The World's Best Reading Collection

Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens
‘Please sir, I want some more.’ These words, spoken by the orphan Oliver Twist are some of the best known in literature, immortalised by the popularity of the book and by the countless stage and screen interpretations. The heart-wrenching story of Oliver’s escape from the workhouse into the dangerous, murky underworld of Victoria London, is as powerful today as it was first written.

Author Charles Dickens’s ability to create colourful characters such as Mr Micawber, Pip, Scrooge, David Copperfield, Nancy and, of course, Oliver Twist has made him one of literature’s most enduringly popular authors.

A Study in Scarlet & The Hound Of the Baskervilles, Conan Doyle
Sherlock Holmes made his creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, one of the most popular and highly paid authors of his day. Holmes’s ability to solve the most baffling of crimes, with the help of his trusty friend Dr Watson, was first seen in A Study in Scarlet, while in The Hound of the Baskervilles the duo are summoned to Dartmoor to solve a blood-chilling supernatural mystery.

‘ You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.’ With these words, Sherlock Holmes introduced himself to Dr John Watson, and to a readership that has been fascinated by the amateur detective’s brilliant deductions ever since.

Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
The memorable confrontation of two strong-willed personalities – the proud Fitzwilliam Darcy and the delightful Elizabeth Bennet – is set against a back-drop of flirtation and gossip, country estates and formal dances. Their gradual discovery of each other is the hugely enjoyable subject of Pride and Prejudice.

Treasure Island & Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson
Before Captain Jack Sparro and The Pirates of the Caribbean, there were Treasure Island and Kidnapped. Two novels of derring-do and adventure among pirates on the high seas.
The tale of how young Jim Hawkins gets caught up in the search for buried treasure with long John Silver and his fellow pirates in Treasure Island has enthralled countless children and adults for years, while Kidnapped, the story of David Balfour’s stolen inheritance, betrayal, abduction, shipwreck and perilous flight across the Scottish Highlands, is one of literature’s supreme adventure stories.

Robert Louis Stevenson, the author of some of the best-loved stories in the English language, led a life that was almost as adventurous as that of his characters.

Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
Few novels have made so deep an imprint on the world’s imagination as Wuthering Heights. For millions of readers, its very name conjures up the same indelible images – of Heathcliff, Cathy, and the desolate, windswept moors that play their own mysterious role in this greatest of all Gothic romances

Wuthering Heights is a wild, passionate story of the intense and almost demonic love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, a foundling adopted by Catherine's father. The action of the story is chaotic and unremittingly violent, but the accomplished handling of a complex structure, the evocative descriptions of the lonely moorland setting and the poetic grandeur of vision combine to make this unique novel a masterpiece of English literature.