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Tag: Before 1900

  • The Picture of Dorian Gray

    In a London studio the painter Basil Hallward completes a portrait of Dorian Gray, a young man of extraordinary beauty whom he idolises. Basil's friend Lord Henry Wotton, a languid aristocrat with a talent for scandalous epigrams, tells Dorian that youth is the only thing worth having. Seized by the thought of growing old, Dorian wishes the picture could age instead of him.

    The wish seems to come true. As Dorian follows Lord Henry's philosophy of pleasure and new sensations, his face remains unlined while the canvas, locked away in an old schoolroom, begins to change with every cruel act. His romance with a young actress, Sibyl Vane, is the first sign of what he is becoming, and rumours of his corrupting influence spread through London society.

    First published in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in 1890 and expanded as a book the following year, the novel was attacked as immoral and later used against Wilde at his trials. It combines Gothic fable with sparkling dialogue and explores aestheticism, vanity, hidden lives and the relationship between art and morality.

    Book details

    AuthorOscar Wilde
    First published1890
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreClassic
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)254
    SettingLondon, late 19th century

    Themes

    • Vanity
    • Aestheticism
    • Corruption
    • Double life
    • Art and morality

    Who should read it

    Readers who enjoy witty dialogue and Gothic morality tales about beauty, influence and secret sin.

  • Dracula

    Jonathan Harker, a young English solicitor, travels to the Carpathian Mountains to help Count Dracula complete the purchase of an estate near London. His host is courteous but strange, and Harker gradually realises he is a prisoner in a castle where the Count crawls down walls and three spectral women haunt the rooms.

    The story then moves to England, where Harker's fiancee Mina and her friend Lucy Westenra become entangled in a series of disturbing events after a ship runs aground at Whitby with its crew dead. Lucy's suitors, the asylum doctor John Seward, the American Quincey Morris and Arthur Holmwood, call in the Dutch professor Abraham Van Helsing, whose knowledge of folklore and science may be their only defence.

    Told through diaries, letters, newspaper cuttings and phonograph records, the novel creates suspense from fragments that the characters must piece together. It drew on Eastern European vampire legend and Victorian anxieties about sexuality, disease, immigration and modern technology, and its count became the template for the vampire in popular culture.

    Book details

    AuthorBram Stoker
    First published1897
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreHorror
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)418
    SettingTransylvania, Whitby and London, 1890s

    Themes

    • Good and evil
    • Sexuality
    • Fear of the foreign
    • Science versus superstition
    • Modernity

    Who should read it

    Horror fans who want the original vampire novel and readers who enjoy stories pieced together from documents.

  • Frankenstein

    Mary Shelley began the story at eighteen during the wet summer of 1816 at Lake Geneva, when Lord Byron challenged his guests to write ghost stories. Published anonymously in 1818 and revised in 1831, the novel is framed by the letters of Robert Walton, an Arctic explorer who rescues an exhausted traveller from the ice.

    The traveller is Victor Frankenstein, a gifted young man from Geneva who, as a student at Ingolstadt, becomes obsessed with discovering the secret of life. He assembles a body and succeeds in animating it, but recoils in horror from the being he has made and flees. The creature, left alone, educates himself by secretly watching a cottage family and reading Milton, Plutarch and Goethe, and in the novel's central section tells his own eloquent story of rejection.

    Far from the grunting monster of film, Shelley's creature is articulate and sympathetic, and the book asks who the real monster is. It explores scientific ambition, responsibility for what we create, isolation and the need for companionship, themes that still frame debates about technology.

    Book details

    AuthorMary Shelley
    First published1818
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreScience fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)280
    SettingGeneva, Ingolstadt, the Alps and the Arctic, 18th century

    Themes

    • Scientific ambition
    • Creation and responsibility
    • Isolation
    • Revenge
    • Nature of humanity

    Who should read it

    Readers curious about the origins of science fiction and horror, and anyone interested in the ethics of creation.

  • Oliver Twist

    Oliver Twist is born in a provincial workhouse, where his mother dies at once, and grows up under the brutal regime of the Poor Law. After famously asking for more gruel, he is sold as an apprentice to an undertaker, mistreated, and finally runs away on foot to London.

    On the road he meets the Artful Dodger, a swaggering young pickpocket who takes him to Fagin, an old receiver of stolen goods who trains boys to steal. Oliver's innocence is tested when he is caught up in a robbery, rescued by the kindly Mr Brownlow, and pulled back into the underworld by the violent housebreaker Bill Sikes and his partner Nancy, whose conscience becomes central to the plot. A mysterious figure named Monks seems strangely interested in Oliver's fate.

    Serialised in 1837 to 1839, the novel was an attack on the New Poor Law of 1834 and on the treatment of poor children. Its melodrama and caricatures, including a portrayal of Fagin now criticised as antisemitic, sit alongside vivid scenes of London's slums that shocked readers into paying attention.

    Book details

    AuthorCharles Dickens
    First published1838
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreClassic
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)554
    SettingLondon and provincial England, 1830s

    Themes

    • Poverty
    • Child exploitation
    • Crime
    • Innocence
    • Social reform

    Who should read it

    Readers interested in Victorian social history and a fast-moving story of an orphan in the London underworld.

  • A Tale of Two Cities

    The novel opens in 1775 as Doctor Manette is released after eighteen years of secret imprisonment in the Bastille, his mind damaged so badly that he obsessively makes shoes. His daughter Lucie, raised in England believing him dead, brings him to London, where they are drawn into the treason trial of Charles Darnay, a French emigre who has renounced his aristocratic family.

    Darnay is saved partly thanks to the dissolute barrister Sydney Carton, who looks strikingly like him and who quietly loves Lucie. Meanwhile in the Paris suburb of Saint Antoine, the wine-shop keeper Defarge and his implacable wife knit and plot as resentment against the nobility, embodied by the cruel Marquis St. Evremonde, builds towards revolution and the Terror.

    Shorter and more plot-driven than many Dickens novels, it was serialised in his weekly magazine All the Year Round in 1859. It contrasts the two cities and explores sacrifice, resurrection, mob violence and the cycle of oppression and vengeance. It is often cited as one of the best-selling novels ever published.

    Book details

    AuthorCharles Dickens
    First published1859
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreHistorical fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)448
    SettingLondon and Paris, 1775-1793

    Themes

    • Revolution
    • Sacrifice
    • Resurrection
    • Injustice
    • Doubles

    Who should read it

    Readers who like historical drama and want a Dickens novel driven by suspense and the French Revolution.

  • Great Expectations

    Pip is an orphan raised by his harsh older sister and her kind husband, the blacksmith Joe Gargery, in the Kent marshes. One evening in the churchyard he is seized by an escaped convict and forced to steal food for him, an encounter that will echo through his life. Soon afterwards he is summoned to Satis House to play with Estella, the cold, beautiful ward of the jilted Miss Havisham, who still wears her wedding dress and has stopped every clock.

    Ashamed of his common origins, Pip longs to be worthy of Estella. When a lawyer announces that an unnamed benefactor has given him great expectations of fortune, he moves to London to be educated as a gentleman and assumes Miss Havisham is responsible. City life brings friendship with Herbert Pocket, snobbery and debt, and growing coldness towards Joe.

    Narrated by an older Pip looking back on his younger self, the novel is one of Dickens's most tightly constructed works, mixing comedy, mystery and moral reckoning about class, ambition, loyalty and guilt. Characters such as the lawyer Jaggers, his clerk Wemmick with his castle in Walworth, and the decaying Miss Havisham are among the most vivid Dickens ever created.

    Book details

    AuthorCharles Dickens
    First published1861
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreClassic
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)505
    SettingKent and London, England, early 19th century

    Themes

    • Social class
    • Ambition
    • Guilt
    • Loyalty
    • Self-improvement

    Who should read it

    Readers who want Dickens at his most compact and personal, with memorable characters and a gripping mystery.

  • Wuthering Heights

    In 1801 a new tenant, Mr Lockwood, visits his landlord Heathcliff at the isolated farmhouse of Wuthering Heights and finds a hostile, strange household. Snowbound for the night, he has a terrifying dream at a window, and back at his rented house the housekeeper Nelly Dean begins to tell him the history behind it.

    Years earlier, Mr Earnshaw brought home a dark-skinned orphan boy from the streets of Liverpool and named him Heathcliff. He and Earnshaw's daughter Catherine grew up inseparable on the moors, while her brother Hindley came to hate the newcomer. The neighbouring Linton family of Thrushcross Grange, refined and wealthy, enters their lives and offers Catherine a very different future, setting off a chain of resentment and revenge.

    The layered narration, told mostly through Nelly and Lockwood, and the novel's raw violence and passion puzzled early critics. Emily Bronte died a year after publication. It is now regarded as one of the most original novels in English, a study of obsession, class and the untamed landscape that mirrors its characters.

    Book details

    AuthorEmily Bronte
    First published1847
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreClassic
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)416
    SettingYorkshire moors, England, late 18th century to 1802

    Themes

    • Obsessive love
    • Revenge
    • Class
    • Nature
    • Inheritance

    Who should read it

    Readers drawn to dark, intense love stories and unconventional storytelling rather than tidy romance.

  • Pride and Prejudice

    Mr and Mrs Bennet of Longbourn have five daughters and no son, which means their estate will pass to a distant cousin and the girls must marry well. When a wealthy young bachelor, Mr Bingley, rents a nearby house, Mrs Bennet sets her sights on him for her eldest daughter, the gentle Jane. Bingley's friend Mr Darcy, richer still, makes a poor first impression at a local ball by snubbing the second daughter, Elizabeth.

    Elizabeth is clever, lively and quick to judge, and her dislike of Darcy hardens when the charming officer George Wickham tells her a story about Darcy's past. Around them circle a memorable cast: the pompous clergyman Mr Collins, the imperious Lady Catherine de Bourgh, the flighty youngest sister Lydia and the sardonic Mr Bennet.

    Austen's irony, sharp dialogue and free indirect narration make the novel feel modern more than two centuries after publication. Beneath the romance it examines class, marriage as economic necessity and the danger of trusting first impressions. It has inspired countless adaptations and retellings.

    Book details

    AuthorJane Austen
    First published1813
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreClassic
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)432
    SettingHertfordshire and Derbyshire, England, early 1800s

    Themes

    • Marriage and class
    • First impressions
    • Pride
    • Family
    • Women's independence

    Who should read it

    Anyone who enjoys witty dialogue and romance, and readers looking for an accessible way into classic literature.

  • Jane Eyre

    Jane Eyre is an orphan raised resentfully by her aunt at Gateshead Hall, where she is bullied by her cousins and locked in a room she believes is haunted. Sent away to Lowood, a harsh charity school run by a hypocritical clergyman, she endures cold, hunger and disease but gains an education and a lasting friendship that shapes her moral outlook.

    As a young woman she takes a post as governess at Thornfield Hall, teaching the French ward of Edward Rochester, a moody, sardonic gentleman. A strong bond grows between them, but the house holds mysteries: strange laughter in the upper corridors, a fire in the night and a secret that tests Jane's principles. Later sections take her across the moors and into the household of the austere clergyman St John Rivers.

    Told in Jane's own intimate, passionate first-person voice, the novel was startling in 1847 for its plain heroine who insists on equality of spirit with the man she loves. It blends Gothic atmosphere with a coming-of-age story and remains central to discussions of women's independence in fiction.

    Book details

    AuthorCharlotte Bronte
    First published1847
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreClassic
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)500
    SettingNorthern England, early 19th century

    Themes

    • Independence
    • Moral integrity
    • Class
    • Love
    • Religion

    Who should read it

    Readers who want a Gothic-tinged love story with a heroine who refuses to compromise her self-respect.

  • Emma

    Emma Woodhouse is twenty-one, mistress of her widowed father's house at Hartfield and the leading young lady of the village of Highbury. Having taken credit for her governess's happy marriage, she decides she has a talent for matchmaking and takes up Harriet Smith, a sweet young woman of unknown parentage, determined to find her a husband above her station.

    Emma's schemes misfire again and again because she misreads the people around her, including the ambitious vicar Mr Elton, the charming Frank Churchill and the reserved, accomplished Jane Fairfax. Her neighbour and old family friend Mr Knightley is the only one who regularly tells her when she is wrong. The supporting cast includes the endlessly talkative Miss Bates and the hypochondriac Mr Woodhouse.

    Austen said she was creating a heroine whom no one but herself would much like, yet Emma's flaws and growing self-knowledge make the novel one of her richest. Its intricate plotting and irony influenced the modern novel, and it inspired adaptations including the film Clueless.

    Book details

    AuthorJane Austen
    First published1815
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreClassic
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)474
    SettingHighbury, Surrey, England, early 1800s

    Themes

    • Self-deception
    • Class
    • Matchmaking
    • Maturity
    • Village society

    Who should read it

    Readers who love Pride and Prejudice and want Austen's subtlest comedy of misjudgement and growing up.