"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.

The year is 1959, and for its very first time, Welton Academy Boarding School is now accepting female students. Violet Ross is not only one of those girls, but the only girl in the graduating class. She feels as though she must face her fears entirely alone, until she comes across a quirky group of boys. Also known as The Dead Poets. Violet soon finds herself becoming rather close with one in particular... "I'm not entirely sure I even knew what constituted 'love,' until I had met him. Now the mere thought of him made me ache to be with him, to look at him, to touch him. I couldn't quite put my feelings into words. Even as I try, few seem to suffice. An entire sea of ink could not adequately describe my feelings towards him. It was almost as if all the stars in the sky were condensed into a single, twinkling one. The only words I felt could convey some of what I felt for him, easily fell from my lips. ' I love you, too.'"

Nineteen Eighty-Four, often published as 1984, is a dystopian novel published in 1949 by English author George Orwell. The novel is set in Airstrip One, formerly Great Britain, a province of the superstate Oceania, whose residents are victims of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance and public manipulation. Oceania's political ideology, euphemistically named English Socialism (shortened to "Ingsoc" in Newspeak, the government's invented language that will replace English or Oldspeak) is enforced by the privileged, elite Inner Party. Via the "Thought Police", the Inner Party persecutes individualism and independent thinking, which are regarded as "thoughtcrimes".

The Scarlet Letter: A Romance is an 1850 work of fiction in a historical setting, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and is considered to be his magnum opus.