Nicholas Nickleby is left responsible for his mother and sister when his father dies.

The Pickwick Papers was Dickens' first published novel and the first ever publishing phenomenon with illegal copies, theatrical performances and merchandise.

The Woman in White is credited with being the first of the sensation novels, and one of the finest examples of the genre.

The Sonnets compiles 154 Sonnets written by Shakespeare on all manner of themes from love and fidelity to politics and lineage.

A Russian prince returns to Saint Petersburg after a long absence in Switzerland, where he was undergoing treatment for epilepsy.

The Brothers Grimm, Jacob (1785-1863) and Wilhelm (1786-1859), were born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, in the German state of Hesse.

Considered by many to contain pioneering works of English writing, Robert Louis Stevenson's New Arabian Nights collects together his short stories that were originally published in periodicals between 1877 and 1880.

While Bram Stoker didn't invent the vampire, his 1897 novel Dracula has been the defining force in the popularity and evolution of vampire mythology today.

Rousseau wrote about the difficulty of being a good individual within an inherently corrupting collectivity: society.

Letters on England gathers together Voltaire's essays about his time in England between 1726 and 1728.

The School for Husbands (L'École des maris) is a work by Molière (the stage name of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin), a French playwright who is often considered to be one of Western literature's great masters of comedy.

Thus Spake Zarathustra is an important philosophical text by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

Inspiring countless business, political and military leaders (Napoleon, Mao Zedong and General MacArthur among them), The Art of War is a Chinese military treatise by Sun Tzu from the 6th century BC.

Doctor Pascal concludes Zola's epic Rougon-Macquart series.

Salome is a tragic play written by Oscar Wilde, which tells the biblical story of Salome.

Science of Mind in its broadest and truest sense includes the best in science, religion, and philosophy.

An Unsocial Socialist begins in an unruly girl's school, comically portraying their tricks and pranks.

The Valley of Fear is the last Sherlock Holmes novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, first published in book form in 1915.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's second novel starring the great detective Sherlock Holmes, The Sign of the Four weaves together a complex plot involving stolen treasure, a secret pact between guards and prisoners, and the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

When Robert Browning first met the ailing Elizabeth Barrett in 1845 it must have seemed to him like something from a gothic novel.