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Tag: Fiction

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.