Here in the office we're as passionate about a good book as we are about a decent red lipstick that won't smudge on our teeth. And like a much-loved beauty product there are some literary heroines we grew up with that aren't easy to forget. Some, we even tried to actually be. Did you desperately want to cut all your hair off like a boy in the style of George from The Famous Five? Our Beauty Director recently explored her desire to emulate a childhood Disney character too.

We see the likes of Cathy Earnshaw or Jo March as old friends, and just like real friends we want to know about their beauty secret life; what would they have had in their bathroom cabinets and make-up bags? What scent follows them into a room? Although for some tragic heroines such as Lady Macbeth and Anna Karenina, their beauty regimes might have been the last thing on their minds (well, aside from Lady Macbeth's obsession with hand-washing but that's another matter). 

Many of us use beauty products as an extension of our personalities and to lift the mood. If Estella from Great Expectations had been alive today, which perfume would she have worn to become even more bewitching to the men she tormented? And which products would have Elizabeth Bennet taken with her in her purse to the Netherfield Ball?

Click through our gallery of our favourite literary heroines and which beauty products we like to think they would have worn today.