Literary Figures

Jane Austen was a British novelist who died in 1817 at the age of just 41, but whose books have stood the test of time. In the 21st century, her novels continue to be not only studied in school but also read for pleasure. We asked the distinguished Austen scholar Patricia Meyer Spacks to talk us through the best Jane Austen novels and explain what it is that makes them special.

Evelyn Waugh's biographer, Selina Hastings, explores the decadence of the young and rich in 1920s London, and tells us about the author's rebellious youth, bullying disposition and later breakdown – as well as just how much (and early) he drank

A prolific writer sometimes oblivious to events going on around him, PG Wodehouse remains so well loved because of his enduring characters and inimitable style, says Sophie Ratcliffe, professor of English at Oxford University and editor of his letters.

Paris in the 1920s was a creative melting pot, the haunt of Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, F Scott Fitzgerald and James Joyce. The Yale English professor gives us a feel for what it was like to be there

Though many scholars have done meticulous work and brought to life slices of his life, writing a traditional, cradle-to-grave biography of Shakespeare is impossible, says Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro. Here he selects some of his favourite books tackling aspects of Shakespeare's life, including the one he most wishes he had written himself.

Agatha Christie wrote some 80 mysteries and short story collections, nearly all designed to entertain and delight readers with their ingenious plot twists. Here, her only grandson, Mathew Prichard, who oversaw her literary estate for many decades, recommends books that give a good sense of the range of her work, from Miss Marple to Hercule Poirot to mysteries featuring neither, and including her best short story.  

Bilingual author and translator with his pick of the five must-reads by - and about - Nabokov. Says a revisionist biography of the writer is due, which comes to terms with the Jewish influence on his work

Russian literature specialist Michael Nicholson, Emeritus Fellow at University College, Oxford, talks us through the best books to learn more about the great Soviet dissident and winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.