The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

This is one of the 759 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.

About this list

Easton Press, 102 Books

Easton Press's selection of the greatest books of the Western Canon.

This list was originally published in 1979 and was added to this site over 11 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
673 Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea Jules Verne 1870 French French
74 The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne 1850 American English
218 The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Robert Louis Stevenson 1886 British English
108 Walden Henry David Thoreau 1854 American English
65 Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift 1726 British English
7 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 1851 American English
67 A Farewell to Arms Ernest Hemingway 1929 American English
552 The Red Badge of Courage Stephen Crane 1895 American English
1247 The Jungle Book Rudyard Kipling 1894 British English
24 The Odyssey Homer -740 Greek Ancient greek
551 Pilgrim's Progress John Bunyan 1678 British English
88 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce 1916 Irish English
127 Paradise Lost John Milton 1667 British English
46 One Thousand and One Nights Unknown 800 Multiple Arabic
38 Great Expectations Charles Dickens 1860 British English
80 Candide Voltaire 1759 French French
106 Oedipus the King Sophocles -429 Greek Ancient greek
366 The Hunchback of Notre-Dame Victor Hugo 1831 French French
507 The Last of the Mohicans James Fenimore Cooper 1826 American English
1705 The Sea-Wolf Jack London 1904 American English
1308 Cyrano de Bergerac Edmond Rostand 1897 French French
110 The Canterbury Tales Geoffrey Chaucer 1400 British Middle english
1273 Robert Browning's Poetry Robert Browning 1833 British English
3238 The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson 2000 American English
73 The Portrait of a Lady Henry James 1881 American English
184 Uncle Tom's Cabin Harriet Beecher Stowe 1852 American English
115 Treasure Island Robert Louis Stevenson 1883 British English
205 The Complete Sherlock Holmes Arthur Conan Doyle 1927 British English
974 The Poems of John Keats John Keats 1817 British English
180 On the Origin of Species Charles Darwin 1859 British English
8 Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes 1605 Spanish Spanish
317 The Poems of Robert Frost Robert Frost 1913 American English
3288 Stories of Washington Irving Washington Irving 1820 American English
55 Animal Farm George Orwell 1945 British English
15 Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë 1847 British English
3922 She Stoops to Conquer Oliver Goldsmith 1773 British English
170 Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck 1937 American English
13 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen 1813 British English
18 The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky 1880 Russian Russian
40 Les Misérables Victor Hugo 1862 French French
37 The Iliad Homer -750 Greek Ancient greek
196 Lady Chatterley's Lover D. H. Lawrence 1928 British English
87 The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas 1844 French French
50 Brave New World Aldous Huxley 1932 British English
562 Aesop's Fables Aesop -560 Greek Ancient greek
137 Lord Jim Joseph Conrad 1900 British English
690 The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin 1791 American English
119 The Three Musketeers Alexandre Dumas 1844 French French
1297 Poetics Aristotle -322 Greek Greek
70 The Aeneid Virgil -19 Roman Latin
20 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert 1857 French French
152 The Prince Niccolo Machiavelli 1532 Italian Italian
29 Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë 1847 British English
71 Hamlet William Shakespeare 1600 British English
954 Pygmalion George Bernard Shaw 1913 British English
3290 Candida George Bernard Shaw 1898 Irish English
69 Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe 1719 British English
337 Romeo and Juliet William Shakespeare 1597 British English
1661 A Midsummer Night's Dream William Shakespeare 1595 British English
877 The Cherry Orchard Anton Chekhov 1904 Russian Russian
572 Three Sisters Anton Chekhov 1901 Russian Russian
30 The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri 1308 Italian Italian
621 Analects Confucius -479 Chinese Classical chinese
268 Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats William Butler Yeats 1933 Irish English
89 The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde 1890 Irish English
105 Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray 1847 British English
122 Decameron Giovanni Boccaccio 1353 Italian Italian
669 Beowulf Unknown 1000 Unknown Old english
10 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy 1877 Russian Russian
591 Stories of Guy de Maupassant Guy de Maupassant 1880 French French
294 The Time Machine H. G. Wells 1895 British English
179 Fathers and Sons Ivan Turgenev 1862 Russian Russian
31 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad 1899 British English
12 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy 1869 Russian Russian
6098 The History of Rome Livy -27 Roman Latin
93 Little Women Louisa May Alcott 1868 American English
6939 The Talisman Sir Walter Scott 1825 Scottish English
117 Tess of the d'Urbervilles Thomas Hardy 1891 British English
35 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Lewis Carroll 1865 British English
53 Dracula Bram Stoker 1897 British English
736 Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Edward FitzGerald 1859 British English
42 The Red and the Black Stendhal 1830 French French
188 A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens 1859 British English
220 The Republic Plato -379 Greek Ancient greek
156 Poems of Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson 1890 American English
96 Faust Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1808 German German
134 Tom Jones Henry Fielding 1749 British English
404 The Federalist Papers Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay 1787 American English
643 Silas Marner George Eliot 1861 British English
1416 Rights of Man Thomas Paine 1791 British English
77 Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman 1855 American English
1267 Billy Budd Herman Melville 1924 American English
133 Confessions Augustine 397 Roman Latin
98 The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe 1902 American English
297 Ivanhoe Sir Walter Scott 1819 British English
450 Way of All Flesh Samuel Butler 1903 British English
9 The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner 1929 American English
11 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky 1866 Russian Russian
322 Household Tales Brothers Grimm 1812 German German
22 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain 1884 American English
39 Frankenstein Mary Shelley 1818 British English
47 David Copperfield Charles Dickens 1849 British English