Oscar Wilde was the literary sensation of 1890s European society, an Irishman who wrote in English and French. Wilde was most well known as a playwright, with his 1895 work The Importance of Being Earnest considered his masterpiece. Previously, though, Wilde wrote the 1890 bestselling novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and after spending time in prison on morals charges, wrote the long poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol in 1898.

Jane Austen was England's most popular and influential novelist in the early part of the nineteenth century. Her stories focused on romantic intrigue and also commented on social mores, women's status, and society. In a similar vein, but written years after Austen's death and more in the Gothic tradition, was Charlotte Bronte's 1847 novel Jane Eyre.

Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in 1818.

Jane Austen is the author of these novels.

Madame Bovary was Gustave Flaubert's debut novel and wildly controversial upon its initial publication. Flaubert's novel tells the tale of a doctor's wife who conducts a number of scandalous affairs. While the plot was simple and straightforward, the book was filled with small patterns and perfectly constructed sentences, fitting Flaubert's quest to find "le mot juste," or the perfect word.

Gothic fiction was a development of the Romantic movement, and relied on a Gothic castle setting, horror elements, and sweeping plots. All of those features are present in all of the answer choices, except for Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. While Dickens was influenced by Gothic fiction, his work departed from it in focusing on everyday people's lives, and using almost no horror elements.

Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, published in 1876, details the life of a young boy growing up on the Mississippi River. At one point, Tom Sawyer and his friend Huckleberry Finn run off and make the town think they are dead, which leads to Tom witnessing his own funeral. Tom Sawyer also appears in Twain's 1884 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

The Brothers Karamazov took Fyodor Dostoevsky over two years to write, and he intended the massive work as the first in a series, but he died four months after its publication. The novel concerns the Karamazov family, led by patriarch Fyodor Karamazov and his three sons of young adult age, the hotheaded Dmitri, the rational Ivan, and the faithful Alexei. Philosophical and emotional conflicts drive the plot and themes of the lengthy novel.

The 1895 novel, The Red Badge of Courage, was Stephen Crane's second novel, but his first success, making him a literary celebrity at the age of 24. Crane was inspired to write a tale of the Civil War thirty years after the end of the conflict, after reading tales of battles from veterans. Crane thought the journalistic reports did not convey what it was like psychologically to be in war, and so he crafted his story about a soldier by interviewing a host of Civil War veterans about their experiences.

Jane Austen's Emma, published in 1815, deals with a genteel young woman dealing with romantic intrigues in Regency-era England. What sets Emma apart is its focus on its main character's foibles in attempting to play matchmaker with everyone she knows. Using her typical wit and satire, Austen portrays Emma's headstrong attitude getting in the way of her own life.