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
965 Eminent Victorians Lytton Strachey 1918 British English
1256 Lives of the Caesars Suetonius 121 Roman Latin
515 Lives of the Artists Giorgio Vasari 1550 Italian Italian
4622 De Profundis Oscar Wilde 1905 British English
455 Let Us Now Praise Famous Men James Agee 1941 American English
2747 Out Of Africa Karen Blixen 1937 Danish Danish
14901 Anthony Blunt: His Lives Miranda Carter 2001 British English
4970 The Hare with Amber Eyes Edmund de Waal 2010 British English
369 The Year of Magical Thinking Joan Didion 2005 American English
1780 A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius Dave Eggers 2000 American English
1405 The Life of Charlotte Brontë Elizabeth Gaskell 1857 British English
17010 Churchill Martin Gilbert 1991 British English
12669 Steve Jobs Walter Isaacson 2011 American English
5452 Giving up the Ghost Hilary Mantel 2003 British English
10758 Peter the Great Robert K. Massie 1980 American English
668 Persepolis Marjane Satrapi 2000 French French
1102 Maus Art Spiegelman 1980 American English
110 Walden Henry David Thoreau 1854 American English
301 The Double Helix James D. Watson 1968 American English
14165 The Ascent of Money Niall Ferguson 2008 British English
14901 Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way To Deal With Change In Your Work And In Your Life... Spencer Johnson 1998 American English
319 The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money John Maynard Keynes 1936 British English
17010 Whoops! John Lanchester 2009 British English
152 The Prince Niccolo Machiavelli 1532 Italian Italian
326 Das Kapital Karl Marx 1867 German German
460 Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand 1957 American English
526 The Social Contract Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1762 French French
531 The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith 1776 Scottish English
835 The Art of War Sun Tzu -500 Chinese Classical chinese
1169 Capitalism and Freedom Milton Friedman 1962 American English
14094 The Great Crash, 1929 John Kenneth Galbraith 1955 Canadian English
829 The Road to Serfdom Friedrich von Hayek 1944 Austrian English
344 Leviathan Thomas Hobbes 1651 British English
3228 Freakonomics Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner 2005 American English
29 The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri 1308 Italian Italian
1465 Don Juan Lord Byron 1819 British English
17010 Family Values Wendy Cope 2011 British English
156 Poems of Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson 1890 American English
111 The Waste Land T. S. Eliot 1922 British English
2508 Howl, Kaddish And Other Poems Allen Ginsberg 1956 American English
17010 The Man With Night Sweats Thom Gunn 1992 British English
4071 Birthday Letters Ted Hughes 1998 British English
15787 Paradise Lost And Other Poems John Milton 1667 British English
14165 Dart Alice Oswald 2002 British English
8327 The Poems Of Li Po Li Po -750 Chinese Classical chinese
363 Eugene Onegin Alexander Pushkin 1833 Russian Russian
342 The Sonnets William Shakespeare 1609 British English
76 Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman 1855 American English
2409 Lyrical Ballads William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1798 British English
7939 Selected Poetry Yehuda Amichai 1971 Israeli Hebrew
178 The Flowers of Evil Charles Baudelaire 1857 French French
5851 Poems Of John Clare John Clare 1820 British English
15787 Songs And Sonnets John Donne 1633 English English
96 Faust Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1808 German German
17010 Station Island Seamus Heaney 1984 Irish English
15787 Montage Of A Dream Deferred Langston Hughes 1951 American English
5851 Twenty Love Poems And A Song Of Despair Pablo Neruda 1924 Chilean Spanish
12222 The Golden Gate Vikram Seth 1986 Indian English
17010 White Egrets Derek Walcott 2010 Saint Lucian English
528 Life Is a Dream Pedro Calderón de la Barca 1635 Spanish Spanish
1032 Uncle Vanya Anton Chekhov 1897 Russian Russian
3943 Top Girls Caryl Churchill 1982 British English
942 The Bacchae Euripides -405 Greek Ancient greek
1730 The Government Inspector Nikolai Gogol 1836 Russian Russian
9609 Largo Desolato Vaclav Havel 1985 Czech Czech
17010 Ghosts Unknown 2017 Unknown English
15787 Doctor Faustus And Other Plays Christopher Marlowe 1604 English English
14901 The Lieutenant Of Inishmore Martin McDonagh 2001 Irish English
426 Death Of A Salesman Arthur Miller 1949 American English
3580 The Would-Be Gentleman Molière 1670 French French
3530 The Birthday Party Harold Pinter 1958 British English
1660 A Midsummer Night's Dream William Shakespeare 1595 British English
72 Hamlet William Shakespeare 1600 British English
105 Oedipus the King Sophocles -429 Greek Ancient greek
876 Lysistrata Aristophanes -411 Greek Ancient greek
99 Waiting for Godot Samuel Beckett 1953 Irish French
14087 The Rover Aphra Behn 1677 British English
14089 The Vortex Noel Coward 1924 British English
2236 The Bald Soprano Eugène Ionesco 1950 French French
17010 Insignificance Terry Johnson 1982 British English
14901 Blasted Sarah Kane 1995 British English
17010 Enron Lucy Prebble 2009 British English
4162 Miss Julie August Strindberg 1888 Swedish Swedish
17010 I Will Marry When I Want Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o 1977 Kenyan Gikuyu
229 Watership Down Richard Adams 1972 British English
1444 James and the Giant Peach Roald Dahl 1961 British English
139 The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame 1908 British English
2075 A Little Princess Frances Hodgson Burnett 1905 British English
2239 Emil And The Detectives Erich Kästner 1929 German German
13314 Just So Stories Rudyard Kipling 1902 British English
379 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe C. S. Lewis 1950 British English
265 Pippi Longstocking Astrid Lindgren 1945 Swedish Swedish
17010 The Doll People Ann M. Martin 2000 American English
164 Winnie the Pooh A. A. Milne 1926 British English
44 The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 1943 French French
17010 The Child That Books Built Francis Spufford 2002 British English
146 The Hobbit J. R. R. Tolkien 1937 British English
954 Journey to the Center of the Earth Jules Verne 1864 French French
107 Charlotte's Web E. B. White 1952 American English
2739 The Little White Horse Elizabeth Goudge 1946 British English
814 The Secret Garden Frances Hodgson Burnett 1911 British English
15787 How The Whale Became Ted Hughes 1963 British English
522 The Phantom Tollbooth Norton Juster 1961 American English
15787 Stig Of The Dump Clive King 1963 British English
236 Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone J. K. Rowling 1997 British English
17010 A Boy And A Bear In A Boat Dave Shelton 2012 British English
867 Heidi Johanna Spyri 1881 Swiss German
1379 The Sword in the Stone T. H. White 1938 British English
1852 The Velveteen Rabbit Margery Williams 1922 British English
4360 Kitchen Confidential Anthony Bourdain 2000 American English
2239 The Physiology Of Taste Or Meditations On Transcendental Gastronomy Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin 1825 French French
14701 French Country Cooking Elizabeth David 1951 British English
1332 Hangover Square Patrick Hamilton 1941 British English
17010 How To Eat Nigella Lawson 1998 British English
4742 The Omnivore's Dilemma Michael Pollan 2006 American English
5565 Fast Food Nation Eric Schlosser 2001 American English
17010 The Minotaur Takes A Cigarette Break Steven Sherrill 2000 American English
17010 The Kitchen Diaries, Volume I + Ii Nigel Slater 2005 British English
14901 The Man Who Ate Everything Jeffrey Steingarten 1997 American English
17010 Thai Food David Thompson 2002 Australian English