Entertainment/Literature - Fiction
Flatland – Edwin Abbott
Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe. Title taken from a line in The Second Coming by W.B. Yeats
The Salmon of Doubt – Douglas Adams
Dirk Gently – detective in Douglas Adams books
The Plague Dogs – Richard Adams
Born Free – Joy Adamson
Eye of the Hurricane – first poetry book by Fleur Adcock
Half of a Yellow Sun – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. About the Nigerian-Biafran war of the 1960s. Winner of the 2007 Orange Prize
The White Tiger, Between the Assassinations – Aravind Adiga
A Death in the Family – James Agee
PS, I Love You – Cecilia Ahern, the daughter of Bertie Ahern
Rookwood – a novel by William Harrison Ainsworth published in 1834
Le Grand Meaulnes is the only novel by French author Alain-Fournier
The Five People you Meet in Heaven – Mitch Albom
Little Women – Amy, Beth, Jo and Meg March. Written by Louisa May Alcott. The story concerns the lives and loves of four sisters growing up during the American Civil War
‘Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents’ – opening line of Little Women
Beth Alcott dies in Little Women
Laurie Lawrence –character in Little Women
Good Wives – Louisa May Alcott
Helliconia Trilogy – Brian Aldiss. The trilogy consists of the books Helliconia Spring, Helliconia Summer and Helliconia Winter
Super-Toys Last All Summer Long – Brian Aldiss
Brick Lane, In the Kitchen – Monica Ali
Untold Story – Monica Ali. It asks what would have happened if Princess Diana had not died in a car accident in Paris in 1997 but had arranged for her own disappearance
The Divine Comedy – Dante Alighieri (c. 1265 – 1321), is composed of three canticas: Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory), and Paradiso (Paradise) – composed each of 33 cantos (or ‘canti’). The poet tells in the first person his travel through the three realms of the dead, lasting during the Easter Triduum in the spring of 1300. The Roman poet Virgil guides him through the nine circles of Hell, and the seven terraces of Purgatory; Beatrice, Dante's ideal woman, guides him through the nine spheres of Heaven. Written in 14th century
Judus, Cassius and Brutus are traitors eaten on Level 9 of Hell in Dante’s Inferno
The House of the Spirits, City of the Beasts – Isabel Allende. Born in Lima. Her father was a first cousin of Salvador Allende
The Crime at Black Dudley, first Albert Campion book, created by Marjory Allingham
Magersfontein Lugg is Albert Campion’s manservant
Lucky Jim, Take a Girl Like You, Colonel Sun: A James Bond Adventure, The Old Devils – Kingley Amis
Lucky Jim follows the exploits of the eponymous James (Jim) Dixon, a reluctant medieval history lecturer at an unnamed provincial English university
The Biographer’s Moustache – Kingsley Amis
The Rachel Papers – first Martin Amis novel. Son of Kingsley Amis
Time’s Arrow, The Pregnant Widow – Martin Amis
London Fields – Martin Amis. Murder mystery novel narrated by Samson Young, an American writer living in London
Money – Martin Amis, tells the story of, and is narrated by, John Self, a successful director of commercials who is invited to New York by Fielding Goodney, a film producer, in order to shoot his first film
Lionel Asbo: State of England – Martin Amis
On the Pulse of Morning – poem by Maya Angelou read at Bill Clinton’s inauguration in 1993. African-American poet born in 1928
Still I Rise – Maya Angelou
Orlando Furioso is an Italian epic poem by Ludovico Ariosto which has exerted a wide influence on later culture. The earliest version appeared in 1516. The action of Orlando Furioso takes place against the background of the war between the Christian emperor Charlemagne and the Saracen King of Africa, Agramante
Cloud Cuckoo Land – poem by Simon Armitage
Dover Beach – poem by Matthew Arnold
Book of Matches and The Dead Sea Poems – poetry collections by Simon Armitage
The Young Visitors – Daisy Ashford, aged 9. Describes the adventures in Edwardian society of Mr Salteena. Written in 1890
Foundation Series, I Robot – Isaac Asimov. His works have been published in all ten major categories of the Dewey Decimal System
Miguel Angel Asturias was a Guatemalan writer and diplomat. He was awarded the 1967 Nobel Prize in literature. The Banana Trilogy – The Cyclone, The Green Pope and The Eyes of the Interred
Behind the Scenes at the Museum, Case Histories – Kate Atkinson
Moral Disorder, The Handmaid’s Tale, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood, born in Canada
The Penelopiad is a parallel novel by Margaret Atwood, and one of the first books to be published in the Canongate Myth Series, a book series in which ancient myths are rewritten by contemporary authors. The story takes an alternative view of the story of Odysseus by focusing on Odysseus's wife, Penelope, and her twelve hanged maids. Most of the novel follows Penelope's struggle when Odysseus takes twenty years to return from Troy
The Edible Woman – first novel by Margaret Atwood
Oryx and Crake – post-apocalyptic novel by Margaret Attwood
Brief Lives – John Aubrey, who discovered the Aubrey holes at Stonehenge
Melrose novels – Edward St Aubyn
Funeral Blues, The Night Train – WH Auden
In Memory of WB Yeats, The Dyer’s Hand – WH Auden
The Age of Anxiety – WH Auden. The poem won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1948. It inspired a symphony by composer Leonard Bernstein
Funeral Blues or Stop all the clocks is a poem by WH Auden
On the Circuit – WH Auden
The Clan of the Cave Bear – Jean Auel
Jean Auel is best known for her Earth's Children books, a series of novels set in prehistoric Europe that explores interactions of Cro-Magnon people with Neanderthals
Jane Austen (1775 – 1817) born in Steventon, Hampshire. Novels – Sense and Sensibility (published 1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1816), Northanger Abbey (1817) posthumous, Persuasion (1817) posthumous. Other works – Lady Susan (novella), The Watsons (incomplete novel), Sanditon (incomplete novel)
Mansfield Park – The main character, Fanny Price, is sent at an early age from her poor family to live with her rich uncle and aunt, Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram. Other characters – Henry and Mary Crawford, Edmund
Anne Elliot – heroine in Persuasion. Engaged to Captain Frederick Wentworth. Louisa Musgrove has an accident in Lyme Regis
Fitzwilliam Darcy is in Pride and Prejudice
Mr Bingley was the ‘single man in possession of a good fortune’ in Pride and Prejudice
Bennet family live near the fictional town of Meryton in Hertfordshire
Bennet Sisters in Pride and Prejudice – Elizabeth, Lydia, Kitty, Mary and Jane
Charles Bingley rents Netherfield Park near Longbourn
Lydia elopes with Wickham
Pride and Prejudice was originally titled First Impressions
Leatherhead – Highbury, in Emma
The heroine, Emma Woodhouse, marries Mr Knightly
Harriet Smith wants to marry Robert Martin, but Emma thinks she should marry the new vicar, Mr. Elton
Sense and Sensibility – Dashwood sisters. Elinor marries Edward Ferrars, Marianne marries Colonel Brandon. Other character – Willoughby
Catherine Morland is the heroine of Northanger Abbey. Other characters – Elinor Tilney, and her brother Henry
Catherine Morland is excessively fond of reading Gothic novels of which Ann Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho is a favourite
Paul Auster is an American author known for works blending absurdism and crime fiction, such as Moon Palace and The Brooklyn Follies
The New York Trilogy (City of Glass, Ghosts, The Locked Room) – Paul Auster
Jonathan Livingston Seagull – Richard Bach
Time for Bed, Whatever Love Means – David Baddiel
The Death of Eli Gold – David Baddiel
National Velvet – novel by Enid Bagnold
Career Girls – first novel by Louise Bagshawe (maiden name of Louise Mensch)
Every Man for Himself – Beryl Bainbridge. The novel is about the 1912 RMS Titanic disaster. The novel won the 1996 Whitbread Prize
Young Adolf, Master Georgie, An Awfully Big Adventure – Beryl Bainbridge
The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress – unfinished work by Beryl Bainbridge
Go Tell It on the Mountain is a 1953 semi-autobiographical novel by James Baldwin. Absolute Power – first novel by David Baldacci
The Coral Island – RM Ballantye
Empire of the Sun – JG Ballard
JG Ballard was born in Shanghai
The Kindness of Women – sequel to Empire of the Sun
Crash – JG Ballard. Made into a film directed by David Cronenberg
The Drowned World, The Burning World, The Crystal World – JG Ballard
La Comedie humaine (The Human Comedy) is the title of Honore de Balzac's multi-volume collection of interlinked novels and stories depicting French society in the period of the Restoration and the July Monarchy (1815–1848)
The Physiology of Marriage – Balzac, 1829
Complicity, Whit, The Bridge – Iain Banks
The Crow Road – Iain Banks
‘It was the day my grandmothet exploded’ – opening line of The Crow Road
The Wasp Factory – features Eric and Frank Cauldhame
The Quarry – final Iain Banks novel
The Culture series or Culture cycle refers to a series of novels and short fiction written by Iain M Banks. The stories centre around the Culture, a post-scarcity semi-anarchist utopia consisting of various humanoid races and managed by very advanced artificial intelligences
A jackdaw stole the ring belonging to the Pope, at Rheims – in a poem by Richard Barham
Books of Blood, The Damnation Game – Clive Barker. His fiction has been adapted into motion pictures, notably the Hellraiser and Candyman series
Regeneration Trilogy is a series of three novels by Pat Barker on the subject of the First World War. It is a fictionalised account of the wartime experiences of the poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, the psychiatrist W. H. R. Rivers, and the fictional protagonist, Lt. Billy Prior. The novels are – Regeneration (1990), The Eye in the Door (1993) and The Ghost Road (1995)
Staring at the Sun, Flaubert’s Parrot – Julian Barnes
Metroland – first novel by Julian Barnes
Arthur and George – Julian Barnes. Concerns an incident in the life of Arthur Conan Doyle
A History of the World in 10½ Chapters – Julian Barnes
England, England – Julian Barnes
The Sense of an Ending – Julian Barnes
A Kind of Loving – Stan Barstow
Julian Barnes has written crime fiction under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh
Love for Lydia, My Uncle Silas – HE Bates
Fair Stood the Wind for France – HE Bates
The Darling Buds of May – HE Bates
Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) – poems by Baudelaire
Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable – trilogy of novels by Samuel Beckett
Mercier et Camier – Samuel Beckett
Vathek is a Gothic novel written by William Beckford
Zuleika Dobson – Max Beerbohm
The Hostage – Brendan Behan
The Quare Fellow – Brendan Behan
Aphra Behn was a prolific dramatist of the Restoration, and is considered one of the first English professional female writers. Her most popular works included The Rover, Love-Letters Between a Noble-Man and his Sister and Oroonoko (published in 1688)
Sieze the Day, Herzog, Humboldt’s Gift – Saul Bellow
Henderson the Rain King, The Adventures of Augie March – Saul Bellow
Anna of Five Towns, The Card, Clayhanger trilogy – Arnold Bennett
The Old Wives’ Tale – Arnold Bennett
Mapp and Lucia is a collective name for a series of novels by E. F. Benson
Ways of Seeing, From A to X – John Berger
G – John Berger. Won the 1972 Booker Prize. The novel's setting is pre-First World War Europe, and its protagonist is named ‘G’
Birds without Wings – Louis de Bernieres
Notwithstanding – collection of short stories by Louis de Bernieres
Alfred Bester is best remembered for his science fiction, including The Demolished Man, winner of the inaugural Hugo Award in 1953
John Betjeman (1906 – 1984) was Poet Laureate from 1972 until his death, and a founding member of the Victorian Society. He is considered instrumental in helping to save St Pancras railway station, and there is a statue of him at the station. He had a teddy bear named Archibald Ormsby-Gore, better known as Archie. Together with an elephant known as Jumbo, he was a lifelong companion of Betjeman's
Charlie Chan appeared in six novels by Earl Derr Biggers, published from 1925 to 1932 Light a Penny Candle – first novel of Maeve Binchy
Circle of Friends, Tara Road – Maeve Binchy
For the Fallen, which is well known for being used in Remembrance Sunday services, is a poem by Laurence Binyon
Sugar Rush – Julie Burchill
Cara Black best known for her Aimee Leduc mystery novels featuring a female Paris-based private investigator
Murder in the Marais – first novel by Cara Black
Lorna Doone, subtitled A Romance of Exmoor, is a novel by RD Blackmore
The Maid of Sker – RD Blackmore
“A robin redbreast in a cage, puts all heaven in a rage” – from Auguries of Innocence by William Blake (1757 – 1827)
Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience: Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul – William Blake
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell – William Blake
The Exorcist – William Peter Blatty
Q is a novel by Luther Blissett first published in Italian in 1999. The novel is set in Europe during the 16th century, and deals with Protestant reformation movements. ‘Luther Blissett’ was a nom de plume for four Italian authors, Roberto Bui, Giovanni Cattabriga, Federico Guglielmi and Luca Di Meo, who were part of the ‘Luther Blissett Project’
Are you there, God? It’s me, Margaret – Judy Blume
Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village – Robert Blythe
The Bridge Over the River Kwai, Planet of the Apes – Pierre Boulle
Any Human Heart – William Boyd
A Good Man in Africa, Restless – William Boyd
Nat Tate: An American Artist, Waiting for Sunrise – William Boyd
The Decameron, also called Prince Galehaut is a 14th century medieval allegory by Giovanni Boccaccio (1313 – 1375), told as a frame story encompassing 100 tales by ten young people. In Italy during the time of the Black Death, a group of seven young women and three young men flee from plague-ridden Florence to a villa, where no one lives, in the countryside of Fiesole for two weeks
The Decameron contains more parallels to the Canterbury Tales than any other work
On Famous Women – Giovanni Boccaccio
The History Man – the protagonist is the hypocritical Howard Kirk, a sociology professor at the fictional University of Watermouth. Written by Malcolm Bradbury
The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
The central character in Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag, is employed as a ‘fireman’ (which, in this future, means ’bookburner’)
Something Wicked This Way Comes – Ray Bradbury. The novel's title was quoted directly from William Shakespeare's Macbeth: ‘By the pricking of my thumbs / Something wicked this way comes’
A Sound of Thunder – Ray Bradbury. It is based on the idea of the butterfly effect
Lady Audley’s Secret – Mary Elizabeth Braddon
A Woman of Substance, Unexpected Blessings – Barbara Taylor Bradford
A Time to Dance – novel by Melvyn Bragg
Remember Me… – Melvyn Bragg
Room at the Top – John Braine
A Conferderate General From Big Sur – Richard Brautigan
Trout Fishing in America – Richard Brautigan
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace – poem by Richard Brautigan
Nadja – novel by Andre Breton. It starts with the question ‘Who am I?’
Simon Brett has written series of detective novels featuring Charles Paris and Mrs Pargeter, and a series set in the village of Fethering
When the Wind Blows is a 1982 graphic novel, by Raymond Briggs, that shows a nuclear attack on Britain by the Soviet Union from the viewpoint of a retired couple, Jim and Hilda Bloggs
Gentleman Jim – created by Raymond Briggs
Anne Bronte (1820 – 1849) Novels – Agnes Grey (1847), The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848). Pseudonym Acton Bell
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – tenant was Helen Graham
Charlotte Bronte (1815 – 1855) Novels – Jane Eyre (1847), Shirley (1849)
Villette (1853) – in which Lucy Snowe travels to the fictional city of Villette to teach at an all-girls school. Based on a visit by Charlotte Bronte to Brussels
The Professor, written before Jane Eyre, published posthumously in 1857. Pseudonym Currer Bell
Stancliffe’s Hotel – Charlotte Bronte. Novella written in 1838, published in 2003
Jane Eyre – Heroine married Mr Rochester. Opening line is ‘There was no possibility of talking a walk that day’
“Amen! Even so come, Lord Jesus” – last line of Jane Eyre
Thornfield Hall – Mr Rochester’s house, in Jane Eyre
Pilot – dog owned by Mr Rochester (Edward Fairfax Rochester)
Mr Rochester is married to Bertha Mason, who is mad, and kept in the attic at Thornfield Hall
Charlotte Bronte married Arthur Bell Nicholls but died in pregnancy in 1855
Emily Bronte (1818 – 1848) Novel – Wuthering Heights (1847) under the pseudonym Ellis Bell
Wuthering Heights – Cathy Earnshaw, Edgar Linton, Isabella Linton, Nelly Dean
Heathcliff married Isabella in Wuthering Heights
Wuthering Heights – narrated by Lockwood
“1801 – I have just returned from a visit to my landlord – the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with” – opening line in Wuthering Heights
“And wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth” – last line of Wuthering Heights
Rupert Brooke (1887 – 1915) is buried on the island of Skyros, Greece
“If I should die, think only this of me. That there’s some corner of a foreign field that is for ever England” – first line of The Soldier by Rupert Brooke
“Just now the lilac is in bloom” – first line of The Old Vicarage, Grantchester
“Stands the church clock at ten to three? And is there honey still for tea?” – last line of The Old Vicarage, Grantchester
The Great Lover – Rupert Brooke
Quite Ugly One Morning, Boiling a Frog – Christopher Brookmyre
Hotel du Lac, Strangers, Latecomers – Anita Brookner
World War Z – apocalyptic horror novel by Max Brooks
Digital Fortress – Dan Brown’s first novel
The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown. Claims that Jesus was not crucified, but married Mary Magdalene
Angels and Demons – Dan Brown. Follows symbolist Robert Langdon as he deciphers clues involving the secrets of the Catholic Church
Sex and the Single Girl – Helen Gurley Brown
Phiz – Hablot Knight Browne, illustrated Pickwick Papers and other Dickens works
The Cry of the Children, Sonnets from the Portuguese – Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Aurora Leigh – Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Robert Browning died in Venice in 1889
Porphyria’s lover – poem by Robert Browning
Pippa Passes, Home Thoughts from Abroad, Pied Piper of Hamelin – Robert Browning
The Lost Leader – Robert Browning, is an attack on Wordsworth
The Thirty-Nine Steps – John Buchan (Baron Tweedsmuir). Spy is recognised by missing part of a finger on his right hand
Richard Hannay appears in several John Buchan novels – The Thirty-Nine Steps, Greenmantle, Mr Standfast, The Three Hostages and The Island of Sheep
The Good Earth – Pearl Buck
Post Office – first novel by Charles Bukowski
The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov
The White Guard – Mikhail Bulgakov
Edward Bulwer-Lytton was an English novelist, poet, playwright, and politician, who coined such phrases as “the great unwashed”, “pursuit of the almighty dollar”, “the pen is mightier than the sword”
“The pen is mightier than the sword” – from Richelieu, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Paul Clifford is a novel published in 1830 by English author Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Opening line “It was a dark and stormy night”
John Bunyan was known as the “immortal dreamer” and “immortal tinker”
Pilgrim’s Progress – written by John Bunyan in Bedford jail, in 1678
‘As I walked through the wilderness of this world’ – opening line in Pilgrim’s Progress
Pilgrim’s Progress tells of Christian, an ordinary man, who makes his way from the ‘City of Destruction’ (earth) to the ‘Celestial City’ (heaven) of Zion via the Slough of Despond
Vanity – town in Pilgrim’s Progress where Vanity Fair is held
Slough of Despond is a deep bog in The Pilgrim's Progress, into which the character Christian sinks under the weight of his sins and his sense of guilt for them
Anthony Burgess's fiction includes the Malayan trilogy (The Long Day Wanes), on the dying days of Britain's empire in the East; the Enderby quartet of comic novels about a reclusive poet and his muse; Nothing Like the Sun, the classic speculative recreation of Shakespeare's love-life; the cult exploration of the nature of evil A Clockwork Orange (1962); and his masterpiece, Earthly Powers, a panoramic saga of the 20th century
Auld Lang Syne – Robert Burns
Bard of Ayrshire , Coming through the Rye – Robert Burns
The Selkirk Grace. Address to a Haggis – Robert Burns
Robert Burns was born in Alloway, South Ayrshire, in 1759
William S Burroughs accidentally shot and killed his wife Joan Vollmer Adams in Mexico while trying to shoot a glass off her head
The Naked Lunch, Queer, Junkie – William Lee, pen-name of William S Burroughs
The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead – William S Burroughs
Sex and the City – written by Candace Bushnell
Erewhon or Over the Range is a novel by Samuel Butler, published anonymously in 1872. The title is also the name of a country, supposedly discovered by the protagonist
The Way of All Flesh (1903) is a semi-autobiographical novel by Samuel Butler which attacks Victorian-era hypocrisy
Possession – AS Byatt
Don Juan – narrative poem by Lord Byron (1788 – 1824)
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage – Lord Byron. Includes “While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand; When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall; And when Rome falls – the world”
Amongst Byron's best-known works are the brief poems She Walks in Beauty, When We Two Parted, and So, we'll go no more a roving
The Dream – Byron
Epitaph to a Dog is a poem by Lord Byron. It was written in 1808 in honour of his Newfoundland dog, Boatswain, who had just died of rabies
“The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold” – first line of The Destruction of Sennacherib by Byron
Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce, The Postman Always Rings Twice – James Cain
Tobacco Road – Erskine Caldwell
God’s Little Acre – Erskine Caldwell. The novel was so controversial that the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice attempted to censor it, leading to the author's arrest and trial for obscenity
Invisible Cities – Italo Calvino
Andrea Camilleri’s detective novels are set on Sicily and feature Inspector Montalbano
The Rebel, The Just – Albert Camus (1913 – 1960)
La Peste – Albert Camus. Oran is swept by plague
The Myth of Sisyphus – Albert Camus
The First Man – Albert Camus, published posthumously
Set in Amsterdam, The Fall consists of a series of monologues by the self-proclaimed ‘judge-penitent’ Jean-Baptiste Clamence, as he reflects upon his life to a stranger
The Stranger (also known as The Outsider) – Albert Camus, tells the story of an alienated man, Meursault, who eventually commits a murder and waits to be executed
Birdcage novels of Victor Canning
Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Music for Chameleons – Truman Capote
Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card
An Elegie upon the death of the Deane of Pauls, Dr. John Donne – Thomas Carew
Oscar and Lucinda – Peter Carey. Won the 1998 Booker Prize. Oscar and Lucinda – It tells the story of Oscar Hopkins, the Cornish son of a Plymouth Brethren minister who becomes an Anglican priest, and Lucinda Leplastrier, a young Australian heiress who buys a glass factory
True History of the Kelly Gang – Peter Carey. Won the 2001 Booker Prize
How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won the F.A. Cup by JL Carr, published in 1975, is a comic fantasy that describes in the form of an official history how a village football club progressed through the FA Cup to beat Glasgow Rangers F.C. in the final at Wembley Stadium
A Most Wanted Man – John le Carre
Connie Sachs is a fictional character created by John le Carre. Sachs plays a key supporting role in le Carre's Karla Trilogy of novels including Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy, and Smiley's People
George Smiley is brought out of retirement in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Bill Haydon is the mole in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Call for the Dead – John le Carre. First novel featuring George Smiley
The Secret Pilgrim – John le Carre. Last novel featuring George Smiley
The Russian House – John le Carre
The Constant Gardener – John le Carre
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The Mission Song – John le Carre
Karla is a fictional character in several novels by John le Carre. A Soviet Intelligence officer, he most often appears as a distant antagonist of George Smiley
MI6 is known as ‘The Circus’ in several novels by John le Carre
A Delicate Truth – John le Carre
The Bloody Chamber – Angela Carter
Wise Children – last novel by Angela Carter
The Hornet’s Nest – Jimmy Carter. Only work of fiction to be published by a US president
Pink collection – novels by Barbara Cartland
Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? – first collection of short stories by Raymond Carver
My Antonia is a novel by American writer Willa Cather. It is the final book of the Prairie Trilogy of novels by Cather, a list that also includes O Pioneers! and The Song of the Lark
Death Comes for the Archbishop – Willa Cather
Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes (1547 – 1616). Set in La Mancha. Sancho Panza is his squire, and Rosinante is his horse. Published in 1605
“Tilting at windmills” – Don Quixote fights windmills that he imagines to be giants
Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, The Yiddish Policemen's Union – Michael Chabon
Fen Women by Mary Chamberlain – first book published by Virago Press, founded by Carmen Calill in 1973
Big Sleep, The Little Sister, The Long Goodbye, Farewell my Lovely – Raymond Chandler. All concern the cases of a Los Angeles private investigator named Philip Marlowe
Meet the Tiger – first novel featuring Simon Templar, by Leslie Charteris
No Orchids for Miss Blandish – James Hadley Chase
Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343 – 1400) was buried in Westminster Abbey. In 1556 his remains were transferred to a more ornate tomb, making Chaucer the first writer interred in the area now known as Poets' Corner
The Canterbury Tales is a collection of 24 stories written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century. The tales, some of which are originals and others not, are contained inside a frame tale and told by a collection of pilgrims on a pilgrimage from the Tabard Inn in Southwark to Canterbury to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral
First tale – Knight’s Tale
Last tale – Parson’s Tale
28 pilgrims
Alisoun – The Wife of Bath
Monk’s Tale – a collection of seventeen short stories on the theme of tragedy
Franklin’s Tale – a franklin was a medieval landowner
Pardoner’s Tale – three men set out from a bar to find and kill Death, whom they blame for the passing of their friend
Reeve’s Tale – the reeve, named Oswald in the text, is the manager of a large estate who reaped incredible profits for his master and himself
Book of the Duchess, Parlement of Foules, Troilus and Crisedye – Chaucer
Chaucer was court poet to Richard II
The Wapshot Chronicle, Bullet Park, Falconer – John Cheever
The Blue Cross – first Father Brown book, created by GK Chesterton
The Man Who Was Thursday, The Man Who Knew Too Much – GK Chesterton
The Napoleon of Notting Hill – first GK Chesterton novel
Lepanto – poem by GK Chesterton
Girl with a Pearl Earring – Tracy Chevalier
The Virgin Blue, Falling Angels, Burning Bright, The Lady and the Unicorn – Tracy Chevalier
Clochemerle is a 1934 French satirical novel by Gabriel Chevallier
Child Ballads are a collection of 305 ballads from England and Scotland, and their American variants, collected by Francis James Child in the late nineteenth century. The collection was published as The English and Scottish Popular Ballads
Lee Child is the pen name of British thriller writer Jim Grant. His first novel, Killing Floor, won the Anthony Award for Best First Novel. Each of Child's novels follows the adventures of a former American Military Policeman named Jack Reacher who is wandering the United States
The Riddle of the Sands – Robert Erskine Childers
The Awakening – Kate Chopin
Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart, Perceval, the Story of the Grail – Chretien de Troyes
Agatha Christie (1890 – 1976) wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but is remembered for her 80 detective novels and her successful West End theatre plays. Lived at Greenway House, in Devon
The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side – Agatha Christie, dedicated to Margaret Rutherford
Tommy and Tuppence are two fictional detectives, recurring characters in the work of Agatha Christie. Their full names are Thomas Beresford and Prudence Cowley
Miss (Jane) Marple lives in St. Mary’s Mead
The Mysterious Affair at Styles – first Hercule Poirot novel (1920)
Miss Marple’s first published appearance was in issue 350 of The Royal Magazine in 1927 with the first printing of the short story The Tuesday Night Club which later became the first chapter of The Thirteen Problems (1932). Her first appearance in a full-length novel was in The Murder at the Vicarage in 1930
Curtain – last Hercule Poirot novel
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie
Ten Little Niggers by Agatha Christie renamed to Ten Little Indians and And Then There Were None
Murder on the Orient Express – partly inspired by Lindburgh baby kidnap
The Moving Finger – Agatha Christie. Title taken from Edward FitzGerald’s translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Dead Man’s Folly, Five Little Pigs – Agatha Christie
And Then There Were None – Agatha Christie
In 1930, Agatha Christie married archaeologist Max Mallowan
Savrola: A Tale of the Revolution in Laurania is the only fiction book written by Winston Churchill
The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger and The Sum of All Fears – Tom Clancy. Main characters – Jack Ryan and John Clark
John Clare was known as the ‘Peasant Poet’ and died in Northampton General Lunatic Asylum
Rendezvous with Rama, The City and the Stars, The Sands of Mars – Arthur C Clarke
Space Odyssey series – 2001: A Space Odyssey, 2010: Odyssey Two, 2061: Odyssey Three, 3001: The Final Odyssey
John Blackthorne – hero of Shogun, written by James Clavell
Shogun is loosely based on the historical exploits of William Adams
Tai-Pan – James Clavell
Fanny Hill: or, the Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure – John Cleland
The Rain Before it Falls – Jonathan Coe
What a Carve Up! – Jonathan Coe
The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho, who was born in Brazil
Dusklands – first novel by JM Coetzee
Disgrace, Summertime – JM Coetzee
Martina Cole – crime novelist. Known as ‘The Queen of the Criminal Underworld’. Wrote Dangerous Lady (first novel), The Jump, The Graft and The Take
The Business – novel by Martina Cole
“Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink” – from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 – 1834)
Kubla Khan – Coleridge (1797)
Dejection: An Ode – Coleridge
The Eolian Harp – Coleridge poem
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who lived nearby at Nether Stowey (between Bridgwater and Minehead), was interrupted during composition of his poem Kubla Khan by ‘a person on business from Porlock’
Colette was the pen name of the French novelist Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (1873 – 1954); she is most famous for having written Gigi, Cheri and the Claudine series
Eion Colfer was commissioned to write the sixth installment of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, entitled And Another Thing...
Prime Time – novel by Joan Collins
The Hunger Games is the first novel in The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, followed by Catching Fire and Mockingjay. Set in the country of Panem
Peeta Mellark – character in The Hunger Games
Art master Walter Hartright is the hero of The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins
Anne Catherick is ‘The Woman in White’
The Moonstone (1868) by Wilkie Collins is generally considered the first detective novel in the English language. The story concerns a young woman called Rachel Verinder who inherits a large Indian diamond, the Moonstone, on her eighteenth birthday
Sergeant Cuff – in The Moonstone
Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens collaborated on several dramatic and fictional works
Jiminy Cricket – Pinocchio’s conscience. Written by Italian Carlo Collodi
Blue Fairy brings Pinocchio to life
The Manchurian Candidate (1959), by Richard Condon, is a political thriller novel about the son of a prominent US political family who is brainwashed into being an unwitting assassin for the Communist Party
Nostromo, The Secret Agent, Typhoon – Joseph Conrad (1857 – 1924). Born in Poland
Lord Jim – Joseph Conrad. An early and primary event is the abandonment of a ship in distress by its crew including the young British seaman Jim
Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad. It follows Charles Marlow as he recounts, at dusk and into the evening, his adventure into the Congo to a group of men aboard a ship anchored in the Thames Estuary
Almayer's Folly – first novel by Joseph Conrad
Lace – Shirley Conran
The Leatherstocking Tales is a series of novels by James Fenimore Cooper (1789 – 1851), each featuring the hero Natty Bumppo, known by European settlers as ‘Leatherstocking,’ and by the Native Americans as ‘Pathfinder,’ ‘Deerslayer,’ or ‘Hawkeye. The books are: The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Pathfinder, The Pioneers and The Prairie
Uncas is the son of Chingachgook and the titular Last of the Mohicans
Score – Jilly Cooper
Wicked! – novel by Jilly Cooper
Rutshire Chronicles is the name given to a series of romantic novels by Jilly Cooper
Bloody Men – poem by Wendy Cope
Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis – Wendy Cope
Le Cid – Pierre Corneille, one of the three great seventeenth-century French dramatists, along with Moliere and Racine. He has been called ‘the founder of French tragedy’
Bernard Cornwell's best known books feature the adventures of Richard Sharpe, an English soldier, and are set in the Napoleonic era
Sharpe’s Eagle – first Sharpe novel
Death of Kings – Bernard Cornwell, is about Alfred the Great
Patricia Cornwell thought that Walter Sickert may have been Jack the Ripper, after seeing his ‘Camden Town Murder’ paintings
Portrait of a Killer – Patricia Cornwell
Kay Scarpetta is based on former Virginia Chief Medical Examiner Marcella Fierro. The series is noted for the use of recent forensic technology in Scarpetta's investigations
The term McJob was popularized by Douglas Coupland's 1991 novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture
Where the Rainbow Ends – book by Jameson Courier
‘I am monarch of all I survey’ – Alexander Selkirk, in a William Cowper poem
Malice Aforethought (1931) is a murder mystery novel written by Anthony Berkeley Cox, using the pen name Francis Iles
John Halifax, Gentleman – Dinah Craik
The Bridge – Hart Crane poem about Brooklyn Bridge
The Red Badge of Courage (1895) is a novel by Stephen Crane about the meaning of courage, as it is discovered by Henry Fleming, a recruit in the American Civil War
Disclosure, Timeline, The Andromeda Strain – Michael Crichton
Eimi, The Enormous Room – ee cummings
A Parliamentary Affair – first novel by Edwina Currie
Adventure novels featuring Dirk Pitt – Clive Cussler
The Maze Runner – James Dashner
Leisure – WH Davies. First line – ‘What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare?’
Cecil Day-Lewis translated Virgil
The Magnetic Mountain – Cecil Day-Lewis
Cecil Day-Lewis wrote detective stories under the pseudonym Nicholas Blake, featuring gentleman detective Nigel Strangeways
Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe. Inspired by Alexander Selkirk, who was rescued in 1709 by Woodes Rogers' expedition after four years on the uninhabited island of Juan Fernandez off the Chilean coast
The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe – full book title
The IPCRESS File, Horse Under Water, Funeral in Berlin, Billion Dollar Brain, Spy Story – Harry Palmer novels by Len Deighton
The IPCRESS File – the plot involves mind control: the acronym IPCRESS stands for ‘Induction of Psycho-neuroses by Conditioned Reflex under strESS’
Berlin Game is a 1983 spy novel by Len Deighton, and the first novel in the Game, Set and Match trilogy, being succeeded by Mexico Set and London Match, all featuring the character of SIS employee Bernard Samson
SS-GB is an alternate history novel by Len Deighton, set in a United Kingdom fictionally conquered and occupied by Germany during World War II
A Taste of Honey – Shelagh Delaney
To Serve Them All My Days – RF Delderfield
Swann novels – RF Delderfield
White Noise, Underworld, Cosmopolis – Don DeLillo
The Inheritance of Loss – Kiran Desai. Won the 2006 Man Booker Prize
The Village by the Sea – Anita Desai. Mother of Kiran Desai
Last Bus to Woodstock – first Inspector Morse book, by Colin Dexter
The Remorseful Day – last Morse novel
A Scanner Darkly – Philip K Dick. Semi-autobiographical story is set in a dystopian Orange County
VALIS – Philip K Dick. The title is an acronym for Vast Active Living Intelligence System, Dick's gnostic vision of one aspect of God
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K Dick. Source of Blade Runner
We Can Remember It for You Wholesale – Philip K Dick. Source of Total Recall
The Minority Report – Philip K Dick. Source of Minority Report
One of the Family was the last novel written by Monica Dickens, great granddaughter of Charles Dickens
Deliverance is the first novel by James Dickey. It was adapted into a 1972 film by director John Boorman
Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts. Though virtually unknown in her lifetime, Dickinson has come to be regarded, along with Walt Whitman, as one of the two quintessential American poets of the 19th century. Her extensive use of dashes and unconventional capitalization in her manuscripts, and her idiosyncratic vocabulary and imagery combine to create a unique lyric style
Coningsby, Sybil and Tancred – trilogy by Benjamin Disraeli
Henrietta Temple – Benjamin Disraeli
Vivian Grey – first novel by Benjamin Disraeli
Endymion – last novel Disraeli published before his death
House of Cards was the first in what would become a trilogy of political thrillers with Francis Urquhart as the central character. House of Cards was followed by To Play the King and The Final Cut. Written by Michael Dobbs
Berlin Alexanderplatz is a 1929 novel by Alfred Doblin and is considered one of the most important and innovative works of the Weimar Republic
Ragtime, Billy Bathgate – EL Doctorow
Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates is a novel by American author Mary Mapes Dodge, notable for popularizing the story of the little Dutch boy who plugs a dike in Haarlem with his finger
A Fairy Tale of New York – JP Donleavy
The Ginger Man – JP Donleavy. The Ginger Man is an account of the often racy misadventures of the book's protagonist, Sebastian Dangerfield, a young American student of law at Trinity College, who is living in Dublin with his English wife. Banned both in Ireland and USA by reason of obscenity
The Canonisation – John Donne
For Whom the Bell Tolls – John Donne
‘No man is an Island, entire of itself’ – from a poem by the metaphysical poet John Donne
The Flea – John Donne
Alexei, Dmitry and Ivan – The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821 – 1881)
“On a very hot evening at the beginning of July a young man left his little room at the top of a house in Carpenter Lane” – opening line of Crime and Punishment
Raskolnikov murders a women pawnbroker in Crime and Punishment
The Gambler, The Possessed – Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Idiot – Dostoevsky. Prince Myshkin falls in love with a photograph and then the real thing
The canon of Sherlock Holmes consists of the fifty-six short stories and four novels (A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of the Four, The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Valley of Fear) written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859 – 1930) and published from 1887 to 1927
Holmes was inspired, Doyle said, by Dr. Joseph Bell, for whom Doyle had worked as a clerk at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary
John – first name of Watson, in Sherlock Holmes stories
Moriarty is a criminal mastermind whom Holmes describes as the ‘Napoleon of crime’. Doyle lifted the phrase from a real Scotland Yard inspector who was referring to Adam Worth, one of the real life models of Moriarty
Irene Adler is a fictional character featured in the Sherlock Holmes story A Scandal in Bohemia. She is one of the most notable female characters in the Sherlock Holmes series, despite appearing in only one story, and is frequently used as a romantic interest for Holmes in derivative works
The Adventure of the Final Problem is a short story by Arthur Conan Doyle. It features Holmes and Moriarty fighting over the Reichenbach Falls
Baker Street Irregulars are any of several different groups, all named after the original, from various Sherlock Holmes stories in which they are a gang of young street children whom Holmes often employs to aid his cases
Sherlock Holmes described Sebastian Moran as "the second most dangerous man in London"
Toby – dog in The Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle
George Edward Challenger, better known as Professor Challenger, is a fictional character in a series of science fiction stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, including The Lost World
The setting for The Lost World is believed to have been inspired by reports of Percy Harrison Fawcett's expedition to the borderland between Venezuela and Brazil, in a mountain called Mount Roraima
The White Company is a historical adventure by Arthur Conan Doyle set during the Hundred Years' War. The ‘White Company’ of the title is a free company of archers
The Woman who walked into Doors, A Star called Henry – Roddy Doyle
Barrytown Trilogy – The Commitments, The Snapper and The Van. Roddy Doyle
The Deportees and Other Stories, Bullfighting – short story collections by Roddy Doyle
Doyle's most recent books are the novella Two Pints (2012); and The Guts (2013), which continues the story of the Rabbitte family from the Barrytown Trilogy
An American Tragedy, The Genius and the Trilogy of Desire – Theodore Dreiser
Sister Carrie – Theodore Dreiser
John Dryden was sacked as poet laureate when he refused to sign the oath of allegiance during William and Mary’s Glorious Revolution
Marriage a la Mode – John Dryden
Standing Female Nude, Selling Manhattan, Mean Time, Rapture – Carol Ann Duffy
Achilles (for David Beckham) – Carol Ann Duffy
The World’s Wife – Carol Anne Duffy
Winter Quarters, Conscience of the King – books by Alfred Duggan
The Black Tulip, The Three Musketeers and Twenty Years After – Alexandre Dumas (1802 – 1870)
Musketeers – Athos, Porthos and Aramis. Story of D’Artagnan becoming a musketeer
The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas. Edmond Dantes in an isolated island prison at Chateau d’If. Crown prosecutor – Villefort
The Lady of the Camellias is a novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The title character is Marguerite Gautier, who is based on Marie Duplessis, the real-life lover of author Dumas
A Spell of Winter is a gothic novel by Helen Dunmore, set in England, around the time of World War I. The novel was the first recipient of the Orange Prize for Fiction, in 1996
Alexandria Quartet – Lawrence Durrell. Justine (1957), Balthazar (1958), Mountolive (1958), and Clea (1960), set in Alexandria, Egypt, during the 1940s
Constance, Sebastian – novels by Lawrence Durrell
But Beautiful is a book about jazz and jazz musicians by Geoff Dyer
The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco
Foucault’s Pendulum – Umberto Eco. The novel is full of esoteric references to the Kabbalah, alchemy and conspiracy theory
The Prague Cemetery – Umberto Eco
The Memory Keeper’s Daughter – Kim Edwards
The first novel by Martin Edwards, All the Lonely People, introduced Liverpool lawyer Harry Devlin
Castle Rackrent, a short novel by Maria Edgeworth published in 1800, is often regarded as the first historical novel
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius – Dave Eggers
Desiderata – a 1927 prose poem by American writer Max Ehrmann. It exhorts the reader to ‘be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be’
Adam Bede, the first novel written by George Eliot (1819 – 1880), the pen name of Mary Ann Evans, was published in 1859
The Mill on the Floss details the lives of Tom and Maggie Tulliver, a brother and sister growing up on the river Floss near the village of St. Oggs, evidently in the 1820s. Dorlcote Mill is on the River Floss
Silas Marner is a weaver in a small religious community, Lantern Yard
Middlemarch – set in a fictional provincial town in England, based on Coventry. The central character, Dorothea Brooke, is an ardent and idealistic young woman who yearns for knowledge and to help others
A Study of Provincial Life – subtitle of Middlemarch
Daniel Deronda – George Eliot’s last novel
Murder in the Cathedral – TS Eliot (1888 – 1965). About the murder of Thomas A’ Becket in Canterbury cathedral in 1170
‘This is the way the world ends – not with a bang, but with a whimper’ – in The Hollow Men by TS Eliot
Ash Wednesday and The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock – TS Eliot
The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock contains the line “I have measured out my life in coffee spoons”
The Waste Land is dedicated to Ezra Pound, who gave TS Eliot the nickname ‘Old Possum’
Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats – TS Eliot
The Four Quartets – four poems by TS Eliot – Burnt Norton, East Coker, The Dry Salvages, Little Gidding
The phrase ‘wire in the blood’ comes from Burnt Norton (1935). “The trilling wire in the blood sings below inveterate scars”
The Cocktail Party – TS Eliot
The Journey of the Magi – TS Eliot
Ariel Poems – TS Eliot
TS Eliot is buried in East Coker
American Psycho is a psychological thriller by Bret Easton Ellis. The story is told in the first person by Patrick Bateman, a serial killer and Manhattan businessman
Invisible Man – Ralph Waldo Ellison, who was named by his father after Ralph Waldo Emerson. The novel addresses many of the social and intellectual issues facing African-Americans in the early twentieth century, including black nationalism, the relationship between black identity and Marxism, and the reformist racial policies of Booker T. Washington
The L.A. Quartet is a sequence of four crime fiction novels by James Ellroy. The novels, set in the late 1940s through the late 1950s in Los Angeles, are: The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential and White Jazz
The Black Dahlia is a neo-noir crime fiction novel, taking inspiration from the true story of the murder of Elizabeth Short
American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand, Blood’s a Rover – James Ellroy. Underworld USA Trilogy
James Ellroy was influenced by murder of his mother in 1958
Stark, Gridlock, Popcorn, High Society – Ben Elton novels
The First Casualty – Ben Elton
Paul Eluard was a French poet who was one of the founders of the surrealist movement. His first wife, Gala, married Salvador Dali. Buried in the Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris
Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his poem Concord Hymn, described the first shot fired by the Patriots at the Battle of Concord in 1775 as the "shot heard 'round the world."
Stephanie Plum mysteries – Janet Evanovich
The Horse Whisperer – Nicholas Evans
The Crimson Petal and the White – Michael Faber. Title taken from a work by Tennyson
Under the Skin – Michael Faber
Moonfleet – John Meade Falkner
Empire Trilogy (Troubles, The Siege of Krishnapur and The Singapore Grip) – J. G. Farrell
William Faulkner (1897 – 1962) most celebrated novels include The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), Light in August (1932) and The Unvanquished (1938)
Absalom, Absalom! – William Faulkner. Tale of the American Civil War (1936)
The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner, title from a speech by Macbeth
The Rievers – William Faulkner
William Faulkner was an American novelist and poet whose works feature his native state of Mississippi
Charlotte Grey, Human Traces, A Possible Life – Sebastian Faulks
Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks. WWI love story
A Trick of the Light – first novel by Sebastian Faulks
The Girl at the Lion D’or – second novel by Sebastian Faulks
Devil May Care – James Bond sequel by Sebastian Faulks
Jeeves and the Wedding Bells – Sebastian Faulks. Tribute to PG Wodehouse
Then we Came to the End – Joshua Ferris
Nursery Crime novels – Jasper Fforde
Tom Thumb, a Tragedy – Henry Fielding
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, often known simply as Tom Jones, is a comic novel by Henry Fielding. First published in 1749, Tom Jones is divided into 18 smaller books. Tom Jones is discovered on the property of a very kind, wealthy landowner, Squire Allworthy
Pamela, by Samuel Richardson, inspired Henry Fielding to write two parodies: Shamela (1741), about Pamela's true identity; and Joseph Andrews (1742), about Pamela’s brother
F Scott Fitzgerald (1896 – 1940) married Zelda Sayre. Worked for MGM in Hollywood
This Side of Paradise is the debut novel of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Published in 1920, and taking its title from a line of the Rupert Brooke poem Tiare Tahiti, the book examines the lives and morality of post-World War I youth. Its protagonist, Amory Blaine, is an attractive Princeton University student who dabbles in literature
The Beautiful and Damned – second novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby – third novel by F Scott Fitzgerald
‘So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past’ – last line of The Great Gatsby
Tender Is the Night is a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was his fourth and final completed novel. The title is taken from the poem Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats. Features Dick and Nicole Diver
The Last Tycoon – last novel by F Scott Fitzgerald, was unfinished. The story follows Monroe Stahr's rise to power in Hollywood, and his conflicts with rival Pat Brady
Gould’s Book of Fish – novel by Richard Flanagan, set on an island off Tasmania
Madame Bovary is Gustave Flaubert's first novel and considered his masterpiece. The story focuses on a doctor's wife, Emma Bovary, who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life. Madame Bovary is seduced by Boulanger
Un Coeur Simple – Flaubert
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang – Ian Fleming (1908 – 1964). Main characters live in a windmill
Casino Royal – first Ian Fleming novel featuring James Bond (1953)
Live and Let Die – second Ian Fleming novel featuring James Bond
Ian Fleming wrote 12 full-length Bond novels
Ian Fleming lives at Goldeneye in Jamaica
Dr No set in Crab Key, Jamaica
Dr. Julius No
M – Sir Miles Messervy
James Bond's parents are Andrew Bond, a Scotsman, and Monique Delacroix, from Canton de Vaud, Switzerland. Their nationalities were established in On Her Majesty's Secret Service
In the first novel, Casino Royale, the 00 concept is introduced and, in Bond's words, means: ‘that you've had to kill a chap in cold blood in the course of some assignment.’ His 00 number (007) was awarded him because he twice killed in fulfilling assignments. In the second novel, Live and Let Die, the 00 number designates a past killing; not until the third novel, Moonraker, does the 00 number designate a licence to kill
SMERSH is a Soviet counterintelligence agency that was featured in Ian Fleming's early James Bond novels and films as 007's nemesis. СМЕРШ (SMERSH) is an acronym of two Russian words, which means ‘Death to Spies’
Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn
The Last King of Scotland, Turbulence – Giles Foden
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close – Jonathan Safran Foer
The Pillars of the Earth – Ken Follett. Novel about The Anarchy
Fables – Jean de La Fontaine
The Good Soldier, Parade’s End – Ford Madox Ford
The African Queen, The Earthly Paradise, Hornblower novels – CS Forester
The Happy Return – first Hornblower novel
A Room with a View, Howard’s End, Where Angels Fear to Tread – EM Forster (1879 – 1970)
A Passage to India – EM Forster
Howards End – story of class struggle featuring the Wilcox family. Howards End is the name of a house
Epigraph to Howards End: ‘Only connect.’
Lucy Honeychurch – main character in A Room with a View
The Longest Journey – EM Forster
The Dogs of War, The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File and The Fourth Protocol – Frederick Forsyth
The Phantom of Manhattan is a book by Frederick Forsyth, intended as a sequel to The Phantom of the Opera musical
The Cobra – Frederick Forsyth. Published in 2010
The Negotiator – Frederick Forsyth
Sarah Woodruff is the woman in The French Lieutenant’s Woman – John Fowles, set in Lyme Regis
The Magus – John Fowles
Penguin Island – Anatole France
Sid Halley is a former British jump racing Champion Jockey and private detective who is the central character in four Dick Francis novels, Odds Against, Whip Hand, Come to Grief and Under Orders
The Corrections, Freedom – novels by Jonathan Franzen
Quiet as a Nun – first novel by Antonia Fraser featuring investigative journalist Jemima Shore
Flashman novels by George MacDonald Fraser
Flashman appears in a series of twelve books, collectively known as The Flashman Papers
Cold Mountain – book by Charles Frazier
Van der Valk books – Nicolas Freeling
A Tiny Bit Marvellous – Dawn French novel
The Women’s Room – Marilyn French. Feminist novel
Robert Frost recited a poem, The Gift Outright, on January 20, 1961 at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, The Road Not Taken – Robert Frost
Robert Frost’s work frequently employed themes from the early 1900s rural life in New England. Won four Pulitzer prizes
Sophie’s World – Jostein Gaarder
Sandman graphic novels – Neil Gaiman
The Ocean at the End of the Lane – Neil Gaiman
The Snow Goose, The Poseidon Adventure – Paul Gallico
The Zoo Gang – Paul Gallico
The Forsyte Sage, A Modern Comedy, End of the Chapter, The Skin Game – John Galsworthy (1867 – 1933)
The Forsyte Sage is a trilogy – Man of Property, In Chancery, and To Let
Perry Mason created by Erle Stanley Gardner
The Beach – Alex Garland
Elizabeth Gaskell (1810 – 1865) The Life of Charlotte Bronte (1857). Novels – Mary Barton (1848), Cranford (1851), Ruth (1853), North and South (1855), Sylvia's Lovers (1863), Cousin Phillis (1864), Wives and Daughters: An Everyday Story (1865) (incomplete novel)
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell was born Elizabeth Stevenson
Mary Barton – Elizabeth Gaskell. Subtitled A Tale of Manchester Life, about working classes in Victorian Manchester
Margaret Hale and John Thornton are the main characters in North and South
Our Lady of the Flowers, The Miracle of the Rose, The Thief’s Journal – Jean Genet
Elizabeth George is the American author of a number of mystery novels set in Great Britain. Eleven of her novels featuring Inspector Lynley have been adapted for television by the BBC as The Inspector Lynley Mysteries
Graceless, Aimless, Feckless and Pointless – cows in Cold Comfort Farm, by Stella Gibbons
Neuromancer is a 1984 novel by William Ford Gibson, notable for being the most famous early cyberpunk novel and winner of the so-called science-fiction ‘triple crown’ (the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award). It was Gibson's first novel and the first of The Sprawl trilogy
Howl – Allen Ginsberg, 1956
Kaddish – poem by Allen Ginsberg
The Sorrows of Young Werther is an epistolary and loosely autobiographical novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, first published in 1774. It was an important novel of the Sturm und Drang period in German literature
Egmont – novel by Johann Goethe
Faust – Goethe. Inspired by Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. The devil is called Mephistopheles
Wilheim Meister’s Apprenticeship – Goethe
Dead Souls is a satirical prose narrative by Nikolai Gogol (1809 – 1852). The first part of a projected trilogy, it was published in 1842 under the title The Adventures of Chichikov
Nikolai Gogol – the novel Taras Bulba (1835) and the short stories Diary of a Madman, The Nose and The Overcoat (1842) are among his best known works
Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
Lord of the Flies, Rites of Passage, Close Quarters, Fire Down Below – William Golding
Lord of the Flies – is a pig’s head, in the book
The Inheritors – William Golding. Concerns the extinction of the last remaining tribe of Neanderthals at the hands of the more sophisticated Homo sapiens
The Princess Bride – William Goldman
The Vicar of Wakefield – Oliver Goldsmith (1728 – 1774). The vicar is Dr. Primrose
The Deserted Village – poem by Oliver Goldsmith
The Conservationist – Nadime Gordimer. Winner of the 1974 Booker Prize
July’s People – Nadime Gordimer
My Childhood, My Universities – Maxim Gorky
Sue Grafton is best known as the author of the 'alphabet series' ("A" Is for Alibi, etc.) featuring private investigator Kinsey Millhone in the fictional city of Santa Teresa, California
Caroline Graham is best-known as the writer of the Chief Inspector Barnaby series, dramatised for television as Midsomer Murders
Poldark novels by Winston Graham. Poldark’s first name was Ross
The Danzig trilogy (The Tin Drum, Cat and Mouse, Dog Years) – Gunter Grass
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard is a poem by Thomas Gray which was completed when Gray was living near St Giles' parish church at Stoke Poges
‘The curfew tolls the knell of parting day’ – first line of Thomas Gray’s elegy
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard refers to the heroism of John Hampden
Honorary Consul – Graham Greene (1904 – 1991)
Our Man in Havana – Graham Greene. The novel is set in Cuba during the regime of Fulgencio Batista (which was to be overthrown by Castro). James Wormold, a vacuum cleaner salesman, meets Hawthorne, who offers him work for the British secret service
Brighton Rock, The Heart of the Matter, The Power and the Glory – Graham Greene
The Power and the Glory tells the story of a Roman Catholic priest in the state of Tabasco in Mexico during the 1930s
The Third Man, The Quiet American – Graham Greene
Travels with my Aunt – Graham Greene. Aunt’s name is Augusta
The End of the Affair – Graham Greene
The Comedians, The Destructors – Graham Greene
The Human Factor, The Confidential Agent – Graham Greene
Love on the Dole – Walter Greenwood
The Other Boleyn Girl, The Boleyn Inheritance – Philippa Gregory
The Cousins' War – Philippa Gregory. Five books – The White Queen (2009), the story of Elizabeth Woodville; The Red Queen (2010), the story of Lady Margaret Beaufort; The Lady of the Rivers (2011), the story of Jacquetta of Luxembourg, the mother of Elizabeth Woodville; The Kingmaker's Daughter (2012), the story of Anne Neville; The White Princess (2013), the story of Elizabeth of York
Zane Grey was an American author best known for his popular adventure novels and stories that were a basis for the Western genre in literature. Riders of the Purple Sage (1912) was his best-selling book
The Pelican Brief, The Firm – John Grisham
A Time to Kill – first John Grisham novel
Marley and Me – John Grogan. Marley is a yellow Labrador Retriever
Dairy of a Nobody – George and Weedon Grossmith (brothers)
Jack Straw’s Castle – poem by Thom Gunn
Snow Falling on Cedars – David Guterson
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon. Chapter numbers are prime numbers
Central character in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time suffers from Asperger’s
A Spot of Bother – Mark Haddon
King Solomon's Mines, She, Allan Quatermain, She, Eric Brighteyes – H Rider Haggard
Ayesha: The Return of She – H Rider Haggard. Origin of the term SWMBO
Hotel, Airport – Arthur Hailey
Runway Zero-Eight – Arthur Hailey. The spoof comedy Airplane! is based on the story
The Well of Loneliness – Radclyffe Hall. Tried for indecency
Monday Morning – first novel by Patrick Hamilton
Sam Spade books – Dashiell Hammett
The Thin Man, The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett
84 Charing Cross Road – Helene Hanff
A Raisin in the Sun – Lorraine Hansberry
The Art of Fielding – Chad Harbach. Novel about baseball
Far From the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy (1840 – 1928). Published in 1874, tells the story of Bathsheba Everdene. Title taken from Grey’s Elegy in a Country Churchyard. Other characters – Gabriel Oak, Sergeant Frank Troy
Under the Greenwood Tree – Thomas Hardy. The plot concerns the activities of a group of church musicians, one of whom, Dick Dewy, becomes romantically entangled with a new school mistress, Fancy Day. Title taken from a song in As You Like It
Mayor of Casterbridge – Thomas Hardy. Mayor was Michael Henshard
The Story of a Man of Character – subtitle of The Mayor of Casterbridge
Dorchester was Casterbridge in novels of Thomas Hardy
Shaftesbury was Staston in novels of Thomas Hardy
The Return of the Native – Thomas Hardy. Takes place entirely in the environs of Egdon Heath. Diggory Venn is a reddleman; he travels the country marking flocks of sheep with a red mineral called ‘reddle’
Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented is a novel by Thomas Hardy, first published in 1891. Title character is Tess Durbeyfield, who is hanged for murder
The Trumpet Major – Thomas Hardy
Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy’s last novel. The hero Jude Fawley is a lower-class young man who dreams of becoming a scholar
Desperate Remedies – first novel by Thomas Hardy
The Woodlanders, Wessex Tales – Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy’s funeral took place at Westminster Abbey. His heart was buried at Stinsford in Dorset with his wife Emma, and his ashes were buried in Poets' Corner
The Southern Vampire Mysteries series, otherwise known as The Sookie Stackhouse Novels – Charlaine Harris
Chocolat, Blackberry Wine, Five Quarters of the Orange – novels by Joanne Harris
The Lollipop Shoes – Joanne Harris
Blueeyedboy – Joanne Harris
Lustrum, The Ghost – Robert Harris
An Officer and a Spy – Robert Harris. It tells the true story of French officer Georges Picquart from 1896–1906, as he struggles to expose the truth about the doctored evidence that sent Alfred Dreyfus to Devil's Island
Fatherland – Robert Harris. Set in a world in which Nazi Germany won World War II
Eustace and Hilda – LP Hartley
The Go-Between – LP Hartley. About a boy who unwittingly acts as a go-between for a Victorian lady having an illicit affair. The novel begins with the line ‘The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there’
Ducks – poem by Frederick William Harvey
The Dresser, An English Tragedy – Ronald Harwood
The Scarlet Letter, published in 1850, is an American novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Set in Puritan Boston in the seventeenth century, it tells the story of Hester Prynne, who gives birth after committing adultery. The Scarlet Letter ‘A’ represents the act of adultery that Hestor Prynne has committed
The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, The Marble Faun – Nathaniel Hawthorne
Our Old Home – Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God is a 1911 poem by J. Milton Hayes. Mentions ‘Mad Carew’
Liber Amoris – William Hazlitt
District and Circle – collection of poems by Seamus Heaney
Finders Keepers – Seamus Heaney
The Burial at Thebes – play by Seamus Heaney. A version of Sophocles' Antigone
Field Work, Human Chain – Seamus Heaney
Death of a Naturalist – Seamus Heaney
The Rattle Bag – anthology edited by Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney was as a professor at Harvard from 1981 to 1997 and the Poet in Residence from 1988 to 2006.
Red Planet, Stranger in a Strange Land, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Time Enough for Love – Robert Heinlein
Catch-22 – Joseph Heller. The plot centres on a group of American fighter pilots in Italy during WWII, and their efforts to avoid flying suicidal missions
Catch-22 follows Yossarian, a U.S. Army Air Forces B-25 bombardier. Most events occur while the Airmen of the fictional 256th squadron are based on the island of Pianosa, in the Mediterranean Sea west of Italy
Closing Time – sequel to Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
Notes on a Scandal – novel by Zoe Heller. It is about a female teacher at a London comprehensive school who begins an affair with one of her underage pupils.A film version, was released in 2006 and stars Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett
The Believers – Zoe Heller
Casabianca is a poem by Felicia Dorothea Hemans. The poem opens: ‘The boy stood on the burning deck’, and commemorates an actual incident that occurred in 1798 during the Battle of the Nile aboard the French ship L'Orient
Across the River and Into the Trees – Ernest Hemingway (1899 – 1961), set in Venice at the end of World War II
The Old Man and the Sea – about a Cuban fisherman called Santiago who fishes for marlin
For Whom the Bell Tolls is a 1940 novel by Ernest Hemingway. It tells the story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to an antifascist guerilla unit in the mountains during the Spanish Civil War. As an expert in the use of explosives, he is given an assignment to blow up a bridge to accompany a simultaneous attack on the city of Segovia. Name taken from a work by John Donne
A Farewell to Arms is a semi-autobiographical novel written by Ernest Hemingway in 1929. The novel is told through the point of view of Lieutenant Frederic Henry, an American serving as an ambulance driver in the Italian army during World War I
Death in the Afternoon – a non-fiction book by Ernest Hemingway about the ceremony and traditions of Spanish bullfighting
The Dangerous Summer – Ernest Hemingway, describes the real-life bullfighting rivalry that took place in 1959 between legendary bullfighters Luis Miguel Dominguin and his brother in law Antonio Ordonez
The Garden of Eden – Ernest Hemingway, is the story of five months in the lives of David Bourne, an American writer, and his wife, Catherine
The Torrents of Spring – first novel by Hemingway
Green Hills of Africa, The Sun Also Rises, The Snows of Kilimanjaro – Hemingway
Today is Friday, Islands in the Stream – Hemingway
The Cisco Kid is a fictional character found in numerous film, radio, television and comic book series based on the fictional Western character created by O. Henry in his 1907 short story The Caballero's Way, published in the collection Heart of the West
Dune, Dune Messiah – Frank Herbert
The Temple – Welsh poet George Herbert
The Rats, The Fog, The Survivor – first novels by James Herbert
Ash – James Herbert
Cherry Ripe – poem by Robert Herrick
‘Gather ye rosebuds while ye may’ – opening line of To the Virgins by Robert Herrick
All Creatures Great and Small – set around Darrowby (based on Thirsk). James Herriot book
If Only They Could Talk – first James Herriot book
Steppenwolf, Siddhartha, and The Glass Bead Game (also known as Magister Ludi) – Hermann Hesse
The Black Moth, These Old Shades, The Masqueraders, The Conqueror – Georgette Heyer
Jack Higgins is the principal pseudonym of UK novelist Harry Patterson. Breakthrough novel The Eagle has Landed (1975)
Patricia Highsmith was an American novelist who is known mainly for her psychological crime thrillers. Strangers on a Train has been adapted to the screen three times, notably by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. Series about murderer Thomas Ripley, including The Talented Mr. Ripley
Dalziel and Pascoe books – Reginald Hill
Mrs De Winter – Susan Hill. Follow-on to Rebecca
The Woman in Black – Susan Hill
Detective Simon Serailler appears in Susan Hill crime novels
Seabiscuit, Unbroken – Laura Hillenbrand
Lost Horizon – James Hilton. Contains the Tibetan utopia called Shangri La
Goodbye Mr Chips – James Hilton
A Kestral for a Knave – Barry Hines. The film Kes is based on the book
The Island – Victoria Hislop. The island is Spinalonga, off the coast of Crete
Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow – Peter Hoeg. Set in Denmark
E. T. A. Hoffmann was a German Romantic author of fantasy and horror. He is the subject and hero of Jacques Offenbach's famous but fictional opera The Tales of Hoffmann, and the author of the novella The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, on which the famous ballet The Nutcracker is based. The ballet Coppelia is based on two other stories that Hoffmann wrote
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner – James Hogg, who was known as ‘The Ettrick Shepherd’
The Line of Beauty, The Stranger’s Child – Alan Hollinghurst
Albert Ramsbottom was eaten by a lion at Blackpool Zoo in the monologue by Stanley Holloway
Old Ironsides – poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes about USS Constitution (1830)
South Riding – Winifred Holtby
‘No sun, no moon …’ is a line in November by Thomas Hood
Prisoner of Zenda – set in Ruritania. Written by Anthony Hope
Gerard Manley Hopkins – sprung rhythm poetry structure. Hopkins was a jesuit
31 Songs – Nick Hornby
Juliet, Naked – novel by Nick Hornby
EW Hornung, the creator of Raffles, was the brother-in-law of Arthur Conan Doyle
The House of Silk – Anthony Horowitz. It marks the first time that the Conan Doyle Estate has authorized a new Sherlock Holmes novel
The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini
And the Mountains Echoed – Khaled Hosseini
The Map and the Territory – Michael Houellebecq. Winner of the Prix Goncourt in 2010
A Shropshire Lad – AE Housman. Starts with celebrations of Victoria’s 50th year on the throne, with beacons lit across the country
The Human Predicament, A High Wind in Jamaica – Richard Hughes
The Hawk in the Rain – first book of poetry by Ted Hughes
Tales from Ovid, Birthday Letters, Lupercal – Ted Hughes
Harry Flashman – bully in Tom Brown’s Schooldays, by Thomas Hughes
Les Miserables (1862) is a novel by Victor Hugo (1802 – 1885). It follows the lives and interactions of several French characters over a twenty year period in the early 19th century that includes the Napoleonic wars and subsequent decades. Principally focusing on the struggles of the protagonist, ex-convict Jean Valjean, who seeks to redeem himself
Notre-Dame de Paris (sometimes translated into English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame) – Victor Hugo. Quasimodo is named after Quasimodo Sunday, the first Sunday after Easter, when he was found abandoned
Abou Ben Adhem – James Leigh Hunt
George Gently appears in all 46 Alan Hunter novels, mainly set in East Anglia
Graham Hurley is best known for creating the character of DI Joe Faraday
Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Hurston
Chrome Yellow, Antic Hay, Point Counter Point, Eyeless in Gaza, Brave New World, Island, The Devils of Loudun – Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963)
“A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories” – first line of Brave New World
The Doors of Perception is a 1954 book by Aldous Huxley detailing his experiences when taking mescaline. The title comes from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Brief Candles – Aldous Huxley, title from a speech by Macbeth
Conn Iggulden's debut book was The Gates of Rome, the first in a four-part series entitled Emperor
The Cider House Rules, The World According to Garp, The Hotel New Hampshire, Setting Free the Bears, A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
Rip Van Winkle – Washington Irving
Ichabod Crane is the main protagonist in Washington Irving's short story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Headless Horseman is a character in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Kazuo Ishiguro won the Whitbread Prize in 1986 for his second novel An Artist of the Floating World, and the Booker Prize in 1989 for his third, The Remains of the Day. His other novels include A Pale View of Hills, The Unconsoled, When We Were Orphans, and his most recent book Never Let Me Go
The Monkey's Paw is a horror short story by WW Jacobs
Coming from Behind – first novel by Howard Jacobson
Brian Jacques is an English author, best known for his Redwall series of novels
Visions Before Midnight – Clive James
Fifty Shades of Grey – E.L. James
Fifty Shades Darker, Fifty Shades Freed – E.L. James
Fifty Shades of Grey, which details the sadomasochistic affair between fictional characters Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele, has been hugely popular with mature women, as a result the trilogy and books similar to it have been described as mummy porn
The American, The European, The Bostonian – Henry James (1843 – 1916)
The Golden Bowl, Washington Square – Henry James
Daisy Miller – Henry James
Portrait of a Lady is the story of a spirited young American woman, Isabel Archer, who ‘affronts her destiny’ and finds it overwhelming. She inherits a large amount of money and subsequently becomes the victim of Machiavellian scheming by two American expatriates
The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors – Henry James
Turn of the Screw – ghost story by Henry James
The Art of Fiction – Henry James
Henry James spent the last 40 years of his life in England, becoming a British subject in 1915
Ghost Stories of an Antiquary – first collection of ghost stories by M.R. James
Cover Her Face – first novel featuring Adam Dalgliesh, by P.D. James
The Lighthouse is a 2005 novel by P.D. James, the most recent book in the classic Adam Dalgliesh mystery series
Death Comes to Pemberley – a novel by P.D. James that continues Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice with a murder mystery
Cordelia Gray is the main protagonist of P.D. James's An Unsuitable Job for a Woman and of The Skull Beneath the Skin
The Children of Men – P.D. James
Brighton-based Detective Superintendent Roy Grace is featured in the books of Peter James
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow – Jerome K Jerome, who was editor of The Idler
Three Men in a Boat – Harris, George, and J. The dog is Montmorency
Seventy-Two Virgins – novel by Boris Johnson
The Perils of the Pushy Parents – poem by Boris Johnson
Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia – book by Samuel Johnson
The Known World – Edward Jones, winner of 2005 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
Fear of Flying – Erica Jong. The novel is narrated by its protagonist, Isadora Wing, a poet. On a trip to Vienna with her second husband, Isadora decides to indulge her sexual fantasies with another man. Introduced the term ‘zipless fuck’, a sexual encounter for its own sake, without emotional involvement or commitment
The Wheel of Time is a series of epic fantasy novels written by American author James Oliver Rigney, Jr., under the pen name Robert Jordan
Warning – Jenny Joseph. First line “When I am an old woman I shall wear purple”
James Joyce (1882 – 1941), along with Marcel Proust and Virginia Woolf, is considered a key figure in the development of the modernist novel. He is best known for his landmark novels Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939). His other major works are the short story collection Dubliners (1914) and the semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
Ulysses chronicles the passage through Dublin by its main character, Leopold Bloom, during an ordinary day, June 16, 1904. The title alludes to the hero of Homer's Odyssey, and there are many parallels between the two works (e.g., the correspondences between Leopold Bloom and Odysseus, Molly Bloom and Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus and Telemachus). June 16 is now celebrated by Joyce's fans worldwide as ‘Bloomsday’
Leopold Bloom lives at 7 Eccles Street, Dublin
Finnegans Wake treats, in an unorthodox fashion, the Earwicker family, composed of the father HCE, the mother ALP, and their three children Shem the Penman, Shaun the Post, and Issy. Finnegan is a Dublin hod carrier
Finnegans Wake includes the phrase ‘Three quarks for Muster Mark’. Quark is a gull’s cry
The Successor – Ismail Kadare
The Trial is a novel by Franz Kafka (1883 – 1924) about a character named Josef K., who awakens one morning and, for reasons never revealed, is arrested and subjected to the judicial process for an unspecified crime
The Castle is a philosophical novel by Franz Kafka. In it a protagonist, known only as K., strives to gain access to the mysterious authorities of a castle that governs the village where K. has arrived to work as a land surveyor
Amerika – Franz Kafka. The story describes the bizarre wanderings of a 16-year-old European emigrant named Karl Rossmann in the United States, who was forced to go to New York to escape the scandal of his seduction by a housemaid
The Metamorphosis – Kafka. A traveling salesman, Gregor Samsa, wakes to find himself transformed into a gigantic insect
The Far Pavilions – M.M. Kaye
John Keats (1795 – 1821) died of consumption in Rome, aged 25. Engaged to Fanny Brawne
Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn, To Autumn – John Keats
Hyperion – Keats. Unfinished poem based on the Titanomachia, and tells of the despair of the Titans after their fall to the Olympians
Endymion – Keats. It is based on the Greek myth of Endymion, the shepherd beloved by the moon goddess Selene. Begins with the line “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever”
“My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains” – opening line of Ode to a Nightingale
La Belle Dame sans Merci – John Keats
The Eve of Saint Agnes – poem by Keats
La Belle Dame sans Merci – ballad written by Keats
Lamia – Keats
“Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art” is the first line of a love sonnet by Keats
The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Schindler’s Ark – Thomas Keneally
Thomas Keneally was nominated three times for the Booker Prize before winning it in 1982 with Schindler’s Ark
So I Am Glad, Day – AL Kennedy
Neil Cassidy was the inspiration for Dean Moriarty, in On the Road by Jack Kerouac
The Dharma Bums, Desolation Angels, Big Sur – Jack Kerouac
Arsenic and Old Lace – Joseph Kesseling. Abbey and Martha Brewster
Flowers for Algernon – Daniel Keyes. The eponymous Algernon is a laboratory mouse who has undergone surgery to increase his intelligence by artificial means
Watermelon, Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married, Sushi for Beginners – Marian Keyes
Lucy, Annie John – Jamaica Kincaid, born in Antigua
Dark Tower novels – Stephen King (born 1947)
Some Stephen King stories are set in Castle Rock
Carrie, Salem’s Lot, The Shining, Cujo, Christine, The Dead Zone, Pet Sematary, Needful Things – Stephen King
The Running Man – Stephen King, first published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman
Misery – Stephen King. The novel focuses on Paul Sheldon, a writer famous for Victorian-era romance novels involving the character of Misery Chastain
Hereward the Wake, Westward Ho! – Charles Kingsley
Sophie Kinsella is best known for writing the Shopaholic novels series of chick lit novels, which focus on the misadventures of Becky Bloomwood
The Lacuna – Barbara Kingsolver
Rudyard Kipling (1865 – 1936) was born in Bombay. Named after the lake in Staffordshire where his parents first met. In 1907, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first English-language writer to receive the prize, and its youngest recipient to date. Rudyard Kipling’s son, John, was killed on his first day in action at the Battle of Loos in 1915
Rudyard Kipling is best known for his children's books, including The Jungle Book (1894), The Second Jungle Book (1895), Just So Stories (1902), and Puck of Pook's Hill (1906); his novel, Kim (1901); his poems, including Mandalay (1890) and If (1910); and his many short stories, including the collections Life's Handicap (1891), The Day's Work (1898), and Plain Tales from the Hills (1888)
Gunga Din (1892) is one of Rudyard Kipling's most famous poems, perhaps best known for its often-quoted last line, ‘You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!’ The poem is a rhyming narrative from the point of view of a British soldier, about a native water-bearer who saves his life
Gunga Din – first of the Barrack-Room Ballads
The Islanders – Rudyard Kipling. Describes cricketers as ‘flannelled fools’ and footballers as ‘muddied oafs’
The Man Who Would Be King – Kipling (1888). Tells the story of British adventurers Daniel Dravot and Peachey Carnehan in British India who become kings of Kafiristan, a remote part of Afghanistan
The Elephant’s Child – Rudyard Kipling
Stalky & Co. – Rudyard Kipling
Kipling wrote the poem Recessional in 1897 for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee
‘Lest we forget’ – from Recessional, by Kipling
Captains Courageous – Kipling
The Love That Dares to Speak Its Name – poem by James Kirkup, about the gay fantasies of the centurion contemplating the body of Jesus
English Passengers – Matthew Kneale
Lassie books – Eric Knight. Lassie was a collie
Darkness at Noon – Arthur Koestler. Anti-totalitarian novel. Born in Budapest, commited suicide in 1983
Deanna Dwyer, KR Dwyer – pseudonyms used by Dean Koontz
Life is Elsewhere – Milan Kundera
The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera. Set in Prague in 1968, the novel details the circumstances of life for artists and intellectuals in Czechoslovakia in the wake of the Prague Spring and the subsequent invasion by the USSR
The Buddha of Suburbia, Something to Tell You – Hanif Kureishi
Glenarvon is Lady Caroline Lamb's first novel, published in 1816. Its rakish title character, Lord Ruthven, is an unflattering depiction of her ex-lover, Lord Byron
Essays of Elia – Charles Lamb
The Incredible Journey – written by Sheila Langford
Ragamuffin – name of a demon in Piers Plowman by William Langland
Jane Tennison – created by Linda La Plante. Played by Helen Mirren
Philip Larkin (1922 – 1985) contributed to The Daily Telegraph as its jazz critic from 1961 to 1971. In 1950 Larkin was appointed sub-librarian at Queen's University Belfast. He worked with distinction as university librarian at the Brynmor Jones Library at the University of Hull for 30 years
Philip Larkin’s first book of poetry, The North Ship, was published in 1945, followed by two novels, Jill and A Girl in Winter, and he came to prominence in 1955 with the publication of his second collection of poems, The Less Deceived, followed by The Whitsun Weddings and High Windows
The Millennium Trilogy is a series of three bestselling novels written by Stieg Larsson. The novels in the series are The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest
Lisbeth Salander – Larsson’s feminist heroine in the Millennium Trilogy
‘Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically’ – opening line of Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence (1885 – 1930)
Lady Chatterley’s Lover concerns a young married woman, Constance (Lady Chatterley), whose upper-class husband, Clifford Chatterley, has been paralyzed and rendered impotent. Her sexual frustration leads her into an affair with Oliver Mellors, who is the gamekeeper on Clifford Chatterley's estate, Wragby Hall
‘Heart’ – last word in Lady Chatterley’s Lover
Sons and Lovers – tells the story of Paul Morel, a young man and a budding artist in a mining community
The Rainbow is a 1915 novel by D.H. Lawrence. It follows three generations of the Brangwen family. The Rainbow was prosecuted in an obscenity trial in 1915, as a result of which all copies were seized and burnt
Women in Love – sequel to The Rainbow, and follows the continuing loves and lives of the Brangwen sisters, Gudrun and Ursula
Freda Wheatly married D.H. Lawrence
The Plumed Serpent – D.H. Lawrence, set in Mexico
The Fox – novella by D.H. Lawrence
Kangaroo, Snake – D.H. Lawrence
The White Peacock – first novel by D.H. Lawrence
Seven Pillars of Wisdom – TE Lawrence (also known as TE Shaw and Lawrence of Arabia). The title comes from the Book of Proverbs, ‘Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars’
The Mint – TE Lawrence
Emma Lazarus is best known for The New Colossus, a sonnet written in 1883; its lines appear on a bronze plaque in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty
Arsene Lupin is a fictional character who appears in a book series of detective fiction / crime fiction novels written by French writer Maurice Leblanc
Earthsea fantasy novels, Hainish Cycle science fiction novels – Ursula K Le Guin
The Left Hand of Darkness – Ursula K Le Guin. It is part of the Hainish Cycle
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee (born 1926). It is told from the point of view of Jean Louise ‘Scout’ Finch, the young daughter of Atticus Finch, a lawyer in Maycomb, Alabama, a fictional small town in the Deep South. She is accompanied by her brother Jem and their mutual friend Dill (based on Truman Capote). Won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961
Calpurnia – cook in To Kill a Mockingbird
Go Set a Watchman – Harper Lee. Published in July 2015
Although publicized as a sequel, Go Set a Watchman is actually the first draft of To Kill a Mockingbird. The title comes from Isaiah 21:6: "For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth." It alludes to Jean Louise Finch's view of her father, Atticus Finch, as the moral compass ("watchman") of Maycomb, and has a theme of disillusionment, as she realizes the extent of the bigotry in her home community
Laurie Lee’s most famous work was an autobiographical trilogy which consisted of Cider with Rosie (1959), As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969) and A Moment of War (1991). The first volume recounts his childhood in the Slad Valley. The second deals with his leaving home for London and his first visit to Spain in 1935, and the third with his return to Spain in December 1937 to join the Republican International Brigades
A Rose for Winter – Laurie Lee
Mystic River – Dennis Lehane
A Wrinkle in Time is a science fantasy[ novel by Madeleine L'Engle, first published in 1962. First book of the Time Quintet featuring the Murry family
Donna Leon is the American author of a series of crime novels set in Venice and featuring the fictional hero Commissario Guido Brunetti
Get Shorty, Out of Sight, Rum Punch – Elmore Leonard
The Phantom of the Opera – novel by Gaston Leroux
Doris Lessing (1919 – 2013) was born in Iran. In 1984, she attempted to publish two novels under a pseudonym, Jane Somers, to demonstrate the difficulty new authors faced in trying to break into print. Lessing was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature
The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing
Alfred and Emily – Doris Lessing
Shikasta – Doris Lessing
Primo Levi is best known for his work on the Holocaust, and in particular his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in Auschwitz. If This Is a Man (published in the United States as Survival in Auschwitz) has been described as one of the most important works of the twentieth century
The Truce – Primo Levi. It describes his experiences returning from the concentration camp at Auschwitz after the Second World War
The Periodic Table – Primo Levi. Each chapter is named after a chemical element
Rosemary’s Baby, The Stepford Wives, The Boys from Brazil – Ira Levin
The Screwtape Letters is a work of Christian satire by C. S. Lewis first published in book form in 1942. The story takes the form of a series of letters from a senior demon, Screwtape, to his nephew, a junior tempter named Wormwood
The Monk – gothic novel written by Matthew Lewis
Main Street, Babbit, It Can’t Happen Here – Sinclair Lewis
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian – Marina Lewycka
Two Caravans – Marina Lewycka
Gift From the Sea – Anne Morrow Lindbergh, wife of Charles
Dexter Morgan is an antihero of a series of novels by Jeff Lindsay, including Darkly Dreaming Dexter which was adapted into the TV series Dexter
Moon Tiger – Penelope Lively. Penelope Lively was born in Cairo
How Green Was My Valley – Richard Llewellyn. The novel tells the story of the Morgans, a poor but respectable mining family of the South Wales valleys, through the eyes of the youngest son, Huw Morgan
A Man of Parts – David Lodge. Based on life of HG Wells
Changing Places – David Lodge
War Music – Christopher Logue. Retelling of The Iliad
White Fang, The Sea Wolf – Jack London
Call of the Wild – Jack London. Features a dog called Buck
John Barleycorn is an autobiographical novel by Jack London dealing with his struggles with alcoholism
Martin Eden – autobiographical novel by Jack London
The Wreck of the Hesperus – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 – 1882)
The Village Blacksmith – Longfellow, contains the line ‘under the spreading chestnut tree the village smithy stands’
The Song of Hiawatha, Paul Revere’s Ride – Longfellow
‘Stars are the forget-me-nots of the angels’ – Longfellow
‘Into each life some rain must fall’ – from The Rainy Day by Longfellow
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes – subtitled The Illuminating Diary of a Professional Lady – Anita Loos
But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes – Anita Loos
Federico García Lorca (1898 – 1936) was a Spanish poet and dramatist, also remembered as a painter, pianist, and composer. An emblematic member of the Generation of '27, he was killed by Nationalist partisans at the age of 38 at the start of the Spanish Civil War
Andre Lorde – female black American poet
HP Lovecraft was an American author of fantasy, horror and science fiction, noted for combining these three genres within single narratives. He has become a cult figure in the horror genre and is noted as creator of the Cthulhu Mythos as well as the famed Necronomicon (a textbook of magic)
‘Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage’ – from To Althea, From Prison by Richard Lovelace
Amy Lowell was an American poet of the imagist school from Brookline, Massachusetts who posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926. In the post-World War I years, Lowell was largely forgotten, but the women's movement in the 1970s and women's studies brought her back to light
Under the Volcano – Malcolm Lowry
The Bourne trilogy – books by Robert Ludlam
With permission from the estate of Robert Ludlum, Eric van Lustbader has continued writing Jason Bourne novels from where Ludlum left off in The Bourne Ultimatum
The Scarlatti Inheritance – first novel by Robert Ludlam
87th Precinct is a series of police procedural novels and stories written by Ed McBain, a pseudonym of Evan Hunter
The Butcher Boy, Breakfast on Pluto – Patrick McCabe
The Road – Cormac McCarthy. The only living creatures are humans, hunting for food
No Country for Old Men – novel by Cormac McCarthy. Title taken from Sailing to Byzantium by WB Yeats
Blood Meridian – Cormac McCarthy
The Border Trilogy consists of three novels written by Cormac McCarthy: All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, and Cities of the Plain
C – Tom McCarthy
Peter Pan in Scarlet – Geraldine McCaughrean
Tis, Teacher Man – Frank McCourt
In Flanders Fields – John McCrae
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe – Carson McCullers
The Thorn Birds – Colleen McCullough
Masters of Rome novels – Colleen McCullough
The Mistress – Martine McCutcheon novel
On Chesil Beach, Atonement – Ian McEwan
The Comfort of Strangers – Ian McEwan
Saturday – Ian McEwan. One day in the life of a London brain surgeon
Solar – Ian McEwan
A Child in Time – Ian McEwan
Enduring Love, Black Dogs, Sweet Tooth – Ian McEwan
Tay Bridge Disaster – poem by William Topaz McGonagall
The Rose of Sebastopol, The Alchemist’s Daughter, The Crimson Rooms – Katharine McMahon
Aggressor, Crossfire – Andy McNab
Ex-member of the SAS Nick Stone is the main fictional character in a series of books written by Andy McNab
Bulldog Drummond – Sapper (HC McNeile)
Detective novels by Philip MacDonald feature Anthony Gethryn. He wrote the novelization of the film Forbidden Planet as WJ Stuart
England, Their England – a satirical comic novel of 1920s English urban and rural society by the Scottish writer A. G. Macdonell. It is particularly famed for its portrayal of village cricket
Monarch of the Glen, Whisky Galore – novels by Compton MacKenzie
Whisky Galore – ship is SS Cabinet Minister, wrecked off Great Todday and Little Todday. In real life, ship was SS Politician which was sunk in 1941
The Guns of Navarone, Force 10 from Navarone – Alistair MacLean
Ice Station Zebra – Alexander MacLean
The Naked and the Dead – Norman Mailer (1923 – 2007). A saga about soldiers fighting in the South Pacific
The Armies of the Night – Norman Mailer. His account of taking part in the anti-Vietnam War marches in 1967
The Executioner's Song, Mailer's novelization of the life of murderer Gary Gilmore, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction
Barbary Shore, The White Negro, An American Dream – Norman Mailer
The Castle in the Forest – Mailer’s last novel
Le Morte d’Arthur – Thomas Malory (1485)
Wallander – police inspector in series of detective novels by Henning Mankell
Wallander novels are set in and around the town of Ystad, 56 km south-east of Malmo
The Troubled Man – last novel featuring Wallander
The White Lioness – Henning Mankell
Mephisto – novel by Klaus Mann. Son of Thomas Mann
Dr Faustus, The Magic Mountain – Thomas Mann (1875 – 1955)
Death in Venice – Thomas Mann
Buddenbrooks – Thomas Mann
Buddenbrooks portrays the downfall of a wealthy mercantile family of Lubeck over four generations
Lotte in Weimar: The Beloved Returns – Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann was born in Lubeck. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Thomas Mann fled to Switzerland. When World War II broke out, he emigrated to the United States
Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel. Rise to power of Thomas Cromwell
Bring Up the Bodies – Hilary Mantel. Covers events in 1535
Hilary Mantel is the only woman to win Booker twice, for Wolf Hall (2009) and Bring Up the Bodies (2012)
The Mirror and the Light is the title of the Wolf Hall trilogy's final installment
Every Day is Mother's Day – first novel by Hilary Mantel
Dealer’s Choice, Closer – Patrick Marber
The Listeners – Walter de la Mare
Christopher Marlowe was arrested in1593. No reason was given, though it was thought to be connected to allegations of blasphemy. He was brought before the Privy Council for questioning on 20 May. Ten days later, he was stabbed to death by Ingram Frizer. Whether the stabbing was connected to his arrest has never been resolved
Hero and Leander – poem by Christopher Marlowe
Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927 – 2014) was a Colombian novelist, journalist, publisher and political activist. Widely credited with introducing the global public to magical realism, he spent much of his time in Mexico City. One Hundred Years of Solitude has sold more than 10 million copies. It chronicles several generations of the Buendía family who live in a fictional South American village called Macondo. Other works include Love in the Time of Cholera and Chronicle of a Death Foretold
“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Col. Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice” – opening line of One Hundred Years of Solitude
Leaf Storm – Marquez’s first novel
The General in His Labyrinth – Marquez. A fictionalized account of the last days of Simon Bolívar
Mr Midshipman Easy, Peter Simple – Captain Frederick Marryat
Children of the New Forest by Captain Marryat features the Beverly children
Roderick Alleyn is a fictional character who first appeared in 1934. He is the policeman hero of the 32 detective novels of Ngaio Marsh, who was born in New Zealand
A Game of Thrones is the first book in A Song of Ice and Fire, a series of novels by American author George R. R. Martin. The novel has lent its name to several spin-off items based on the novels, including a role-playing game and a television series. Martin introduces the plot-lines of the noble houses of Westeros, the Wall, and the Targaryens
A Feast for Crows in a novel in the A Song of Ice and Fire series
An Object of Beauty – Steve Martin
Richard Parker – Bengal tiger in Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Beatrice and Virgil – Yann Martel
To His Coy Mistress, The Garden, An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland, The Mower's Song and the country house poem Upon Appleton House – Andrew Marvell. A colleague and friend of John Milton
Cargoes, Sea Fever, Sea Change – John Masefield (1878 – 1967)
Saltwater Ballads – John Masefield
The Midnight Folk – John Masefield
John Masefield – last poet to be buried in Poets’ Corner
Of Human Bondage, Cakes and Ale, Liza of Lambeth – William Somerset Maugham (1874 – 1965)
Cakes and Ale – from a line spoken by Toby Belch in Twelfth Night
The Moon 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
