Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers

A look at 100 inspiring novels that have left a significant mark on the world of literature and popular culture.

From Voltaire to Verlaine and from Hugo to Hemingway, these are the Paris locations that have influenced modern literature.

The enduring appeal of Jane Austen’s fiction is captured in this pocket-sized collection of quotations taken from her celebrated works.

A unique biography of Mark Twain featuring the cities in America where he lived, worked and visited on his many lecture tours.

In this sensitive and revealing biography of Agatha Christie, Gillian Gill probes the mysterious private life and motivations of one of the bestselling authors of all time and discovers a brilliant and eccentric woman whose passionate search for success was balanced by an obsession with privacy.

Painter Jack Vettriano emerged from the unlikely background of the Scottish coalfields – unknown and untutored – and has seen his canvases hung in the Royal Scottish Academy.

What were the achievements of the ’angry’ writers who emerged in the fifties?

Historically, they gave birth to the satire movement of the 1960s-Beyond the

Fringe, That Was the Week that Was and Private Eye. Their satire and

irreverence aroused enthusiasm in man, and a new ‘anti-Establishment’ mood

Exploring the brilliant web of verbal hocus-pocus that J.R.R. Tolkien delightedly spun in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, master hobbit investigator David Day reveals the myriad crafty puns and riddles, hidden meanings, and mythical associations beneath the saga's thrilling surface.

In Tolkien's Ring, David Day shows how the Lord of the Rings is the result of an ancient story-telling tradition; and how, by drawing upon the world's primary myths and legends, J.R.R Tolkien created his own mythology for the twentieth century.