This spooky Edgar Allan Poe poem opens with: "Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary..."
"The Raven"
This beloved, honey-loving bear created by A.A. Milne lives in the Hundred Acre Wood and is perpetually prone to getting stuck in rabbit holes after overindulging.
Winnie-the-Pooh
A rich man who loves to throw extravagant parties and loves a woman named Daisy.
The Great Gatsby
This author's most famous novel was conceived during a ghost story contest by the shores of Lake Geneva in 1816.
Mary Shelley
This Greek poet is traditionally credited with composing The Iliad and The Odyssey.
Homer
Published in 1929, this influential extended essay by Virginia Woolf argues that "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."
A Room of One's Own
Unlike their adventurous and disobedient brother Peter, these three sensible siblings follow the rules and gather blackberries with their mother, Mrs. Rabbit.
Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail
This 1891 Oscar Wilde novel explores the corrupting influence of art and hedonism as an ageing, depraved aristocrat watches his portrait bear the physical marks of his sins while he remains youthful.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
In addition to writing classic fantasy, this British author was a dedicated and respected medieval scholar who spent decades as a professor at Oxford University.
J.R.R Tolkien
Tolkien translated this 14th-century Middle English alliterative poem, which was published posthumously in 1975 and involves a certain knight proposing that any brave knight can strike him with what he holds, provided they agree to take a return blow from him exactly one year and one day later
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
This 1859 Charles Dickens novel, contrasting London and Paris during the French Revolution, opens with: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."
A Tale of Two Cities
This trio of brilliant orphans, consisting of an inventor, a scholarly reader, and a teething infant, must constantly outwit the villainous Count Olaf after a mysterious fire destroys their family estate.
Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire
Published anonymously in 1811 under the simple attribution "By a Lady," this novel explores the contrasting temperaments of the Dashwood sisters.
Sense and Sensibility
In 1850, he pitched his publisher a romance based on legends from southern sperm whale fisheries.
Herman Melville
Written in the 17th century, this work details the biblical fall of man, famously explaining "to justify the ways of God to men."
Paradise Lost
A dystopian classic by Aldous Huxley opens with a chilling description and introduces a world where mass production extends even to human reproduction: "A squat, grey building of only thirty-four stories."
Brave New World
In L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables, this wealthy, sharp-tongued, but secretly soft-hearted friend of Marilla and Matthew holds social sway over Avonlea society.
Mrs. Rachel Lynde
Published in 1897, this epistolary novel introduces a solicitor who travels to the Carpathian Mountains to assist a peculiar, nocturnal count with real estate transactions in London.
Dracula
This Victorian novelist signed many of his early works with the pen name "Boz," drawing on a family nickname derived from the name Moses.
Charles Dickens
This epic 16th-century poem by Edmund Spenser was dedicated to Queen Elizabeth I and uses a unique nine-line stanza scheme that concludes with an Alexandrine.
The Faerie Queene
Spoken by the dying title character in Christopher Marlowe's Renaissance tragedy, this desperate line laments his squandered soul as the clock runs out: "See, see where Christ's blood streams in the firmament!"
Doctor Faustus
In Diana Wynne Jones's novel, Howl's Moving Castle, this mysterious schoolteacher whom Howl tries to woo in Porthaven is actually the Witch of the Waste trying to seize Howl's heart.
Lily Angorian
As the narrator's psychological state deteriorates due to her forced isolation, she becomes obsessed with a specific feature of her summer home's upstairs room.
The Yellow Wallpaper
Credited by many historians with writing the first true science fiction novel, this author imagined a futuristic world of interplanetary travel and scientific discovery in her 1666 work The Blazing World.
Margaret Cavendish
The only one of Beowulf's retainers who stays to help him fight the dragon when others run away. Later, he is named successor, and Beowulf passes down his armour and leadership to.
Wiglaf