Visually, underwear can be a powerful tool. But how about in the written word? From Ian McEwan's relentlessly detailed descriptive style to Jane Austen's slightly less erotic complaints about push-up brassieres, we bring you 20 instances of linger in literature.

Lingerie in Literature

Clarissa by Samuel Richardson

The Collected Dorothy Parker

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding

Atonement by Ian McEwan

Rejection by Franz Kafka

Nana by Emile Zola

The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

Mr. Mulliner Speaking by P.G. Wodehouse

Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable: A Trilogy by Samuel Beckett

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Lady Chatterley's Lover by DH Lawrence

Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

Catch 22 by Joseph Heller

SantaLand Diaries by David Sedaris

Gentleman Alone by Pablo Neruda

Fifty Shades of Grey by EL James

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Jane Austen's Letters