"The Masque of the Red Death", originally published as "The Mask of the Red Death: A Fantasy" (1842), is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. The story follows Prince Prospero's attempts to avoid a dangerous plague, known as the Red Death, by hiding in his abbey. He, along with many other wealthy nobles, hosts a masquera...
"The Raven" tells of a talking raven's mysterious visit to a distraught lover, tracing the man's slow fall into madness. The lover, often identified as being a student, is lamenting the loss of his love, Lenore. Sitting on a bust of Pallas, the raven seems to further instigate his distress with its constant repetition...
On Christmas Eve, around 1812, Pip, an orphan who is about six years old, encounters an escaped convict in the village churchyard while visiting the graves of his mother, father, and siblings. The convict scares Pip into stealing food and a file to grind away his shackles, from the home he shares with his abusive olde...
The novel depicts the plight of the French peasantry demoralized by the French aristocracy in the years leading up to the revolution, the corresponding brutality demonstrated by the revolutionaries toward the former aristocrats in the early years of the revolution, and many unflattering social parallels with life in L...
The story traces the life of David Copperfield from childhood to maturity. David was born in Blunderstone, Suffolk, near Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, England, in 1820, six months after the death of his father. David spends his early years with his mother and their housekeeper, Peggotty. When he is seven years old, his mot...
A Christmas Carol tells the story of bitter and miserly Ebenezer Scrooge and his ideological, ethical, and emotional transformation resulting from supernatural visits by Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come.
Gulliver's Travels is a famous satirical novel by Jonathan Swift, first published in 1726. It was originally banned because of the politically sensitive references the author makes in the novel, but the work has also been censured for displays of madness and for being "wicked and obscene, blasphemous, filthy in word a...
Black Beauty is an 1877 novel by Anna Sewell, and reportedly banned by South Africa's apartheid regime. The story is narrated in the first person as an autobiographical memoir told by a horse named Black Beauty.
This book has a very controversial past, due to offensive wording. "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain is a 1876 novel about a young boy growing up along the Mississippi River."
This novel was removed from dictatorships in Europe during the the 1920s and 1930s. From Wikipedia: "The Call of the Wild is a novel by American writer Jack London. The plot concerns a previously domesticated dog named Buck, whose primordial instincts return after a series of events leads to his serving as a sled dog...
"Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus" is about an eccentric scientist Victor Frankenstein, who creates a grotesque creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment.
The story is about an orphan, Oliver Twist, who endures a miserable existence in a workhouse and then is placed with an undertaker. He escapes and travels to London where he meets the Artful Dodger, leader of a gang of juvenile pickpockets. Naively unaware of their unlawful activities, Oliver is led to the lair of the...
"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" tells of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures. The tale plays with logic, giving the story lasting popularity with adults as well as children.
"Little Women" follows the lives of four sisters – Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March – and is loosely based on the author's childhood experiences with her three sisters.
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 Hertf...
More than eight years before the novel opens, Anne Elliot, then a lovely, thoughtful, warm-hearted 19 year old, accepted a proposal of marriage from the handsome young naval officer Frederick Wentworth. He was clever, confident, and ambitious, but poor and with no particular family connections to recommend him. Sir Wa...
Sense and Sensibility is set in southwest England between 1792 and 1797, and portrays the life and loves of the Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne. The novel follows the young ladies to their new home, a meagre cottage on a distant relative's property, where they experience love, romance and heartbreak.
"The Cask of Amontillado" (sometimes spelled "The Casque of Amontillado") is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in the November 1846 issue of Godey's Lady's Book. The story, set in an unnamed Italian city at carnival time in an unspecified year, is about a man taking fatal revenge on a friend who, he be...
"Moby-Dick" tells the adventures of wandering sailor Ishmael, and his voyage on the whaleship Pequod, commanded by Captain Ahab. Ishmael soon learns that Ahab has one purpose on this voyage: to seek out Moby Dick, a ferocious, enigmatic white sperm whale. In a previous encounter, the whale destroyed Ahab's boat and bi...
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of twelve stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle featuring his famous detective.
Anne of Green Gables recounts the adventures of Anne Shirley, a young orphan girl mistakenly sent to Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, a middle-aged brother and sister who have a farm on Prince Edward Island and who had intended to adopt a boy to help them.