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Stephen Leacock is an unjustly forgotten master of the short-story genre, once considered the best-known humorist in the world. Although he was a prolific writer, publishing about fifty novels, memoirs and histories in his lifetime, he was best known for his story short-collections Literary Lapses, Nonsense Novels and Frenzied Fiction.

Salome retells the Biblical story in which the stepdaughter of Herod demands the head of John the Baptist as a reward for her dancing for her stepfather's amusement. Written in 1891, rehearsals of Salome had to be cancelled when the play was banned by the Lord Chamberlain due to its depiction of religious characters.

Politics vs. Literature is, at heart, a review of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. Using the book as an example of enjoying a book whose author one cannot stand, Orwell goes on to say that he considers Gulliver's Travels a work of art, leaving the reader to reconsider the books on their own shelves.

In The Prevention of Literature, Orwell discusses the effect of the ownership of the press on the accuracy of reports of events, and takes aim at political language, which 'consists almost entirely of prefabricated phrases bolted together.' It is a stirring cry for freedom from censorship, which Orwell says must start with the writer themselves.

In Why I Write, Orwell describes his journey to becoming a writer, and his movement from writing poems to short stories to the works we remember him for. Why I Write is a unique opportunity to look into Orwell's mind, and it grants the reader an entirely different vantage point from which to consider the rest of the great writers' oeuvre.

In Politics and the English Language, Orwell takes aim at the language used in politics, which, he says, 'is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind'. This essay is just as relevant today, and gives the reader a vital understanding of the tactics at play in political language.

Described by Virginia Woolf herself as 'easily the best of my books', To the Lighthouse is a milestone of Modernism. Set on the Isle of Skye, the narrative centres on a promise which isn't to be fulfilled for a decade. Bearing all the hallmarks of Woolf's prose, To the Lighthouse has earned its reputation - it has lost not an iota of brilliance.

Hannah Snell's story begins in 1744, with tragedy. That year, she married James Summs, a Dutch seaman. Soon after their marriage, she fell pregnant - and Summs abandoned her. The baby died just a year after she was born. At this juncture, Snell donned a suit, assumed her brother-in-law's identity and set off in search of her husband.

Brimming with the counter-intuitive wit with which Wilde's name is synonymous, the play follows two young men, Algernon and Jack, as they come to grips with one another's lies, which spiral out of control and culminate in a hauntingly brilliant scene with a cast of characters dripping with satire, a lost manuscript and an unforgettable handbag.

First published in 1688, Oroonoko is a politically charged novella by the Restoration playwright and spy Aphra Behn, and is arguably one of the founding texts of the novel form. Purporting to chart the life of an African prince, Oroonoko, who is tricked into slavery, the narrative follows the Prince through his trials of love, loss and rebellion.

In 1928 Virginia Woolf was asked to deliver speeches at Newnham and Girton Colleges on 'Women and Fiction'; she spoke about her conviction that 'a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction'. The following year, the two speeches were published as A Room of One's Own, and became one of the foremost feminist texts.