1. Mary Woolstonecroft, Vindication of the Rights of Women.

    She is not writing specifically about women here: this is her version of Rousseau for Dummies.

  2. Goethe, Italienische Reise.

    He's in Agrigento, getting all excited about the geology again. Rather than the lemons.

  3. Leonardo Sciascia, Il giorno della civetta.

    A northern policeman, back in the Po valley after having his investigation in Sicily spiked, reflects.

  4. Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls.

    Characteristically ignoring the fact that his metaphor is unhelpful to at least half his readership.

  5. James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time.

    The title is taken from a slave song echoing Genesis 9:11-16. The clue is the line before.

  6. James Morris, Venice.

    Streets full of it. Please advise.

  7. Ogden Nash, Peekaboo, I Almost See You.

    Not the Nash of Nash equilibrium, but one with a mind equally beautiful and a lot funnier.

  8. André Breton, Manifeste du surréalisme.

    For some reason surrealists are popularly thought to be obsessed with fish.

  9. Milton, Sonnet III.

    When Wordsworth wrote "Milton! Thou shouldst be living at this hour: England hath need of thee" he didn't mean that a few sonnets in accurate but slightly stiff Italian were what was wanted.

  10. Siegfried Sassoon, Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man.

    Obliterated by the Hunting Act 2004.