Classics - book genre

In P.G. Wodehouse's famous novel, Freddie and his uncle are in difficulties. Freddie wants to start a bookmaker’s business and to marry Eve, while his uncle wants to raise money, unbeknown to his wife, to help a runaway daughter. Freddie persuades his uncle to steal his wife’s necklace and sees Psmith’s advertisement in a daily paper. Freddie enlists the services of Psmith to steal the necklace. There are plots and counterplots. Psmith steals, not the necklace, but Eve's heart.

All art is quite useless. In Oscar Wilde's controversial novel, Dorian Gray is the subject of a portrait in oil by Basil Hallward, an artist impressed and infatuated by Dorian's beauty. Through Basil, Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, and he soon is enthralled by the aristocrat's hedonistic world view: that beauty and sensual fulfillment are the only things worth pursuing in life.

Jane Austen's 1813 romantic novel of manners follows Elizabeth Bennett's circuitous path to finding love. Elizabeth's mother attempts to marry all five of her daughters to rich gentlemen and secure their family's future. Pulled in different directions by an assortment of suitors, Elizabeth realizes that a certain Mr Darcy may not be as dour and boorish as he seems.

Arthur Conan Doyle's collection of 12 short stories published in 1892 introduced Sherlock Holmes to the world. Follow this flawed genius and his sidekick Dr Watson as they crack impossible cases in the work that has defined the detective fiction genre.

Lewis Carroll's 1865 novel follows Alice in her first trip to Wonderland. While playing in an English meadow, she falls down a rabbit hole and encounters peculiar creatures.

Irish author Bram Stoker's 1897 Gothic horror novel, Dracula, introduced the notorious Count Dracula and founded the vampire fantasy genre. Dracula attempts to move to England from his castle in Transylvania to seek new blood and proliferate the undead curse. He battles a small group led by Professor Abraham Van Helsing.

Grimms' Fairy Tales, originally known as the Children's and Household Tales (Kinder- und Hausmärchen), is a collection of stories by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm. First published in 1812, the collection includes famous stories like Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel, Rumpelstiltskin, The Frog Prince, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarves that have shaped Western storytelling.

Wuthering Heights is a novel by Emily Brontë published in 1847 under her pseudonym "Ellis Bell". Brontë's only finished novel opens with Lockwood visiting the home of his landlord. An accident occurs alongside a supernatural event which pique Lockwood's curiosity.

Charlotte Brontë's novel follows a young woman as she attends boarding school, graduates, and finds work for a wealthy widower named Mr. Rochester. The novel is the first work of prose to focus on its protagonist's moral and spiritual development through an intimate first-person narrative.

Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, follows a young scientist named Victor Frankenstein who creates a hideous sentient creature.