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Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded
Is an epistolary novel first published in 1740 by English writer Samuel Richardson. Considered one of the first true English novels, it serves as Richardson's version of conduct literature about marriage. -
The sufferings of the young Werther
1774 Initial landmark of romanticism
A novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe It was one of the most important novels in the Sturm und Drang period in German literature, and influenced the later Romantic movement. Goethe, aged 24 at the time, finished Werther in five-and-a-half weeks of intensive writing in January–March 1774.
The book's publication instantly placed the author among the foremost international literary celebrities, and was among the best known of his works -
Songs of Innocence and of Experience
1789 - William Blake
Songs of Innocence was originally a complete work first printed in 1789. It is a conceptual collection of 19 poems, engraved with artwork. This collection mainly shows happy, innocent perception in pastoral harmony
Songs of Experience is a poetry collection of 26 poems forming the second part of William Blake's Songs of Innocence -
Lyrical Ballads -
1798-1800 William Wordsworth & Samuel Taylor Coleridge
First published in 1798 and generally considered to have marked the beginning of the English Romantic movement in literature.
The immediate effect on critics was modest, but it became and remains a landmark, changing the course of English literature and poetry. -
Faust
1808 - Faust is a tragic play in two parts by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, usually known in English as Faust, Part One and Faust, Part Two. Although rarely staged in its entirety, it is the play with the largest audience numbers on German-language stages. Faust is considered by many to be Goethe's magnum opus and the greatest work of German literature. -
Children's and Household Tales
Grimms' Fairy Tales, originally known as the Children's and Household Tales is a German collection of fairy tales by the Grimm brothers or "Brothers Grimm", Jacob and Wilhelm, first published on 20 December 1812. The first edition contained 86 stories.
In their first edition, the Grimms wrote for a mainly adult audience. It was only after Edgar Taylor’s English translation of their work in 1823 was successful with children that they made revisions to sanitize the German stories. -
Pride and Prejudice
Pride and Prejudice is an 1813 romantic novel of manners written by Jane Austen.
The novel follows the character development of Elizabeth Bennet, the dynamic protagonist of the book who learns about the repercussions of hasty judgments and comes to appreciate the difference between superficial goodness and actual goodness. Its humour lies in its honest depiction of manners, education, marriage, and money in Great Britain. -
Die Nachtstücke
1817 - Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann Is a collection of eight short stories that combine a spirit of light-heartedness with darker themes of human irrationality. The stories are written in a simple and populist tone, accessible to all.
The Gothic and fantastical tales offer a disturbing insight into the human psyche and the individual’s struggle to feel at ease in society. -
Frankstein, or The Modern Prometheus
Is an 1818 novel written by English author Mary Shelley. Frankenstein tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. Shelley started writing the story when she was 18, and the first edition was published anonymously in London on 1 January 1818, when she was 20. -
Don Juan
1823 Lord Byron
Don Juan is a satirical poem based on the myth of Don Juan, which Lord Byron subverts, trying to describe Juan not as a cruel and insatiable conqueror but as a man easily seduced by women -
Eugene Onegin
Eugene Onegin is a novel in verse written by Alexander Pushkin. Onegin is considered a classic of Russian literature, and its protagonist has served as the model for a number of Russian literary heroes (so-called superfluous men). It was published in serial form between 1825 and 1832. -
The Three Musketeers
Is a French historical adventure novel written in 1844 by French author Alexandre Dumas. It is in the swashbuckler genre, which has heroic, chivalrous swordsmen who fight for justice. Set between 1625 and 1628, it recounts the adventures of a young man named d'Artagnan after he leaves home to travel to Paris, hoping to join the Musketeers of the Guard. -
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is an 1845 memoir and treatise on abolition written by famous orator and former slave Frederick Douglass during his time in Lynn, Massachusetts. It is generally held to be the most famous of a number of narratives written by former slaves during the same period. -
Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre (originally published as Jane Eyre: An Autobiography) is a novel by English writer Charlotte Brontë, published under the pen name "Currer Bell", on 16 October 1847. The novel revolutionised prose fiction by being the first to focus on its protagonist's moral and spiritual development through an intimate first-person narrative, where actions and events are coloured by a psychological intensity. Charlotte Brontë has been called the "first historian of the private consciousness" -
Wuthering Heights
Wuthering Heights is an 1847 novel by Emily Brontë, published under the pseudonym Ellis Bell. It concerns two families of the landed gentry living on the West Yorkshire moors, the Earnshaws and the Lintons, and their turbulent relationships with Earnshaw's adopted son, Heathcliff. It was influenced by Romanticism and Gothic fiction. -
Vanity Fair
anity Fair is an English novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, which follows the lives of Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley amid their friends and families during and after the Napoleonic Wars. It was first published as a 19-volume monthly serial from 1847 to 1848 -
Shirley, a Tale
Shirley, A Tale is a social novel by the English novelist Charlotte Brontë, first published in 1849. It was Brontë's second published novel after Jane Eyre (originally published under Brontë's pseudonym Currer Bell). The novel is set in Yorkshire in 1811–12, during the industrial depression resulting from the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812. The novel is set against the backdrop of the Luddite uprisings in the Yorkshire textile industry. -
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale is an 1851 novel by American writer Herman Melville. The book is the sailor Ishmael's narrative of the obsessive quest of Ahab, captain of the whaling ship Pequod, for revenge on Moby Dick, the giant white sperm whale that on the ship's previous voyage bit off Ahab's leg at the knee. Melville drew on his experience as a common sailor from 1841 to 1844, including several years on whalers, and on wide reading in whaling literature. -
Villete
Villette is an 1853 novel written by English author Charlotte Brontë. After an unspecified family disaster, the protagonist Lucy Snowe travels from her native England to the fictional French-speaking city of Villette to teach at a girls' school, where she is drawn into adventure and romance.
Villette was Charlotte Brontë's third and last novel published during her life. -
Bleak House
Bleak House is a novel by Charles Dickens, first published as a 20-episode serial between March 1852 and September 1853. The novel has many characters and several sub-plots, and is told partly by the novel's heroine, Esther Summerson, and partly by an omniscient narrator. At the centre of Bleak House is a long-running legal case in the Court of Chancery, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which comes about because a testator has written several conflicting wills -
Leaves of grass
Leaves of Grass is a poetry collection by American poet Walt Whitman. First published in 1855, Whitman spent most of his professional life writing and rewriting Leaves of Grass,[1] revising it multiple times until his death.