Classics
5 stories
Shakespeare's 154 Sonnets (Completed ) by WilliamShakespeare
Shakespeare's 154 Sonnets (Completed )
WilliamShakespeare
  • Reads 151,455
  • Votes 4,985
  • Parts 155
Shakespeare's Sonnets is the title of a collection of 154 sonnets by William Shakespeare, which covers themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality. The first 126 sonnets are addressed to a young man; the last 28 to a woman. The sonnets are almost all constructed from three quatrains, which are four-line stanzas, and a final couplet composed in iambic pentameter. This is also the meter used extensively in Shakespeare's plays. The rhyme scheme is abab cdcd efef gg. Sonnets using this scheme are known as Shakespearean sonnets. Often, the beginning of the third quatrain marks the volta ("turn"), or the line in which the mood of the poem shifts, and the poet expresses a revelation or epiphany.
Frankenstein (1818) by MaryShelley
Frankenstein (1818)
MaryShelley
  • Reads 284,860
  • Votes 6,964
  • Parts 28
"Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus" is about an eccentric scientist Victor Frankenstein, who creates a grotesque creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) by RobertLouisStevenson
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)
RobertLouisStevenson
  • Reads 184,151
  • Votes 3,863
  • Parts 10
Pride and Prejudice (1813) by JaneAusten
Pride and Prejudice (1813)
JaneAusten
  • Reads 10,365,109
  • Votes 220,963
  • Parts 61
The story follows the main character Elizabeth Bennet as she deals with issues of manners, upbringing, morality, education, and marriage in the society of the landed gentry of early 19th-century England. Elizabeth is the second of five daughters of a country gentleman living near the fictional town of Meryton in Hertfordshire, near London.
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) by OscarWilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)
OscarWilde
  • Reads 1,228,683
  • Votes 16,389
  • Parts 21
"The Picture of Dorian Gray" tells of a young man named Dorian Gray, the subject of a painting by artist Basil Hallward. Basil is impressed by Dorian's beauty and becomes infatuated with him, believing his beauty is responsible for a new mode in his art. Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, a friend of Basil's, and becomes enthralled by Lord Henry's world view. Espousing a new hedonism, Lord Henry suggests the only things worth pursuing in life are beauty and fulfilment of the senses.