Playful imaginations. Lucian Denis Diderot Thomas Love Peacock Max Beerbohm Jaroslav Hasek Ivy Compton-Burnett S. J. Perelman Italo Calvino Edward Gorey Heroes of their time. Beowulf Abolqasem Ferdowsi The Icelandic sagas Christopher Marlowe Emile Zola Ernst Junger James Agee Love's mysteries. Sappho Arthurian romances Marie-Madeleine de La Fayette Soren Kierkegaard George Meredith C. P. Cavafy Georgette Heyer Anna Akhmatova Daphne du Maurier Words from the wise. Lao-tse Heraclitus Cicero Erasmus The English religious tradition Benedict de Spinoza Samuel Johnson Everyday magic. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight The classic fairy tales E. T. A. Hoffmann Prosper Merimee Frances Hodgson Burnett E. Nesbit/John Masefield Walter de la Mare Lives of consequence. Plutarch Girolamo Cardano John Aubrey Alexander Pope Jean-Jacques Rousseau Frederick Douglass Jacob Burckhardt Henry James W. H. Auden The dark side. John Webster Mary Shelley James Hogg Sheridan Le Fanu Bram Stoker M. R. James William Roughead H. P. Lovecraft Traveler's tales. Thomas More Daniel Defoe Xavier de Maistre Jules Verne J. K. Huysmans Isak Dinesen Robert Byron The way we live now. Petronius Elizabeth Gaskell Ivan Goncharov Jose Maria Eca de Queiros Anton Chekhov Jean Toomer Willa Cather Louis-Ferdinand Celine Zora Neale Hurston Eudora Welty Realms of adventure. H. Rider Haggard Arthur Conan Doyle Rudyard Kipling H. G. Wells G. K. Chesterton Agatha Christie Dashiell Hammett Encyclopedic Visions. Ovid Robert Burton Edward Gibbon J. G. Frazer H. W. Fowler Ezra Pound Andre Malraux Philip K. Dick