100 Greatest Books of All Time

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

About this list

Steve Donoghue, 100 Books

Steve Donoghue is a renowned book critic whose work has appeared in prestigious publications such as The Washington Post, The American Conservative, The Spectator, The Wall Street Journal, The National, and the Daily Star. He is a regular contributor to The Boston Globe, the Vineyard Gazette, and the Christian Science Monitor, and he serves as the Books Editor for Georgia’s Big Canoe News.

Steve's YouTube channel, Steve Donoghue, boasts over 7,700 videos dedicated to books in one form or another. His "100 Greatest Books of All Time" list is unique in that it is unranked—except for the very first book, which he deems the definitive greatest book of all time. The list stands out for its inclusion of more non-Western works than is typical for such compilations and notably features "Animal Liberation" by Peter Singer, highlighting its significant influence and potential to be recognized as a classic in the years to come.

You can watch the series detailing his selections here:

The 100 Greatest Books of All Time: 100-91!
The 100 Greatest Books of All Time: 90-81!
The 100 Greatest Books of All Time: 80-71!
The 100 Greatest Books of All Time: 70-61!
The 100 Greatest Books of All Time: 60-51!
The 100 Greatest Books of All Time: 50-41!
The 100 Greatest Books of All Time: 40-31!
The 100 Greatest Books of All Time: 30-21!
The 100 Greatest Books of All Time: 20-11!
The 100 Greatest Books of All Time: The Top Ten!

This list was originally published in 2024 and was added to this site over 1 year ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
37 The Iliad Homer -750 Greek Ancient greek
30 The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri 1308 Italian Italian
12 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy 1869 Russian Russian
110 The Canterbury Tales Geoffrey Chaucer 1400 British Middle english
24 The Odyssey Homer -740 Greek Ancient greek
130 The Tale of Genji Murasaki Shikibu 1001 Japanese Classical japanese
285 Oresteia Aeschylus -458 Greek Ancient greek
173 A Room of One's Own Virginia Woolf 1929 British English
541 The Seven Pillars of Wisdom T. E. Lawrence 1926 British English
1091 Shahnameh Ferdowsi 1010 Iranian Persian
422 Ramayana Valmiki -200 Indian Sanskrit
451 Hiroshima John Hersey 1946 American English
377 The Education of Henry Adams Henry Adams 1907 American English
108 Walden Henry David Thoreau 1854 American English
11 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky 1866 Russian Russian
3192 The Age of Reason Thomas Paine 1794 British English
141 Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh 1945 British English
206 The Gulag Archipelago Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1973 Russian Russian
3051 Our Town Thornton Wilder 1938 American English
13 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen 1813 British English
15 Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë 1847 British English
28 Middlemarch George Eliot 1871 British English
4567 The Dirty Dust Máirtin Ó Cadhain 1949 Irish Irish
3149 Chronicles Jean Froissart 1370 French Middle french
10048 Poems Of Wang Wei Wei Wang 700 Chinese Chinese
3314 Satires Juvenal 100 Roman Latin
1935 Autobiography Benvenuto Cellini 1728 Italian Italian
512 The Golden Ass Apuleius 158 Roman Latin
105 Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray 1847 British English
1982 The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne Gilbert White 1789 British English
865 The Pillow Book Sei Shōnagon 1002 Japanese Japanese
365 Eugene Onegin Alexander Pushkin 1833 Russian Russian
46 One Thousand and One Nights Unknown 800 Multiple Arabic
1550 Njal's Saga Iceland 1280 Icelandic Old norse
8522 The Outermost House Henry Beston 1928 American English
1266 The Heptameron Marguerite de Navarre 1558 French French
2713 The Narrow Road to the Deep North Matsuo Bashō 1684 Japanese Japanese
2150 The Conference Of The Birds Attar Neyshabouri 1177 Persian Persian
2797 The Anatomy of Melancholy Robert Burton 1621 British English
8521 The History Of The Franks Gregory of Tours 594 French Latin
373 The Duino Elegies Rainer Maria Rilke 1923 German German
10048 Krieg Ludwig Renn 1928 German German
10048 The Tale Of The Heike Unknown 1371 Japanese Japanese
125 Antigone Sophocles -441 Greek Ancient greek
6137 Poems Of Du Fu Du Fu 759 Chinese Classical chinese
7082 The Scholars Wu Ching-tzu 1750 Chinese Chinese
96 Faust Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1808 German German
3128 Attis And Other Poems Catullus -53 Roman Latin
8 Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes 1605 Spanish Spanish
66 The Metamorphosis Franz Kafka 1915 Czech German
70 The Aeneid Virgil -19 Roman Latin
1555 Troilus And Criseyde Geoffrey Chaucer 1385 British Middle english
10048 A Shropshire Lad A. E. Housman 1896 British English
32 Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf 1925 British English
7 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 1851 American English
323 Mahabharata Vyasa -400 Indian Sanskrit
8529 Selected Stories Of Lu Hsun Lu Xun 1972 Chinese Chinese
2239 A Treatise of Human Nature David Hume 1739 British English
518 The Odes Horace 23 Roman Latin
830 The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Edward Gibbon 1776 British English
22 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain 1884 American English
106 Oedipus the King Sophocles -429 Greek Ancient greek
9905 The Demon Haunted World Carl Sagan 1995 American English
8526 The Secret History Procopius 550 Multiple Greek
7582 Animal Liberation Peter Singer 1975 Australian English
220 The Republic Plato -379 Greek Ancient greek
8522 Histories Of The Kings Of Britain Geoffrey of Monmouth 1911 British Latin
80 Candide Voltaire 1759 French French
774 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 1792 British English
703 The Way We Live Now Anthony Trollope 1875 British English
3313 Roughing It Mark Twain 1872 American English
484 Dream of the Red Chamber Cao Xueqin 1754 Chinese Chinese
8522 Ring Of Bright Water Gavin Maxwell 1960 British English
133 Confessions Augustine 397 Roman Latin
1853 The Velveteen Rabbit Margery Williams 1922 British English
972 The Orlando Furioso Lodovico Ariosto 1516 Italian Italian
1528 The Consolation of Philosophy Boethius 524 Roman Latin
129 First Folio William Shakespeare 1623 British English
2415 Lyrical Ballads William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1798 British English
122 Decameron Giovanni Boccaccio 1353 Italian Italian
1175 The Demons Heimito von Doderer 1956 Austrian German
180 On the Origin of Species Charles Darwin 1859 British English
152 The Prince Niccolo Machiavelli 1532 Italian Italian
580 Black Lamb and Grey Falcon Rebecca West 1941 British English
77 Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman 1855 American English
286 The Once and Future King T. H. White 1958 British English
596 The History of the Peloponnesian War Thucydides -410 Greek Ancient greek
405 De Rerum Natura Lucretius 55 Roman Latin
127 Paradise Lost John Milton 1667 British English
300 The Life of Samuel Johnson James Boswell 1791 British English
1544 The Poetic Edda Unknown 1270 Multiple Old norse
1180 Annals Cornelius Tacitus 109 Roman Latin
439 North and South Elizabeth Gaskell 1855 British English
356 Germinal Émile Zola 1885 French French
1151 The Water Margin Shi Naian 1370 Chinese Chinese
6436 History Of The Conquest Of Mexico William H. Prescott 1843 American English
74 The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne 1850 American English
1159 Eichmann in Jerusalem Hannah Arendt 1963 German English
832 The Last Of The Just André Schwarz-Bart 1959 French French
31 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad 1899 British English