 | Collected Poems 1909-62 by T.S. Eliot
Buy new: £7.76 / Used from: £2.95 One of the 20th Century's three major voices of Modernist intent, the epoch-defining The Waste Land and the powerfully philosophical Four Quartets are two of the most important poems ever written.
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 | Wuthering Heights (Oxford World's Classics) by Emily Brontë
Buy used from: £0.01 A novel of timeless validity and passion. So daemonic and inspiring that every reading leaves you with a sense of uncanny dread and euphoria.
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 | Between the Acts (Oxford World's Classics) by Virginia Woolf
Buy new: £6.29 / Used from: £0.99 Woolf's final book - perhaps The Waves will reveal itself to have been more of achievement - but all of her novels are fun, linguistically and sonically playful and she knew how to create a sentence.
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 | Twilight of the idols: And, The Anti-Christ (Penguin classics) by Friedrich Nietzsche
Buy used from: £0.85 One of the greatest and most resounding voices in literature - his influence is inescapable and to read him is to read an authentic prophet and to experience all that comes with that.
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 | Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
Buy used from: £2.99 Endgame is superior in a most perepherial way, but anything by Beckett was innovative and has never been successfully surpassed by those following him. Absurdly grim and fun.
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 | Blue of Noon by Georges Bataille
Buy used from: £4.98 A morbid genius of nihilistic and surreal erotica / pornography. This book has so many important images and contexts that to ignore it is to close to tomb on liberation.
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 | The Theban Plays (Classics) by Sophocles
Buy used from: £0.01 These plays stand as models - their influence on philosophy, psychoanalysis and the theatre are immense. The Antigone is sublime and profoundly moving, the Oedipus still holds its daemonic power.
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 | English Romantic Verse (Poets) by David Wright
Buy new: £6.10 / Used from: £0.01 This is a wonderfully concise and introductory anthology with a few surprises. Socially important prophets and nom-de-triumphs - let it lead you towards more of their poetry.
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 | The Canterbury Tales: A Selection (Penguin Popular Classics) by Geoffrey Chaucer
Buy new: £2.10 / Used from: £0.01 Very little needs to be said - it's all here and it's ribaldrous, hilarious, discussion-provoking and wonderfully written. No translations!
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 | Antony and Cleopatra (Penguin Popular Classics) by William Shakespeare
Buy used from: £0.01 Read everything by him - Hamlet, Falstaff, Lear, Caliban, Prospero, Shylock, Angelo - he created so much and we thank him for creating Antony, Cleopatra and Enobarbus.
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 | Great Expectations (Oxford World's Classics) by Charles Dickens
Buy used from: £0.01 A phenomenal story-teller and novelist, creating characters as prolifically as Shakespeare - read much of him but start with this or Hard Times. You'll be able to forget nothing of their imagery.
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 | Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings (Penguin Modern Classics) by Jorge Borges
Buy new: £6.47 / Used from: £3.50 I dabbled with Kafka but ultimately decided that although he's more powerful, to read Borges in conjunction with Robert Browning leaves any reader fearfully exhausted.
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 | Selected Poetry (Oxford World's Classics) by John Donne
Buy used from: £0.01 One of the most passionate poets - his erotic poems have a wit, and his Holy sonnets a power that few, short of the best (Shakespeare, Browning) have measured up to them.
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 | The Turn of the Screw (Penguin Popular Classics) by Henry James
Buy new: £2.00 / Used from: £0.01 He's written better novels and novellas, but this is one of his most thought-through and unsettling. No late-October night should be without a reading of this daemonic work of art.
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 | Selected Poems and Letters (Penguin Classics) by Arthur Rimbaud
Buy new: £7.65 / Used from: £4.71 Such an angry but enchanting enfant! - one of the classic cases of being manifestly driven to create and one of the best documents we have detailing the growth of an individual mind - and what a mind!
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