Shelley’s tantalizing gothic tale begins with the discovery of famed scientist Victor Frankenstein pursuing a giant creature into the arctic. As a man driven by feverish ambition and the grief of his dead mother, his wayward experiments and controversial meddling with life’s building blocks have resulted in the creation of a demon. This gripping story explores the complex moral question of what it means to be human and recounts how one of literature’s greatest monsters was born.

Although this novel was first published anonymously as a monthly serial, it proved to be the author’s first major literary success and earned him a wide readership. The story follows independent and spirited Bathsheba Everdene and the challenges she faces as a farmer of a large estate as well as her romantic entanglements with three very different suitors. This atmospheric novel’s vivid descriptions of rural life and frank portrayal of complicated sexual relationships established Hardy as one of the great Victorian realist writers of his time.

Of the many novels that Dickens wrote he considered this to be his favourite. Perhaps that’s because it is widely-considered his most autobiographical. David Copperfield follows its eponymous hero’s journey from an impoverished and perilous childhood to finding fame and fortune as a writer of fiction. With scenes of heart-breaking brutality, romantic strife and comic brilliance, this novel contains some of the most outlandish and memorable of its authors sharply depicted characters.

Socialite Dorian Gray’s much-admired beauty is captured in an artist’s painting, but he realises that his looks will rapidly fade when he acquires a taste for the hedonistic lifestyle introduced to him by Lord Henry Wotton. When his wish that the painting should age instead of him is fulfilled, Dorian indulges in all the unrestrained vices that Victorian London has to offer from Opium dens to sexual scandal. But what is the real price of a libertine lifestyle where sensual pleasure is pursued without any apparent consequence?

Emily Brontë’s sweeping story of violent passion is played out over many years in a remote house on the atmospheric Yorkshire moors. When Mr Earnshaw, the proprietor of Wuthering Heights, adopts homeless boy Heathcliff he can’t predict how he will grow to have a jealous rivalry with his son Hindley and a passionate lifelong affair with his daughter Catherine. This enthralling tale of bitter revenge and frustrated love continues to be compulsively readable for its startling depictions of cruelty and romantic conflict.

Mr Bennet is anxious for at least one of his five daughters to marry well in order to ensure the family’s financial security. But his intelligent and witty second daughter Elizabeth is quick to judge on first impressions. She makes a superficial assessment of wealthy, but ill-at-ease newcomer to the village Mr Darcy. The prospect of their potential romance is further complicated by Darcy’s notoriously aloof decorum. Discover why this fractious pair are at the centre of one of the most comic and romantic novels of all time.

Centred around the lives of a large cast of characters in the fictitious Midlands town of Middlemarch, Eliot sets her ambitious novel at a pivotal point in English history. Electoral reforms, medical innovations and transforming social values herald in the beginning of more modern era. Eliot masterfully interweaves tales about a young idealist, a pedantic aging scholar, a progressive doctor, a religious hypocrite and a passionate impoverished artist. This extraordinary novel continues to fascinate readers for its nuanced psychological insight as much as its wonderfully dramatic story.

What happens when the spirited Countess Anna Karenina turns her back on a secure, but passionless marriage to unite with the dashing Count Karenin? This epic novel recounts the story of a feverish love affair conducted amidst social stigma and a religiously conservative 19th century society. But this is also the tale of Levin, a wealthy and idealistic landowner who grapples with similar conflicts in pursuing marriage to a woman of nobility. Tolstoy’s masterpiece captivates with a skilful and thoughtful balance of humour, tragedy and intriguing drama.