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Arts & Entertainment | Literature | Titles |
On this page, each answer is the title of a particular work of literature.
It won't always be necessary to give the author's name – but they're included here for completeness.
See also Characters – which covers questions of the type "In which book did (such–and–such a character) first appear?"
Author | Title | ||
(Anonymous) | Epic poem from Mesopotamia, parts of which date from around 2000 BC: one of the earliest known works of fiction | The Epic of Gilgamesh | |
(Anonymous) | Manuscript of 254 poems and dramatic texts, dating from the 11th to 13th centuries – many of them bawdy, irreverent, and satirical; found in 1803 in the Benedictine monastery of Benediktbeuern (Beuern), Bavaria, and now housed in the Bavarian State Library in Munich; 24 of them were famously set to music in 1936 by the Munich–born composer Carl Orff | Carmina Burana | |
Richard Adams | Narrated by Dandelion; Hazel, Blackberry, Fiver et al defeat General Woundwort and settle at | Watership Down | |
The inhabitants of Sandalford Warren moved to | |||
Rowf and Snitter were | The Plague Dogs | ||
His third novel (published in 1974): title character is a giant bear | Shardik | ||
Harrison Ainsworth | Popularised the story of Dick Turpin's mythical ride from London to York | Rookwood | |
Jeffrey Archer | His third novel (second in the Kane and Abel trilogy): tells the story of Florentyna Kane, the daughter of Abel Rosnovski, who becomes the first female president of the USA | The Prodigal Daughter | |
Title is the English translation of a Latin phrase (primus inter pares), which refers to someone who is accorded unofficial respect, traditionally owing to their seniority in office, within a group where all members officially have similar status | First Among Equals | ||
Margaret Atwood | Set in the near future in the fictional republic of Gilead, roughly situated in what is now known as New England | ||
Jane Austen | Fanny Price is the heroine of | Mansfield Park | |
The first novel that she finished, but only published posthumously; title is the name of the home of the Tilney family | Northanger Abbey | ||
First Impressions was the original title of | Pride and Prejudice | ||
Left unfinished at her death; her original title was The Brothers, or The Three Brothers; completed and dramatised by Andrew Davies for ITV in 2019 | Sanditon | ||
Her first novel: Elinor and Marianne was a preliminary study for | Sense and Sensibility | ||
Follows the three Dashwood sisters (Elinor, Marianne and Margaret) as they move with their widowed mother from the estate on which they grew up (Norland Park) to their new home (Barton Cottage) | |||
Lieut. Gen. Robert Baden Powell | A Handbook for Instruction in Good Citizenship is the subtitle of | Scouting for Boys | |
R. M. Ballantyne | Ralph, Jack and Peterkin are castaways in | The Coral Island | |
J. M. Barrie | The Boy who Would Not Grow Up is the alternative title of | Peter Pan | |
H. E. Bates | Title comes from Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 | The Darling Buds of May | |
Samuel Beckett | Tramps Vladimir and Estragon are the two main characters in (play) | Waiting for Godot | |
Harriet Beecher Stowe | Life Among the Lowly is the subtitle of | Uncle Tom's Cabin | |
Said (by Wikipedia) to be the second–best–selling book of the 19th century, after the Bible | |||
R. D. Blackmore | Narrated by John (Jan) Ridd – tells the story of his forbidden love; subtitled A Romance of Exmoor | Lorna Doone | |
Giovanni Boccaccio | Stories told over ten days by ten young people fleeing from plague–stricken Florence | The Decameron | |
Ray Bradbury | Set in a future America, where books are banned and any that are found are burnt by 'firemen' | Fahrenheit 451 | |
Title is the temperature at which paper burns | |||
Title comes from Shakespeare's Macbeth (see Agatha Christie) | Something Wicked This Way Comes | ||
Anne Bronte | Helen Graham – more properly known as Helen Huntingdon – is the protagonist and title character of | The Tenant of Wildfell Hall | |
Anne Bronte | Title character marries the curate Edward Weston | Agnes Grey | |
Charlotte Bronte | Eponymous narrator suffers a traumatic education at Lowood Institution, and is employed by Mr. Rochester of Thornfield Hall, as tutor to his ward | Jane Eyre | |
Bertha Mason is the mysterious first wife (who, we eventually discover, is violently insane) of the character that the eponymous narrator eventually marries | |||
Set in 1812, features a Luddite riot; some critics believe that the title character and the central character (Caroline Helstone) are based on the author's sisters, Emily and Anne (respectively) | Shirley | ||
John Buchan | Protagonist goes on the run in the Scottish borders, being the prime suspect in a murder that took place in his flat "near Portland Place", in London | The Thirty–Nine Steps | |
Mikhail Bulgakov | Said to have inspired the Rolling Stones song Sympathy for the Devil | The Master and Margarita | |
Anthony Burgess | 'Nadsat' is a fictional 'argot' used by the principal characters in | A Clockwork Orange | |
Francis Hodgson Burnett | Title character is heir to the Earl of Dorincourt | Little Lord Fauntleroy | |
Edgar Rice Burroughs | John Clayton and Jane Porter are the leading characters in (series) | Tarzan | |
Lewis Carroll | The Jabberwock appears in | Through the Looking Glass | |
Miguel de Cervantes | Lady Dulcinea de Toboso appears in | Don Quixote | |
Henri Charrière | 1969: highly fictionalised memoir about his incarceration in and escape from the French penal colony of French Guiana; filmed in 1973, with Steve McQueen in the central (title) role | Papillon | |
Gabriel Chevalier | About the controversy arising from the building of a public urinal | Clochemerle | |
Erskine Childers | A minor Foreign Office official (Carruthers) is invited on a yachting holiday by an acquaintance (Davies); they uncover a German plot to invade Britain | The Riddle of the Sands | |
Agatha Christie | Title comes from Shakespeare's Macbeth (see Ray Bradbury) | By the Pricking of my Thumbs | |
Arthur C. Clarke | Short story on which 2001: a Space Odyssey was based | The Sentinel | |
John Cleland | Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure: original title of | Fanny Hill | |
Eoin Colfer | "Official" sixth part of Douglas Adams's Hitch–Hiker trilogy, published in 2009 (30th anniversary of the original) | And Another Thing ... | |
Suzanne Collins | "Young adult" book and film trilogy, set in the future totalitarian state of Panem; central character Katniss Everdeen; Catching Fire and Mockingjay are the second and third volumes | The Hunger Games | |
Wilkie Collins | Anne Catherick is the title character of | The Woman in White | |
Joseph Conrad | Novella (1899) about a voyage up the Congo River, in the heart of Africa; the narrator, Marlow, tells of his obsession with the ivory trader Kurtz, to friends aboard a boat anchored on the Thames in London, creating a parallel between London and Africa as places of darkness | Heart of Darkness | |
Joseph Conrad | Inspired by a 1907 attempt to blow up the Greenwich Observatory | The Secret Agent | |
Dante Alighieri | Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso: collectively entitled | The Divine Comedy | |
Roald Dahl | Sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory | The Great Glass Elevator | |
Charles Darwin | His second major book on evolutionary theory – considers the origins of the human species | The Descent of Man | |
Louis de Bernières | Antonia was the name of | Captain Corelli's Mandolin | |
Daniel Defoe | Based on the true story of Alexander Selkirk | Robinson Crusoe | |
Colin Dexter | Republished in 1999 as "the last Inspector Morse book" | The Remorseful Day | |
Baroness D'Orczy | Title character was Sir Percy Blakeney | The Scarlet Pimpernel | |
Fyodr Dostoevsky | Raskolnikoff: impoverished student, central character of | Crime and Punishment | |
Alexandre Dumas (fils) | Inspired by Marie Duplessis, who died of tuberculosis in 1847 | Camille | |
Alexandre Dumas (père) | 1845 sequel to The Three Musketeers (1844) | Twenty Years After | |
Daphne du Maurier | Named after a real public house in Cornwall | Jamaica Inn | |
Nell Dunn | 1963 short story collection: adapted by the author for BBC TV's Wednesday Play (1968); title also used by Squeeze for a 1979 album track which reached No. 2 when released as a single | Up the Junction | |
George Eliot | Tells of infanticide in the village of Hayslope | Adam Bede | |
Tom and Maggie Tulliver are the central characters of | The Mill on the Floss | ||
Subtitled A Study of Provincial Life | Middlemarch | ||
William Faulkner | Title is from T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land | A Handful of Dust | |
Title was inspired by a line in Shakespeare's Macbeth | The Sound and the Fury | ||
Bruce Feirstein | 1982 bestseller: subtitled A Guidebook to All that is Truly Masculine | Real Men Don't Eat Quiche | |
F. Scott FitzGerald | Title character – a mysterious millionaire living in the fictional town of West Egg, on New York's Long Island – is obsessed with the beautiful former debutante Daisy Buchanan | The Great Gatsby | |
Spoiler alert: the title character is shot dead by George Wilson, a garage owner, who believes he (the title character) has killed his wife Myrtle in a car accident | |||
Nick Carraway is the narrator of | |||
Title comes from Keats's Ode to a Nightingale | Tender is the Night | ||
Gustave Flaubert | The story of Emma Roualt, the unfaithful wife of a doctor, who takes arsenic after being refused money by her lover | Madame Bovary | |
Ian Fleming | The first James Bond novel | Casino Royale | |
Frederick Forsyth | Tells how a journalist hunts down a Nazi war criminal | The Odessa File | |
Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué | Fairy story about a water nymph who marries a knight in order to gain a mortal soul, on the condition that he must never see her on Saturdays when she reverts to her mermaid shape; hugely popular in the 19th century – mentioned in Little Women; subject of operas by Hoffmann and Tchaikovsky (and many other adaptations) | Undine | |
Sir James Fraser | Wide–ranging comparative study of mythology and religion, first published 1890 | The Golden Bough | |
Stella Gibbons | Aunt Ada Doom was permanently traumatised by seeing "something nasty in the woodshed" as a child | Cold Comfort Farm | |
William Golding | Tells the story of a group of schoolboys, stranded on a desert island following a plane crash, who descend into savagery as their attempts to govern themselves end in failure | Lord of the Flies | |
Title is a translation of the Hebrew phrase that's the origin of the word Beelzebub | |||
Oliver Goldsmith | The Mistakes of a Night: alternate title of (play) | She Stoops to Conquer | |
Dr. Primrose is the eponymous narrator of | The Vicar of Wakefield | ||
Kenneth Grahame | Pink Floyd took the title of their first album, Piper at the Gates of Dawn, from a chapter in | The Wind in the Willows | |
Graham Greene | James Wormold, a vacuum cleaner salesman, becomes an MI6 agent to help pay for the demands of his extravagant daughter – and proceeds to fabricate stories to send back to London, as he has no real ones | Our Man in Havana | |
1932 novel, published in the USA as Orient Express | Stamboul Train | ||
Features a love triangle between British journalist Thomas Fowler, American CIA agent Alden Pyle, and a young Vietnamese woman named Phuong | The Quiet American | ||
Mark Haddon | First published in 2003, in separate editions for adults and children: won the Whitbread Book Awards for Best Novel and Book of the Year, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book, and the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night–Time | |
Took its title from a remark made by Sherlock Holmes in a short story entitled Silver Blaze | |||
First–person narrator describes himself as "a mathematician with some behavioural difficulties"; chapter numbers are all prime numbers, rather than the more conventional 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. | |||
H. Rider Haggard | Story of an African queen who has discovered the secret of eternal life | She | |
Alex Haley | Subtitled The Saga of an American Family (first published 1976) | Roots | |
Thomas Hardy | His first published novel | Desperate Remedies | |
The central character is named Cytherea, after a young woman her father fell in love with but who fled the country when he proposed marriage | |||
Subtitled A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented | Tess of the D'Urbervilles | ||
Title character has an illegitimate son, after (probably) being raped by the libertine Alec, and names him Sorrow | |||
Title character is arrested at Stonehenge, and hanged for murdering the father of her illegitimate son | |||
Subtitled A Matter of Character | The Mayor of Casterbridge | ||
John Loveday's musical instrument is "silenced for ever upon one of the bloody battlefields of Spain" | The Trumpet–Major | ||
His last novel (not counting The Well–Beloved, which was serialised three years earlier but not published in book form until two years later) | Jude the Obscure | ||
Arabella Donn, a pig farmer's daughter, begins her seduction of the title character by throwing "the characteristic part of a barrow–pig" at him | |||
Joseph Heller | 1961: title entered the English language to mean a situation from which there is no escape because of mutually conflicting or dependent conditions | Catch–22 | |
Closing Time (1995) is a sequel to | |||
Ernest Hemingway | 1932 (non–fiction) book: looks at the history, traditions and appeal of bullfighting | Death in the Afternoon | |
Story of a love affair between US Lieutenant Frederic Henry and English nurse Catherine Barkley; based on the author's experiences as an ambulance driver during World War I | A Farewell to Arms | ||
Set in the Spanish Civil War; title comes from John Donne's Devotions | For Whom the Bell Tolls | ||
Santiago: central character of | The Old Man and the Sea | ||
Nick Hornby | The book that made his name: published in 1992, a memoir of the trials, tribulations and traumas that resulted from his following Arsenal FC from childhood into his early thirties | Fever Pitch | |
Features a record shop called Championship Vinyl | High Fidelity | ||
Aldous Huxley | Set in the year 632 AF (After Ford) | Brave New World | |
Title is from a line in Shakespeare's The Tempest | |||
Centrifugal bumblepuppy, Riemann surface tennis and escalator squash are fictional sports mentioned in | |||
Washington Irving | Schoolmaster Ichabod Crane is pursued by a headless horseman (short story) | The Legend of Sleepy Hollow | |
Jerome K. Jerome | Subtitled To say nothing of the dog | Three Men in a Boat | |
Harris, George and Jay are | |||
Sequel to Three Men in a Boat (using a German word for a journey without an end, i.e. a round trip) | Three Men on the Bummel | ||
James Jones | About life in the US Navy before Pearl Harbor; published 1951; title comes from Kipling's ballad Gentlemen Rankers | From Here to Eternity | |
James Joyce | 1939 comic novel (his last major work): opening line is a sentence
fragment, which continues from the unfinished closing line Features the dreams and nightmares of Dublin tavern keeper H. C. Earwhicker |
Finnegan's Wake | |
James Joyce | Takes place entirely in Dublin on 16th June 1904; said to be based on Homer's Odyssey | Ulysses | |
Thomas Kenneally | 1982 Booker Prize winner, on which the film Schindler's List was based | Schindler's Ark | |
Ludovic Kennedy | 1961: the story of the murders committed by John Christie, and the conviction and execution of Timothy Evans for them | Ten Rillington Place | |
Stephen King | 1974: his first published work – telling the story of a girl with telekinetic powers | Carrie | |
1981: the title character is a rabid St. Bernard dog | Cujo | ||
1983: features a reanimated zombie cat called Winston Churchill (or Church for short) | Pet Sematery | ||
1986: the titular "ancient cosmic evil" usually appears in the form of Pennywise the (Dancing) Clown | It | ||
1999 (short story – filmed in 2007 starring John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson): title is the number of a New York hotel room | 1408 | ||
Charles Kingsley | Gave its name to a seaside town in North Devon | Westward Ho! | |
Rudyard Kipling | How the whale got his throat, How the camel got his hump, How the rhinoceros got his skin, How the leopard got his spots, The Elephant's child (how the elephant got his trunk), The cat that walked by himself, and others: collective title | The Just So stories | |
Title character is an elf, borrowed from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, who declares himself "the oldest Old Thing in England" | Puck of Pook's Hill | ||
Stieg Larsson | Originally published in Swedish with a title that translates as Men Who Hate Women | The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo | |
Swedish title translates as "the castle in the air that got blown up" (third novel in the Millennium trilogy) | The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest | ||
D. H. Lawrence | Central character is an amateur flautist, the flute being a metaphor for the biblical reference in the title | Aaron's Rod | |
Original title Tenderness; first published (privately) in Italy in 1928, then in France and Australia in 1929; an expurgated edition was published in the UK in 1932, and the full version by Penguin in 1960, resulting in a famous obscenity trial | Lady Chatterley's Lover | ||
Tells the story of three generations of the Brangwen family, from the 1840s to 1905; Ursula Brangwen (the central character of Women in Love) first appeared in | The Rainbow | ||
Better–known sequel to the above: tells the story of sisters Gudrun and Ursula Brangwen, and their respective relationships with school inspector Rupert Birkin and coal–mine heir Gerald Crich | Women in Love | ||
Harper Lee | Title completes the advice given to the narrator by her father: "Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em. But remember, it's a sin ... " | To Kill a Mockingbird | |
"First draft" of the above – probably not intended for publication, but controversially published in July 2015 and described as a "prequel"; author died in February 2016 | Go Set a Watchman | ||
Gaston Leroux | Title character is known only as Erik; a singer named Christine Daaé is the other central character | The Phantom of the Opera | |
Anita Loos | The Illuminating Diary of a Professional Lady is the subtitle of | Gentlemen Prefer Blondes | |
Sequel to the above | But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes | ||
Richard Mabey | Influential guide to Britain's wild foods, first published in 1972, and since described as "a modern culinary classic": reflects ever–increasing eco–awareness and popular interest in finding different, and more natural, sources of food | Food for Free | |
Alistair MacLean | Inspired by the Battle of Leros – part of the unsuccessful attempt by the Allies in 1943 to take the Dodecanese Islands from Italian forces | The Guns of Navarone | |
Madonna | Controversial photo–book, published 1992 | Sex | |
Thomas Mann | Life of German composer Adrian Leverkuhn, "as told by a friend" | Dr. Faustus | |
Hilary Mantel | Sequel to Wolf Hall – Man Booker winner 2013 | Bring Up the Bodies | |
Captain Maryatt | Edward, Humphrey, Alice and Elizabeth Bedford | Children of the New Forest | |
W. Somerset Maugham | Early (1908) novel featuring occultist Oliver Haddo – a caricature of Aleister Crowley, who accused Maugham of plagiarism (in a review written under the pseudonym Oliver Haddo) | The Magician | |
Compton Mackenzie | Based on the real life wrecking of the SS Politician off Eriskay in 1941 | Whisky Galore | |
Herman Melville | Title under which Moby–Dick was first published, in London in 1851 – subsequently used as a subtitle | The Whale | |
1924 novella, set on board HMS Indomitable, in the aftermath of the Spithead and Nore mutinies, during the French Revolutionary Wars (1797); Benjamin Britten wrote an opera based on it in 1952, to celebrate the Festival of Britain | Billy Budd | ||
Spike Milligan | 1963 comic novel, about a fictional Irish village split into two by partition | Puckoon | |
John Milton | Prose tragedy whose title character was "Eyeless in Gaza" (giving Aldous Huxley the title of his novel) | Samson Agonistes | |
Margaret Mitchell | Title comes from a poem by Ernest Dowson; working title was Ba Ba Black Sheep | Gone with the Wind | |
Sir Thomas More | Title is the name of an imaginary island – now a byword for a perfect society | Utopia | |
Vladimir Nabokov | Dolores Haze is the full name of the title character of | Lolita | |
Michael Ondaatje | Hungarian aristocrat and explorer László Almásy served as the basis for the title character in (1992 award–winning novel, filmed in 1996) | The English Patient | |
Baroness Orczy | Sir Percy Blakeney is better known as | The Scarlet Pimpernel | |
George Orwell | His first novel (1934): partly inspired by his experiences as a colonial policeman | Burmese Days | |
Based on his experiences in the Spanish Civil War | Homage to Catalonia | ||
Described in its title (or subtitle) as "a fairy story" | Animal Farm | ||
TV shows Big Brother and Room 101 got their titles from | Nineteen Eighty–Four | ||
Britain is referred to as Airstrip One, in | |||
The Last Man in Europe was one of the titles considered for | |||
Mervyn Peake | Trilogy (1946–59): named after the sprawling, decaying, Gothic–style castle where the family of the hero (and title character of the first novel) has lived since time immemorial; also the title of the second novel | Gormenghast | |
Sylvia Plath | Semi–autobiographical novel: published 1963, under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas, a month before her suicide; first published under her real name 1966; not published in the USA until 1972. Title refers to her being trapped by depression, struggling for breath | The Bell Jar | |
Marcel Proust | Swann's Way is the title of the first of seven parts of | In Search of Lost Time (a.k.a. In Remembrance of Things Past) | |
Terry Pratchett | The sixth Discworld novel, and the first to feature the three witches Esmerelda 'Granny' Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, and Magrat Garlick (Granny Weatherwax had previously appeared in Equal Rites, the third novel) | Wyrd Sisters | |
Erich Maria Remarque | English title of Im Westen Nichts Neues (literally Nothing New in the West) – a harrowing novel of the First World War, first published in 1928 as a serial (book form 1929); banned by the Nazis; sequel Der Weg Zurück (The Road Back – 1930–1) | All Quiet on the Western Front | |
Jean Rhys | 1966 prequel to Jane Eyre; tells the story of Bertha Mason, Mr Rochester's first wife – known in this book as Antoinette Cosway | Wide Sargasso Sea | |
Salman Rushdie | Title refers to a section of the Quran that allows intercessory prayers to be made to three Pagan Meccan goddesses; publication caused outrage among some Muslims, who saw it as mocking their faith, prompting Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (then Supreme Leader of Iran) to issue a fatwā calling for Rushdie's death, on 14 February 1989 | The Satanic Verses | |
Sir Walter Scott | Title character marries Rose, the daughter of Baron Bradwardine, after being rejected by the passionate Flora Mac–Ivor | Waverley | |
Named after Edinburgh's Tolbooth jail | Heart of Midlothian | ||
Robin Hood and Little John appear in | Ivanhoe | ||
Scott created the name Cedric, by accident, in | |||
Title character – a disinherited Saxon nobleman, who has returned from the unsuccessful Third Crusade in which he fought alongside King Richard I – makes his first appearance at a jousting tournament in Ashby–de–la–Zouch, Leicestershire | |||
Hubert Selby Jr. | 1964 novel: successfully prosecuted for obscenity in the UK, but cleared on an appeal launched by lawyer and writer John Mortimer | Last Exit to Brooklyn | |
Sellars and Yeatman | Contains 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates | 1066 and All That | |
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley | 1818: subtitled A Modern Prometheus; originated in a challenge laid down by Lord Byron during a holiday in Switzerland (1816) | Frankenstein | |
Richard B. Sheridan | Mrs. Malaprop first appeared in (play) | The Rivals | |
Joe Simpson | Award–winning (non–fiction) climbing narrative, about a harrowing descent from Siula Grande in the Andes in 1985: filmed in 2003, featuring interviews with the author and his two expedition companions | Touching the Void | |
John Steinbeck | Based on the story of Cain and Abel | East of Eden | |
Title comes from a Burns poem | Of Mice and Men | ||
Robert Louis Stevenson | Inspired by the true story of William Brodie (hanged 1788) | Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde | |
The Sea Cook: original title of | Treasure Island | ||
Foremast Hill, Mizzenmast Hill and Spyglass Hill appear on | |||
Inspired by the Appin Murder, a real–life event that took place on the west coast of Scotland in 1752 | Kidnapped | ||
The brig Covenant is wrecked on the notorious Torran Rocks, off the Isle of Mull | |||
Sequel to the above | Catriona | ||
Josephine Tey | 1951 novel that attempted to rehabilitate Richard III | Daughter of Time | |
W. M. Thackeray | Subtitled A Novel Without a Hero | Vanity Fair | |
Flora Thompson | Published posthumously in 1948: title is a quotation from Wordsworth's After–Thought to his series of sonnets on the River Duddon | Still Glides the Stream | |
Hunter S. Thompson | 1971 'roman à clef': based on the author's experiences while writing a piece for Rolling Stone magazine about a Mexican–American television journalist, shot dead by police during an anti–Vietnam War demonstration in Los Angeles in 1970; illustrated by Ralph Steadman; subtitled A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream | Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas | |
J. R. R. Tolkien | There and Back Again is the subtitle of | The Hobbit | |
His last major work: a collection of his writings about the history and mythology of Middle–Earth, edited by his son Christopher and published posthumously in 1977 | The Silmarillion | ||
Leo Tolstoy | Story of a married woman's passion for Count Vronsky, a dashing young cavalry officer, and her tragic fate | Anna Karenina | |
Title character throws herself under a train as her lover departs with another woman | |||
Mark Twain | Begins with the title character faking his own death in order to escape from his drunken father | The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn | |
Gore Vidal | Controversial 1968 novel about a young, sexually aggressive woman who turns out to be a transsexual | Myra Breckinridge | |
Alice Walker | Takes the form of a series of letters, written to God by a 14–year–old girl named only as Celie, about persistent and shocking abuse by her stepfather Alphonso | The Color Purple | |
Horace Walpole | His most famous work: often described as the first Gothic novel | The Castle of Otranto | |
Sarah Waters | Her third novel (2002): title is said (by Wikipedia) to be a slang term for a midwife or a pickpocket | Fingersmith | |
Evelyn Waugh | The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder is the subtitle of | Brideshead Revisited | |
Paul Pennyfeather is the unfortunate hero of | Decline and Fall | ||
A Novel About Journalists is the subtitle of | Scoop | ||
H. G. Wells | Short story: title comes from a quotation from Desiderus Erasmus – often wrongly attributed to Wells himself | The Country of the Blind | |
Oscar Wilde | Title of a long letter written from prison to his former lover Lord Alfred Douglas | De profundis | |
His only novel: the story of a beautiful and hedonistic young man, whose portrait ages with every sin he commits | The Picture of Dorian Gray | ||
Henry Williamson | Published in 1927, filmed in 1979, subtitled His Joyful Water–Life and Death in the Country of the Two Rivers | Tarka the Otter | |
Jeanette Winterson | Semi–autobiographical novel about growing up in Accrington, Lancashire (1985 – serialised on BBC2 in 1990) | Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit | |
Kit Williams | 1979 picture book that sparked a UK–wide treasure hunt, and inspired a genre: the author and illustrator had hidden a jewelled golden hare, and the book (allegedly) gave clues to its whereabouts | Masquerade |
© Haydn Thompson 2017–24