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The Picture of Dorian Gray  is a philosophical novel by Oscar Wilde, first published complete in the July 1890 issue of  Lippincott's Monthly Magazine .   The magazine's editor feared the story was indecent, and without Wilde's knowledge, deleted roughly five hundred words before publication. Despite that censorship,  The Picture of Dorian Gray  offended the moral sensibilities of British book reviewers, some of whom said that Oscar Wilde merited prosecution for violating the laws guarding the public morality. In response, Wilde aggressively defended his novel and art in correspondence with the British press, although he personally made excisions of some of the most controversial material when revising and lengthening the story for book publication the following year. The longer and revised version of  The Picture of Dorian Gray  published in book form in 1891 featured an aphoristic preface—a defence of the arti...

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland  (commonly shortened to  Alice in Wonderland ) is an 1865  novel  written by English mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym  Lewis Carroll . It tells of a girl named  Alice  falling through 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 with children.  It is considered to be one of the best examples of the  literary nonsense  genre.  Its  narrative  course and structure,  characters  and imagery have been enormously influential  in both popular culture and literature, especially in the  fantasy  genre. Dodgson's tale was published in 1865 as  Alice's Adventures in Wonderland  by " Lewis Carroll " with illustrations by  John Tenniel . The first print run of 2,000 was held back becau...

The Bell Jar  is the only novel written by the American writer and poet  Sylvia Plath . Originally published under the pseudonym "Victoria Lucas" in 1963, the novel is semi-autobiographical, with the names of places and people changed. The book is often regarded as a  roman à clef  since the protagonist's descent into mental illness parallels Plath's own experiences with what may have been  clinical depression . Plath died by suicide a month after its first UK publication. The novel was published under Plath's name for the first time in 1967 and was not published in the United States until 1971, in accordance with the wishes of both Plath's husband, Ted Hughes , and her mother.   The novel has been translated into nearly a dozen languages.   The novel, though dark, is often read in high school English classes.

Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly , is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War", according to Will Kaufman. Stowe, a Connecticut-born teacher at the Hartford Female Seminary and an active abolitionist, featured the character of Uncle Tom, a long-suffering black slave around whom the stories of other characters revolve. The sentimental novel depicts the reality of slavery while also asserting that Christian love can overcome something as destructive as enslavement of fellow human beings. Uncle Tom's Cabin  was the best-selling novel of the 19th century and the second best-selling book of that century, following the Bible.It is credited with helping fuel the abolitionist cause in the 1850s. In the first year after it was published, 300,000 copies of the book were sold in the United States;...

Bridget Jones's Diary  is a 1996 novel by Helen Fielding. Written in the form of a personal diary, the novel chronicles a year in the life of Bridget Jones, a thirty-something single working woman living in London. She writes about her career, self-image, vices, family, friends, and romantic relationships. By 2006, the book had sold over two million copies worldwide.   A sequel,  Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason , was published in 1999. Another sequel,  Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy , came out in 2013.