aristocratic English Roman Catholic family
Black Mischief – Evelyn Waugh. Inspired by the coronation of Haile Selassie. It is set on the fictional African island of Azania
The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold – Evelyn Waugh
The White Devil – John Webster
Life and Loves of a She Devil – Fay Weldon
The Invisible Man of the title of the book by HG Wells (1866 – 1946) is Griffin
Island of Doctor Moreau – HG Wells
The Time Machine – HG Wells first novel (1895)
The World Set Free – HG Wells. The book is considered to foretell nuclear weapons
The Wheels of Chance – HG Wells
The War of the Worlds (1898) – HG Wells. Set in Horsell Common, near Woking. Among the most famous adaptations is the 1938 radio broadcast that was narrated and directed by Orson Welles. The first two-thirds of the 60-minute broadcast were presented as a news bulletin and led to outrage and panic by some listeners who had believed the events described in the program were real
The Devil Wears Prada – Lauren Weisberger
Swiss Family Robinson – Johan Weiss
Skagboys – Irvine Welsh
Filth, Glue, Porno – Irvine Welsh
The Camomile Lawn is a novel by Mary Wesley about wartime London and Cornwall as seen through the eyes of five cousins
The Day of the Locust is a 1939 novel by American author Nathanael West, set in Hollywood during the Great Depression, depicting the alienation and desperation of a disparate group of individuals whose dreams of success have effectively failed
The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton. First female winner of Pulitzer Prize for literature (1921)
Ethan Frome, The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton
Roger Brook novels – Dennis Wheatley
Dennis Wheatley wrote 12 historical novels set in Napoleonic period
Described as the ‘Jane Austen of the 20th Century’ by J. B. Priestley, the work of Poems On Various Subjects, Religious and Moral – Phyllis Wheatley, the first African-American poet and first African-American woman to publish a book (1773)
Dorothy Whipple enjoyed a period of great popularity between the wars, two of her novels being made into feature films, They Were Sisters and They Knew Mr Knight
Frost in May – Antonia White
The Once and Future King – TH White, chronicles the raising and education of King Arthur
The Living and the Dead, Voss – Patrick White
The Tree of Man – Patrick White
Walt Whitman (1819 – 1892) is viewed as the first urban poet. He was a part of the transition between Transcendentalism and Realism, incorporating both views in his works. Works include Song of Myself and Drum-Taps
Walt Whitman was often called “the father of free verse”. His work was controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass (1855), which was described as obscene for its overt sexuality
O Captain! My Captain! – Walt Whitman
I Sing the Body Electric – Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman was a volunteer nurse during the American Civil War
The Clematis Tree, An Act of Treachery – Anne Widdecombe
The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900). Dorian Gray is the subject of a painting by artist Basil Hallward
‘He did not wear the scarlet coat for blood and wine are red’ – opening line of Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde
Little House on the Prairie – Laura Ingles Wilder
Little House on the Prairie is set in Walnut Grove
The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927), by Thornton Wilder (1897 – 1975), tells the story of several unrelated people who happen to be on a bridge in Peru when it collapses, killing them
Stoner, Augustus – John Williams
Nigel Williams – novels set in Wimbledon. Best known is The Wimbledon Poisoner
Tarka the Otter: His Joyful Water-Life and Death in the Country of the Two Rivers is a novel by Henry Williamson
Forever Amber – Kathleen Windsor
RD Wingfield created Detective Inspector Jack Frost, set in Denton
Oranges are not the Only Fruit – Jeanette Winterson. It is a bildungsroman about a lesbian girl who grows up in an English Pentecostal community
Why be Happy When you could be Normal? – Jeanette Winterson
Sexing the Cherry – Jeanette Winterson
PG Wodehouse (1881 – 1975) was taken prisoner by the Germans at his home in Le Touquet in 1940. PG Wodehouse wartime broadcasts from Europe led to many accusations of collaborationism with the Germans and even treason
Blandings Castle is a fictional location in the short stories and novels of PG Wodehouse. It is the seat of Lord Emsworth, home to many of his family, and setting for numerous tales and adventures, written between 1915 and 1975. Blandings Castle is in Shropshire. Empress of Blandings is a Berkshire sow
Oswald Mosley is parodied as Sir Roderick Spode, who is leader of The Black Shorts, in PG Wodehouse Jeeves novels
Bertie Wooster visited The Drones club
Gussie Fink-Nottle is a newt fancier in the Jeeves novels
Reginald Jeeves was named after a Warwickshire cricketer
The Bonfire of the Vanities – Tom Wolfe
Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers – Tom Wolfe
A Man in Full – Tom Wolfe
East Lynne – Ellen Wood, known as Mrs Henry Wood
Virginia Woolf (1882 – 1941) drowned herself in the River Ouse
Virginia Woolf’s works include the novels Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), Orlando: A Biography (1928)
Flush: A Biography – Virginia Woolf. Flush is a dog
Orlando is a semi-biographical novel based in part on the life of Woolf's intimate friend Vita Sackville-West
Mrs Dalloway details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a fictional high-society woman in post-World War I England
The Vovage Out – first novel by Virginia Woolf
William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850) visited Revolutionary France in 1791 and became enthralled with the Republican movement. He fell in love with a French woman, Annette Vallon, who in 1792 gave birth to their child, Caroline. He later married Mary Hutchinson. Lived at Dove Cottage with his sister Dorothy
The Prelude – autobiographical poem by William Wordsworth
Lucy poems – Wordsworth
Ode to Duty – Wordsworth
Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood – Wordsworth
Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey – Wordsworth
“Earth hath not anything to show more fair” – from Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, sonnet written in 1802
“I wandered lonely as a cloud” – inspired by Ullswater. First line of Daffodils
On the extinction of the Venetian Republic – sonnet by Wordsworth
Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems is a collection of poems by Wordsworth and Coleridge
The Caine Mutiny. The Winds of War, War and Remembrance – Herman Wouk
Captain Queeg – character in The Caine Mutiny
Beau Geste – PC Wren
Uncle Tom’s Children, Native Son, Black Boy, The Outsider – Richard Wright
The Berry Books, The Chandos Books – groups of novels by Dornford Yates
Revolutionary Road – Richard Yates
The Lake Isle of Innisfree, Easter 1916 – W.B. Yeats (1865 – 1939)
“No country for old men” – line in Sailing to Byzantium by WB Yeats
When you are old – poem by WB Yeats
The Song of Wandering Aengus – WB Yeats
The Tripods is a series of novels written by Samuel Youd (under the pseudonym John Christopher) beginning in the late 1960s. The first two were the basis of a science fiction TV series shown on the BBC
Refugee Boy – Benjamin Zephaniah
Les Rougon-Macquart is the collective title given to the greatest literary achievement of French novelist Emile Zola (1840 – 1902), a monumental twenty-novel cycle about the exploits of various members of an extended family during the French Second Empire. Includes La Ventre de Paris, Nana (a prostitute), Germinale (a realistic story of a coalminers' strike in northern France in the 1860s), The Debacle (set against the background of the series of political and military events that ended the reign of Napoleon III and the Second Empire in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870), Money
Therese Raquin – Emile Zola
The Masterpiece (L'œuvre) – by Emile Zola is a fictional account of Zola's friendship with Paul Cezanne
