500 Must Read Books

This is one of the 743 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.

About this list

The Daily Telegraph, 497 Books

500 'must-read' books of all time as selected by The Telegraph's team of literary experts.

This list was originally published in 2013 and was added to this site about 1 year ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
5750 The Scar China Miéville 2002 British English
880 Utopia Thomas More 1516 British Latin
55 Animal Farm George Orwell 1945 British English
669 The Fall of the House of Usher Edgar Allan Poe 1839 American English
2346 Contact Carl Sagan 1985 American English
1593 Snow Crash Neal Stephenson 1992 American English
65 Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift 1726 British English
17 The Lord Of The Rings J. R. R. Tolkien 1959 English English
293 The Time Machine H. G. Wells 1895 British English
88 The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde 1890 Irish English
299 The Lost Estate Henri Alain-Fournier 1913 French French
12 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen 1813 British English
28 Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë 1847 British English
15 Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë 1847 British English
1559 Oscar and Lucinda Peter Carey 1988 Australian English
21 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert 1857 French French
288 A Room With a View E. M. Forster 1908 British English
176 The End of the Affair Graham Greene 1951 British English
754 The Well of Loneliness Radclyffe Hall 1928 British English
1093 The Swimming-Pool Library Alan Hollinghurst 1988 British English
204 The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro 1989 British English
75 The Portrait of a Lady Henry James 1881 American English
210 Dangerous Liaison Pierre Choderlos de Laclos 1782 French French
248 Atonement Ian McEwan 2001 British English
58 Gone With the Wind Margaret Mitchell 1936 American English
1206 Love in a Cold Climate Nancy Mitford 1949 British English
1159 Norwegian Wood Haruki Murakami 1987 Japanese Japanese
112 Doctor Zhivago Boris Pasternak 1957 Russian Russian
186 Bonjour Tristesse Francoise Sagan 1954 French French
15787 At Grand Central Station I Sat Down And Wept Elizabeth Smart 1945 Canadian English
731 Possession A. S. Byatt 1990 British English
296 The Lover Marguerite Duras 1984 French French
1097 The Blue Flower Penelope Fitzgerald 1995 British English
568 The French Lieutenant's Woman John Fowles 1969 British English
602 The Go-Between L. P. Hartley 1953 British English
788 The Piano Teacher Elfriede Jelinek 1983 Austrian German
785 The Far Pavilions Mary Margaret Kaye 1978 British English
225 Women in Love D. H. Lawrence 1920 British English
3098 Foreign Affairs Alison Lurie 1984 American English
651 The English Patient Michael Ondaatje 1992 Canadian English
974 The Reader Bernhard Schlink 1995 German German
4861 Music and Silence Rose Tremain 1999 British English
1339 The Graduate Charles Webb 1963 American English
1104 The Passion Jeanette Winterson 1987 British English
190 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams 1979 British English
392 Lucky Jim Kingsley Amis 1954 British English
2849 The Bottle Factory Outing Beryl Bainbridge 1974 British English
3014 Queen Lucia E. F. Benson 1920 British English
3814 The Commitments Roddy Doyle 1987 Irish English
638 Bridget Jones's Diary Helen Fielding 1996 British English
480 Cold Comfort Farm Stella Gibbons 1932 British English
945 The Diary of a Nobody George Grossmith, Weedon Grossmith 1892 British English
781 Three Men in a Boat Jerome K. Jerome 1889 British English
2434 Puckoon Spike Milligan 1963 Irish English
145 Gargantua and Pantagruel Francois Rabelais 1532 French French
52 The Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy Laurence Sterne 1759 British English
799 The Loved One Evelyn Waugh 1948 British English
2450 Molesworth Geoffrey Willans, Ronald Searle 1953 British English
552 The Code of the Woosters P. G. Wodehouse 1938 British English
2437 The Ascent Of Rum Doodle W. E. Bowman 1956 British English
2956 The History Man Malcolm Bradbury 1975 British English
2319 What a Carve Up! Jonathan Coe 1994 British English
17010 The Beastly Beatitudes Of Balthazar B J. P. Donleavy 1967 American English
617 Pnin Vladimir Nabokov 1957 Russian English
239 Portnoy's Complaint Philip Roth 1969 American English
3613 Porterhouse Blue Tom Sharpe 1974 British English
203 A Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole 1980 American English
759 Decline and Fall Evelyn Waugh 1928 British English
1218 Thank You, Jeeves P. G. Wodehouse 1934 British English
555 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee Dee Alexander Brown 1970 American English
14165 Ordinary Men Christopher R. Browning 1992 American English
14068 A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Winston Churchill 1956 British English
830 The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Edward Gibbon 1776 British English
14701 Legion Of The Damned Sven Hassel 1953 Danish Danish
33 Catch-22 Joseph Heller 1961 American English
67 A Farewell to Arms Ernest Hemingway 1929 American English
2384 The Face of Battle John Keegan 1976 British English
3060 Montaillou Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie 1975 French French
86 All Quiet on the Western Front Erich Maria Remarque 1928 German German
14901 The Discovery Of France Graham Robb 2007 British English
14068 A History of the Crusades Stephen Runciman 1951 British English
2239 1066 And All That W. C. Sellar 1930 British English
4412 A Bright Shining Lie Neil Sheehan 1988 American English
5372 Longitude Dava Sobel 1995 American English
14701 The Making Of The Middle Ages R. W. Southern 1953 British English
596 The History of the Peloponnesian War Thucydides -410 Greek Ancient greek
1584 The Guns of August Barbara Wertheim Tuchman 1962 American English
85 Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut 1969 American English
12078 Sword Of Honour Evelyn Waugh 1965 British English
848 Regeneration Pat Barker 1991 British English
14901 The Battle For Spain Antony Beevor 2006 British English
8957 A Short History Of Nearly Everything Bill Bryson 2003 American English
14901 Ornamentalism David Cannadine 2001 British English
14901 Europe Norman Davies 1996 British English
1932 Corelli's Mandolin Louis de Bernières 1994 British English
1383 Guns, Germs, and Steel Jared Diamond 1997 American English
13890 The Siege Helen Dunmore 2001 British English
1083 Birdsong Sebastian Faulks 1993 British English
158 The Good Soldier Švejk Jaroslav Hašek 1921 Czech Czech
647 Dispatches Michael Herr 1977 American English
14901 Hitler Ian Kershaw 1998 British English
429 The Naked and the Dead Norman Mailer 1948 American English
6266 Citizens Simon Schama 1989 British English
1833 Histories Cornelius Tacitus 100 Roman Latin
1826 Experience Martin Amis 2000 British English
521 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelou 1969 American English
303 The Life of Samuel Johnson James Boswell 1791 British English
639 Testament Of Youth Vera Brittain 1933 British English
901 Wild Swans Jung Chang 1991 Chinese English
5731 Diaries Alan Clark 1993 British English
1171 My Family And Other Animals Gerald Durrell 1956 British English
113 The Diary of a Young Girl Anne Frank 1947 Dutch Dutch
1618 Good-Bye to All That Robert Graves 1929 British English
854 A Moveable Feast Ernest Hemingway 1964 American English
554 The Seven Pillars of Wisdom T. E. Lawrence 1926 British English
17010 The Moon's A Balloon David Niven 1971 British English
446 Homage to Catalonia George Orwell 1938 British English
2874 The Diary of Samuel Pepys Samuel Pepys 1825 British English
696 The Rings of Saturn W. G. Sebald 1995 German German
401 The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas Gertrude Stein 1933 American English