The plot is based around the character Beverley who remembers his childhood days with his brother Felix and friends and cousins Felicity, Cecily, Dan, Sara Stanley (the "Story Girl"), hired-boy Peter and neighbor Sara Ray.
Marcel Proust, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, William Shakespeare, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Kahlil Gibran, John Milton, Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, Jane Austen, William Makepeace Thackeray, P. B. Shelley, Mary Shelley, John Keats, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Elizabeth Von Arnim, D. H. Lawrence, Ann Ward Radcliffe, Bram Stoker, Arthur Conan Doyle, Joseph Conrad, Oscar Wilde, Lewis Carroll, Frances Hodgson Burnett, C. S. Lewis, George Weedon Grossmith, H.G. Wells, Wilkie Collins, G. K. Chesterton, E. M. Forster, T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, George Bernard Shaw, W. B. Yeats, Sir Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson, Kenneth Grahame, George MacDonald, James Matthew Barrie, Mark Twain, Jack London, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, Willa Cather, Edith Wharton, Kate Chopin, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, James Fenimore Cooper, Henry James, Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, Lewis Wallace, L.M. Montgomery, Homer, Plato, Apuleius, Marcus Aurelius, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Herman Hesse, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jules Verne, Victor Hugo, Gustave Flaubert, Gaston Leroux, Honoré de Balzac, Stendhal, Voltaire, Charles Baudelaire, Alexandre Dumas, Émile Zola, Henrik Ibsen, Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev, Anton Chekhov, Nikolai Gogol, Miguel de Cervantes, Benito Pérez Galdós, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Dante, Giovanni Boccaccio, Niccolò Machiavelli, Rabindranath Tagore, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Kalidasa, Valmiki, Laozi, Sun Tzu, Confucius, Cao Xueqin, Princess Der Ling, Inazo Nitobe, Kakuzo Okakura & Soseki Natsume
Jane Austen, C. S. Lewis, H.G. Wells, Herman Melville, William Shakespeare, John Milton, Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, William Makepeace Thackeray, P. B. Shelley, Mary Shelley, John Keats, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Anne Brontë, George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Elizabeth Von Arnim, D. H. Lawrence, Ann Ward Radcliffe, Bram Stoker, Arthur Conan Doyle, Joseph Conrad, Oscar Wilde, Lewis Carroll, Frances Hodgson Burnett, George Weedon Grossmith, Willkie Collins, G. K. Chesterton, E. M. Forster, T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, George Bernard Shaw, W. B. Yeats, Sir Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson, Kenneth Grahame, George MacDonald, James Matthew Barrie, Mark Twain, Jack London, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, Willa Cather, Edith Wharton, Kate Chopin, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Kahlil Gibran, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, James Fenimore Cooper, Henry James, Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, Lewis Wallace, L.M. Montgomery, Homer, Plato, Apuleius, Marcus Aurelius, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Herman Hesse, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jules Verne, Marcel Proust, Victor Hugo, Gustave Flaubert, Gaston Leroux, Honoré de Balzac, Stendhal, Voltaire, Charles Baudelaire, Alexandre Dumas, Émile Zola, Henrik Ibsen, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ivan Turgenev, Anton Chekhov, Nikolai Gogol, Miguel de Cervantes, Benito Pérez Galdós, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Dante, Giovanni Boccaccio, Niccolò Machiavelli, Rabindranath Tagore, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Kalidasa, Valmiki, Laozi, Sun Tzu, Confucius, Cao Xueqin, Princess Der Ling, Inazo Nitobe, Kakuzo Okakura, Soseki Natsume, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Dean Howells, Washington Irving, L. Frank Baum, Theodor Storm, Juan Valera & Rudyard Kipling
Mark Twain, Beatrix Potter, Louisa May Alcott, Charles Dickens, O. Henry, William Shakespeare, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Emily Dickinson, Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling, Hans Christian Andersen, Selma Lagerlöf, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Martin Luther, Walter Scott, James Matthew Barrie, Anthony Trollope, The Brothers Grimm, L. Frank Baum, L.M. Montgomery, George MacDonald, Leo Tolstoy, Henry Van Dyke, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Clement Moore, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Wordsworth, Alfred Lord Tennyson, William Butler Yeats, Eleanor H. Porter, Jacob A. Riis, Susan Anne Livingston, Ridley Sedgwick, Sophie May, Lucas Malet, Juliana Horatia Ewing, Alice Hale Burnett, Ernest Ingersoll, Annie F. Johnston, Amanda M. Douglas, Amy Ella Blanchard, Carolyn Wells, Walter Crane, Thomas Nelson Page, Florence L. Barclay, A. S. Boyd, Edward A. Rand, Max Brand, William John Locke, Nora A. Smith, Phebe A. Curtiss, Nellie C. King, Booker T. Washington, Lucy Wheelock, Aunt Hede, Frederick E. Dewhurst, Maud Lindsay, Marjorie L. C. Pickthall, Jay T. Stocking, Anna Robinson, Florence M. Kingsley, Olive Thorne Miller, M. A. L. Lane, Elizabeth Harkison, Raymond McAlden, F. E. Mann, Winifred M. Kirkland, François Coppée, Katherine Pyle, Grace Margaret Gallaher, Elia W. Peattie, F. Arnstein, James Weber Linn, Anne Hollingsworth Wharton, Elbridge S. Brooks, Isabel Cecilia Williams, Anton Chekhov, Armando Palacio Valdés, André Theuriet, Alphonse Daudet, Benito Pérez Galdós, Antonio Maré, Pedro A. De Alarcón, Jules Simon, Marcel Prévost, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, Maxime Du Camp, Mary Hartwell Catherwood, F. L. Stealey, Kate Upson Clark, Marion Clifford, E. E. Hale, Willis Boyd Allen, Edgar Wallace, Georg Schuster, Harrison S. Morris, Bjornstjerne Bjornson, Matilda Betham Edwards, Angelo J. Lewis, Vernon Lee, Guy de Maupassant, Saki, Bret Harte, Robert E. Howard, William Francis Dawson, Hamilton Wright Mabie, Christopher North, Susan Coolidge, Oliver Bell Bunce, Phillips Brooks, William Drummond, James Russell Lowell, Alfred Domett, Reginald Heber, Dinah Maria Mulock, Margaret Deland, John Addington Symonds, Edward Thring, Cecil Frances Alexander, Mary Austin, James S. Park, Isaac Watts, Robert Herrick, Edmund Hamilton Sears, Ben Jonson, Edmund Bolton, Robert Southwell, C.s. Stone, James Whitcomb Riley, Frances Ridley Havergal, William Morris, Charles Mackay, Harriet F. Blodgett, Eliza Cook, George Wither, John G. Whittier, Richard Watson Gilder, Tudor Jenks, William Makepeace Thackeray, Henry Vaughan, Christian Burke, Andrew Lang, Emily Huntington Miller, Cyril Winterbotham, Enoch Arnold Bennett, Mary Louisa Molesworth, Meredith Nicholson, A. M. Williamson, C. N. Williamson, Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, James Selwin Tait, Booth Tarkington, Evaleen Stein, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Frank Samuel Child, Samuel McChord Crothers, Sarah Orne Jewett, Georgianna M. Bishop, Sarah P. Doughty, John Punnett Peters, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Margaret Sidney, Nell Speed, Laura Elizabeth Richards, Arthur Conan Doyle, Willa Cather, Ralph Henry Barbour, Cyrus Townsend Brady, Mary Stewart Cutting, William Douglas O'Connor, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ruth McEnery Stuart, S. Weir Mitchell, John Leighton, W. H. H. Murray, Alice Duer Miller, Ellis Parker Butler & Washington Irving
