100 Must-Read Classics, as Chosen by our Readers

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

About this list

Penguin (UK), 100 Books

from the website:

Everyone loves a classic novel, but where to start? From Jane Austen to Charles Dickens, Toni Morrison to Fyodor Dostoevsky, the fiction canon is so vast you can easily get lost in it.

So we asked our readers to tell us about their favourite classic books. The resulting list of must-reads is a perfect way to find inspiration to start your classics adventure. There's something for everyone, from family sagas and dystopian fiction to romances and historical fiction.

This list was originally published in 2022 and was added to this site over 1 year ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
13 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen 1813 British English
16 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee 1960 American English
3 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925 American English
5 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez 1967 Colombian Spanish
109 In Cold Blood Truman Capote 1966 American English
158 Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys 1966 British English
50 Brave New World Aldous Huxley 1932 British English
575 I Capture the Castle Dodie Smith 1948 British English
29 Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë 1847 British English
11 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky 1866 Russian Russian
279 The Secret History Donna Tartt 1992 American English
230 The Call of the Wild Jack London 1903 American English
192 Persuasion Jane Austen 1817 British English
40 Les Misérables Victor Hugo 1862 French French
7 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 1851 American English
27 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf 1927 British English
569 The Death of the Heart Elizabeth Bowen 1938 British, Irish English
39 Frankenstein Mary Shelley 1818 British English
34 The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov 1967 Russian Russian
602 The Go-Between L. P. Hartley 1953 British English
37 The Iliad Homer -750 Greek Ancient greek
154 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Ken Kesey 1962 American English
6 Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell 1949 British English
4 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger 1951 American English
49 Beloved Toni Morrison 1987 American English
556 The Code of the Woosters P. G. Wodehouse 1938 British English
53 Dracula Bram Stoker 1897 British English
779 The Outsiders S. E. Hinton 1967 American English
2667 The Chrysalids John Wyndham 1955 Canadian English
12 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy 1869 Russian Russian
38 Great Expectations Charles Dickens 1860 British English
502 Another Country James Baldwin 1962 American English
33 Catch-22 Joseph Heller 1961 American English
92 The Age of Innocence Edith Wharton 1920 American English
60 Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe 1958 Nigerian English
28 Middlemarch George Eliot 1871 British English
59 Rebecca Daphne du Maurier 1938 British English
117 Tess of the d'Urbervilles Thomas Hardy 1891 British English
105 Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray 1847 British English
141 Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh 1945 British English
20 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert 1857 French French
414 The Mill on the Floss George Eliot 1860 British English
678 Barchester Towers Anthony Trollope 1857 British English
196 Lady Chatterley's Lover D. H. Lawrence 1928 British English
87 The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas 1844 French French
26 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck 1939 American English
1 Ulysses James Joyce 1922 Irish English
193 East of Eden John Steinbeck 1952 American English
17 The Lord Of The Rings J. R. R. Tolkien 1959 English English
18 The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky 1880 Russian Russian
90 Buddenbrooks Thomas Mann 1901 German German
14 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov 1955 American English
814 The Secret Garden Frances Hodgson Burnett 1911 British English
435 Scoop Evelyn Waugh 1938 British English
1208 Love in a Cold Climate Nancy Mitford 1949 British English
188 A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens 1859 British English
946 The Diary of a Nobody George Grossmith, Weedon Grossmith 1892 British English
10 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy 1877 Russian Russian
273 The Betrothed Alessandro Manzoni 1827 Italian Italian
95 Orlando Virginia Woolf 1928 British English
461 Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand 1957 American English
294 The Time Machine H. G. Wells 1895 British English
835 The Art of War Sun Tzu -500 Chinese Classical chinese
246 The Forsyte Saga John Galsworthy 1906 British English
13518 Travels with Charley John Steinbeck 1962 American English
239 Tropic of Cancer Henry Miller 1934 American English
8 Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes 1605 Spanish Spanish
2996 Staying On Paul Scott 1977 British English
136 The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame 1908 British English
637 The Quiet American Graham Greene 1955 British English
15 Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë 1847 British English
511 Perfume Patrick Suskind 1985 German German
22 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain 1884 American English
292 Of Human Bondage W. Somerset Maugham 1915 British English
121 Bleak House Charles Dickens 1852 British English
425 Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen 1811 British English
89 The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde 1890 Irish English
216 A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens 1843 British English
643 Silas Marner George Eliot 1861 British English
32 Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf 1925 British English
93 Little Women Louisa May Alcott 1868 American English
454 The Sea, The Sea Iris Murdoch 1978 British English
47 David Copperfield Charles Dickens 1849 British English
81 The Castle Franz Kafka 1926 Czech German
453 I, Claudius Robert Graves 1934 British English
521 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelou 1969 American English
203 A Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole 1980 American English
410 The Razor's Edge W. Somerset Maugham 1944 British English
2459 Lark Rise To Candleford Flora Thompson 1945 British English
739 The Return of the Native Thomas Hardy 1878 British English
88 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce 1916 Irish English
31 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad 1899 British English
439 North and South Elizabeth Gaskell 1855 British English
132 The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood 1985 Canadian English
167 Giovanni's Room James Baldwin 1956 American English
242 The Godfather Mario Puzo 1969 American English
139 The Woman in White Wilkie Collins 1860 British English
148 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1962 Russian Russian
14784 White Nights Fyodor Dostoevsky 1848 Russian Russian
1772 Hard Times Charles Dickens 1854 British English