Edward Carpenter, John Addington Symonds and Havelock Ellis were pioneers of their day – though their legacy has been overshadowed by the Irish playwright

The last word, our series about emotions and states of mind in books, focuses on depictions of dithering this month, from Hamlet to the ‘maybe-boyfriend’ of Anna Burns’s Milkman

The actor and author on his love of fantasy fiction, the wisdom of Marcus Aurelius, and why he doesn’t want a second bite of Proust

A fashion journalist links the sartorial choices of Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, TS Eliot et al to their avant garde outlook on life

Dangerously handsome young men carelessly ruining women’s lives are a rarer breed than they were. But their hatefulness still makes compelling reading

It may only rarely get built, but imaginary architecture is a crucial support for many stories, from Jane Austen’s Pemberley to Kafka’s Castle and Ballard’s High-Rise

A woman tests novels against first-hand experience in this risky, immersive narrative, which is absolutely faithful to its own raw spirit

Seducing writers from Boccaccio to EM Forster, this city has given us gossipy and rich histories, and a shadowy backdrop to crime

From Homer to Hilary Mantel, these inspiring, sometimes ambiguous figures are a perennial flint-spark for storytelling

From Howards End to Bag End, fictional houses can be as characterful as the people who live in them

Sexual freedom is most often associated with the city, but a small but growing canon including EM Forster and Sarah Waters tells a different story

Visits are great engines for storytelling – and from Jane Austen to Ali Smith, here are some of the best

Repressive laws overshadowing the bedroom and the bookshop ... a study of gay Victorians and ‘obscenity’