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Keynote Books
Books that kicked-off an entire genre deserve a list of their own. We've put together a wonderful posse of firsts and we'll keep adding to it - to begin with the first modern, gothic, modern adventure, historical, sci-fi, spy and dystopian novels.
| Image | Description | Price | |
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Don Quixote Cervantes/Grossman The first modern novel (1605) and regularly voted the best. Two of the greatest literary characters ever created. A tragi-comedy so good Shakespeare based a play on it. In Don Quixote lie the seeds for practically every subsequent literary genre from magical realism… |
£9.99 | |
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Journey to the Centre of the Earth Jules Verne In the first work of science fiction (1864) a mad German professor does what it says on the tin. With considerably less aplomb than a couple of Jedi knights Professor Lidenbrock boldly goes where no man has gone before. The most translated novelist in the world ever s… |
£6.99 | |
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Kim Rudyard Kipling The first spy novel (1901) is set in the Raj and central Asia of the Great Game, the cold war between Britain and Russia. The tension in Kim's story as urchin, come spy, come pilgrim makes him far more than just a boy's own hero or young James Bond. The I… |
£6.99 | |
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The Three Musketeers Dumas, Alexandre The first modern adventure novel (1844), and still the archetype. Originally serialised, it is fast-paced and liberally strewn with cliff-hanging moments and impossible situations. Follow Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and D'Artagnan in their battle with Richelieu and the evil Milady de Win… |
£8.99 | |
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Three Gothic Novels: "The Castle of Otranto","Vathek","Frankenstein,or the Modern Prometheus" Walpole, Beckford, Shelley With only seventy odd pages to play with, the first gothic novel (1764) rolls up its sleeves, throws caution to the wind and crushes a man to death with a gigantic helmet on page 1. Literature never looked back and this edition includes two other early gothic greats, Vathek and … |
£9.99 | |
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Waverley Walter Scott The first historical novel (1814) kicks the genre off with Bonnie Prince Charlie himself and a Highland revolt against the boring old English. Will the eponymous hero choose Hanoverian Rose or Jacobite Flora? Thoroughly researched and full of action, Scott brilliantly depicts a now … |
£7.99 | |
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Waverley Scott, Walter The first historical novel (1814) kicks the genre off with Bonnie Prince Charlie himself and a Highland revolt against the boring old English. Will the eponymous hero choose Hanoverian Rose or Jacobite Flora? Thoroughly researched and full of action, Scott brilliantly depicts a now … |
£8.99 | |
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We Yevgeny Zamyatin The first totalitarian dystopian novel (1920) unsurprisingly came from Russia. Uncannily similar to Brave New World, 1984, and Anthem, this brilliantly insightful work inspired many a (direct) copy. Read the original, written as it was happening! Paperback - Penguin - 1993… |
£8.99 |