Dante, Virgil, Dickens and Edgar Allen Poe, who is creepy!

I have recently been reading Dante's Divine Comedy. Mainly due to the fact that it came free with my little ebook reading gadgety thingumy, and I've never read it, which is a sacrilege! So I felt I really should. Besides, Virgil's in it, and I love Virgil :) It's my dream to learn Classical Latin properly and read the Aeniad. I have a lovely story attributed to Virgil about the Goddess Laverna, but that's a story for another post! But anyway, I would highly reccomend it. I've just gone past the bit with Charon (That's the ferryman, to those unfamiliar. Wiki him here, he's fascinating. Greeks used to place silver coins on the eyes/in the mouths of their dead to pay the ferryman for taking them 'across to the other side') The translation I've got seems pretty good, it's been layed out very nicely. Although I'm not sure how much of the original text may or may not have been sacraficed for the sake of aesthetics.
This has lead to a wonderful revelation. At last, I finally know, there are 9 circles of Hell. Not 7, as I always thought for some reason!
Not sure what I'm going to start on next. This little gadget is fabulous! It came from argos with "100 classics" on it already. Its got the complete works of Shakespeare! (Eek! I love Macbeth!) All of Dickens, including my favourite, Great Expectations. I've read that so many times I can recite bits of it...which is a little scary. Miss Havisham is positively fabulous! A very haunting yet slightly funny charactor. (That could just be my sense of humour though...) I've already finally read The Rime of the Ancient Marinier. Which is wonderful. Iron Maiden have a song about it, and I've got a recording of it somewhere where it's introduced as "What not to do if a bird shits on you" love it! hehe.
The Best Friend was fiddling with it recently and discovered The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe on it. Having once read something of his in my youth which has something to do with a bladed pendulum, I declared I couldn't stand the bloke because his writing's creepy. To which The Best Friend replied, "pah, nonsense" and proceeded to read it out. I've actually not read anything of his sinse the pendulum incident (I have no idea what that story is by the way) I've always been rather put off, and avoided him utterly! But The Best Friend read it beautifully, and it's actually a really nice paced gothic poem. The subject matter's slightly creepy, but not too much so. And it's well and truly made up for by the beautiful way it's written, and the beautiful rhythem of it when it's read aloud. Might explore some more of his work...maybe...if it's not too scary. (Un-scary reccomendations welcome by the way please!)
The one thing that I was very surprised isn't on it is "The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders" by Daniel Defoe. Which is a wonderful story! Very moral, but very intriguing. Well, it pretends to be very moral anyway! In my opinion, it's not all that convincing. I would have loved to have seen Newgate "in the flesh" so to speak, just to put a visual image onto this horrible place which is so hauntingly described. But I wiki'd it, and it's been knocked down now. Probably a good thing!