If, like us, you’ve been contemplating a proper return to reading in lieu of TV shows—we have a suggestion: why not take inspiration for your next book from none other than Kate Middleton?
Previously a rare glimpse into her home at Kensington Palace, the Duchess of Cambridge inadvertently showcased a collection of novels in the background of a post discussing the mental health challenges posed by social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic.
This prompted Instagram page @Katesclosetau, which frequently documents the Duchess’ outfits, to identify the novels in the image. Interestingly, the entire set of books pictured in the royals’ photo comes from publishing house Penguin’s Clothbound Classics Series, all of which are collectable editions featuring tactile cloth covers with intricate foil patterns.
The best part? They are available for all of us to purchase.
Based on the books identified, it would appear that the Duchess of Cambridge has a penchant for classic novels, with the selection featuring literature from the Victorian periods (seven out of 12 books are from that era). Jane Austen appears three times, however her most renowned romance, Pride and Prejudice is interestingly absent.
The eclectic range of genres is also quite noteworthy, and makes the basis for an excellent reading list, spanning across murder mysteries, romances, epic adventures and dark tales of morality.
Considering taking your quarantine reading cues from the Duchess? Feel like brushing up on some classic literature?
Scroll on to see all the books featured in Kate Middleton’s rare Kensington Palace photo.
A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings by Charles Dickens
After reading Christmas Carol, the notoriously reclusive Thomas Carlyle was ‘seized with a perfect convulsion of hospitality’ and threw not one but two Christmas dinner parties. The impact of the story may not always have been so dramatic but, along with Dickens other Christmas writings, it has had a lasting and significant influence upon our ideas about the Christmas spirit, and about the season as a time for celebration, charity, and memory.
Buy it here.
The Sonnets and a Lover’s Complaint by William Shakespeare
When this volume of Shakespeare’s poems first appeared in 1609, he had already written most of the great plays that made him famous. The 154 sonnets—all but two of which are addressed to a beautiful young man or a treacherous ‘dark lady’—contain some of the most exquisite and haunting poetry ever written, and deal with eternal subjects such as love and infidelity, memory and mortality, and the destruction wreaked by Time. Also included is A Lover’s Complaint, originally published with the sonnets, in which a young woman is overheard lamenting her betrayal by a heartless seducer.
Buy it here.
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
An Austen classic with timeless appeal, Sense and Sensiblity tells the story of Marianne Dashwood who wears her heart on her sleeve. When she falls in love with the dashing but unsuitable John Willoughby, she ignores her sister Elinor’s warning that her impulsive behaviour leaves her open to gossip and innuendo. Meanwhile, Elinor, always sensitive to social convention, is struggling to conceal her own romantic disappointment, even from those closest to her. Through their parallel experience of love—and its threatened loss—the sisters learn that sense must mix with sensibility if they are to find personal happiness in a society where status and money govern the rules of love.
Buy it here.
Northanger Abbey Jane Austen
During an eventful season at Bath, young, naïve Catherine Morland experiences the joys of fashionable society for the first time. She is delighted with her new acquaintances: flirtatious Isabella, who shares Catherine’s love of Gothic romance and horror, and sophisticated Henry and Eleanor Tilney, who invite her to their father’s mysterious house, Northanger Abbey. There, her imagination influenced by novels of sensation and intrigue, Catherine imagines terrible crimes committed by General Tilney. With its broad comedy and irrepressible heroine, this is the most youthful and optimistic of Jane Austen’s works.
Buy it here.
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Taken from the poverty of her parents’ home in Portsmouth, Fanny Price is brought up with her rich cousins at Mansfield Park, acutely aware of her humble rank and with her cousin Edmund as her sole ally. During her uncle’s absence in Antigua, the Crawfords arrive in the neighbourhood, bringing with them the glamour of London life and a reckless taste for flirtation. Mansfield Park is considered Jane Austen’s first mature work and, with its quiet heroine and subtle examination of social position and moral integrity, one of her most profound.
Buy it here.
Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
When Tess Durbeyfield is driven by family poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D’Urbervilles and seek a portion of their family fortune, meeting her ‘cousin’ Alec proves to be her downfall. A very different man, Angel Clare, seems to offer her love and salvation, but Tess must choose whether to reveal her past or remain silent in the hope of a peaceful future.
Buy it here.
Middlemarch by George Eliot
George Eliot’s nuanced and moving novel is a masterly evocation of connected lives, changing fortunes and human frailties in a provincial community. Peopling its landscape are Dorothea Brooke, a young idealist whose search for intellectual fulfilment leads her into a disastrous marriage to the pedantic scholar Casaubon; Dr Lydgate, whose pioneering medical methods, combined with an imprudent marriage to the spendthrift beauty Rosamond, threaten to undermine his career; and the religious hypocrite Bulstrode, hiding scandalous crimes from his past.
Buy it here.
The Picture Of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life; indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears the traces of his decadence. The novel was a succès de scandale and the book was later used as evidence against Wilde at the Old Bailey in 1895. It has lost none of its power to fascinate and disturb.
Buy it here.
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle
The terrible spectacle of the beast, the fog of the moor, the discovery of a body, this classic horror story pits detective against dog. When Sir Charles Baskerville is found dead on the wild Devon moorland with the footprints of a giant hound nearby, the blame is placed on a family curse. It is left to Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson to solve the mystery of the legend of the phantom hound before Sir Charles’ heir comes to an equally gruesome end.
Buy it here.
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
As darkness falls, a man caught in a snowstorm is forced to shelter at the strange, grim house Wuthering Heights. It is a place he will never forget. There he will come to learn the story of Cathy: how she was forced to choose between her well-meaning husband and the dangerous man she had loved since she was young. How her choice led to betrayal and terrible revenge—and continues to torment those in the present. How love can transgress authority, convention, even death.
Buy it here.
The Odyssey by Homer
The epic tale of Odysseus and his ten-year journey home after the Trojan War forms one of the earliest and greatest works of Western literature. Confronted by natural and supernatural threats—shipwrecks, battles, monsters and the implacable enmity of the sea-god Poseidon—Odysseus must use his wit and native cunning if he is to reach his homeland safely and overcome the obstacles that, even there, await him.
Buy it here.
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
As the interminable case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce grinds its way through the Court of Chancery, it draws together a disparate group of people: Ada and Richard Clare, whose inheritance is gradually being devoured by legal costs; Esther Summerson, a ward of court, whose parentage is a source of deepening mystery; the menacing lawyer Tulkinghorn; the determined sleuth Inspector Bucket; and even Jo, the destitute little crossing-sweeper.
Buy it here.
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