The best novels for inspiring creativity

Obviously my top choice, having just written a book about not only Tolkien’s novel but also the whole phenomenon of adaptation and artistic creativity.

Tolkien is now a multi-platform media experience.

Alongside his own immersive vision there is also now a universe of creativity inspired by Tolkien in film and video, radio and audio, music and art, gaming and cosplay, fanfic and fashion, and in souvenirs from replica swords to Hobbit cookbooks – so I have no problem with people coming to the novel through the films, TV series, or games.

And remember that Tolkien himself was not only a novelist, but also a poet, artist, calligrapher, and designer, and even recorded musical settings of his songs: he was an unparalleled creative force.

This was the moment when literature leapt off the page and became a way of life.

Tristram Shandy is a hugely experimental comic novel that relentlessly teases the reader – in addition to tangled plot lines and hilarious episodes there are passages where words are missing so as to encourage readers to fill in the gaps, and even a blank half-page on which readers are invited to draw their own picture.

This level of interaction inspired ‘Shandymania’, a cultural craze that included literary works responding directly to Sterne’s novel, illustrations of favourite scenes, souvenir crockery and souvenir fans, ‘Shandean’ recipes, and hack writers publishing spurious volumes meaning that Sterne had to autograph every authentic copy to show they were genuine.

A creative publishing sensation described as "the most typical novel in world literature."

Carroll – like Tolkien, an Oxford don – combined whimsical nonsense with arch satire in this lasting surreal fantasy of Alice, the White Rabbit, the Mad Hatter, and the Queen of Hearts, all beautifully illustrated by John Tenniel.

The language dances through puns and parodies to create a shimmering dreamworld of preposterous distortions, crazy perspectives, and crazier characters. It is probably the most inspirational book of the period.

The first film version appeared in 1903, and there have been scores of movies since then – Walt Disney admitted that no story in literature fascinated him more – as well as dozens of books and comics alluding to or adapting the novel, plays, and musicals, paintings and even a stained glass window in an English church, rock songs and street fashion, computer games and theme-parks, and recipes (again!).

Not the first vampire tale by any means, but the most iconic.

Stoker researched the subject for seven years and filled his novel with vampire lore combined with contemporary science and technology – all presented as an absorbing scrapbook of diaries, journals, letters, telegrams, and newspaper cuttings.

In doing so, he crystallized the figure of the aristocratic vampire, which rapidly became a hit on the silver screen through a succession of influential adaptations that played alongside a limitless appetite for new vampire fiction.

By the 1960s the vampire was a cornerstone of the horror cinema and comic books; come the 1970s and rock music embraced vampire chic through the undying Goth subculture while Hallowe’en, cosplay, and gaming became synonymous with capes and fangs.

The figure of the vampire may have been reworked many times, but Dracula remains the fountainhead.

Conrad’s account of a futile pilgrimage up the Congo, as recounted by the unreliable narrator Marlow, has inspired many more works than its modernist contemporaries, and is by turns terribly unnerving and deeply, darkly comic.

Critics claim that the novel has received more academic analysis than any other English novel, and has thus shaped literary criticism; it has also provoked trenchant creative responses such as Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart.

It was adapted for radio by Orson Welles, and for TV by Nic Roeg, but of course the most stunning version is Francis Ford Coppola’s movie Apocalypse Now, which transposes the story to the Vietnam War.

This has itself led to computer games and even a comic-book version of a trip to the outer reaches of London, perfectly encapsulating the enduring myth of the pointless enterprise.