500 Must Read Books

This is one of the 759 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 over 1 year ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
965 Eminent Victorians Lytton Strachey 1918 British English
1257 Lives of the Caesars Suetonius 121 Roman Latin
515 Lives of the Artists Giorgio Vasari 1550 Italian Italian
4630 De Profundis Oscar Wilde 1905 British English
456 Let Us Now Praise Famous Men James Agee 1941 American English
2752 Out Of Africa Karen Blixen 1937 Danish Danish
14985 Anthony Blunt: His Lives Miranda Carter 2001 British English
4980 The Hare with Amber Eyes Edmund de Waal 2010 British English
370 The Year of Magical Thinking Joan Didion 2005 American English
1783 A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius Dave Eggers 2000 American English
1406 The Life of Charlotte Brontë Elizabeth Gaskell 1857 British English
17152 Churchill Martin Gilbert 1991 British English
12700 Steve Jobs Walter Isaacson 2011 American English
5461 Giving up the Ghost Hilary Mantel 2003 British English
10787 Peter the Great Robert K. Massie 1980 American English
670 Persepolis Marjane Satrapi 2000 French French
1104 Maus Art Spiegelman 1980 American English
108 Walden Henry David Thoreau 1854 American English
304 The Double Helix James D. Watson 1968 American English
14232 The Ascent of Money Niall Ferguson 2008 British English
14985 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
17152 Whoops! John Lanchester 2009 British English
152 The Prince Niccolo Machiavelli 1532 Italian Italian
328 Das Kapital Karl Marx 1867 German German
461 Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand 1957 American English
527 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
1170 Capitalism and Freedom Milton Friedman 1962 American English
14159 The Great Crash, 1929 John Kenneth Galbraith 1955 Canadian English
829 The Road to Serfdom Friedrich von Hayek 1944 Austrian English
345 Leviathan Thomas Hobbes 1651 British English
3234 Freakonomics Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner 2005 American English
30 The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri 1308 Italian Italian
1466 Don Juan Lord Byron 1819 British English
17152 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
2513 Howl, Kaddish And Other Poems Allen Ginsberg 1956 American English
17152 The Man With Night Sweats Thom Gunn 1992 British English
4077 Birthday Letters Ted Hughes 1998 British English
15910 Paradise Lost And Other Poems John Milton 1667 British English
14232 Dart Alice Oswald 2002 British English
8342 The Poems Of Li Po Li Po -750 Chinese Classical chinese
365 Eugene Onegin Alexander Pushkin 1833 Russian Russian
343 The Sonnets William Shakespeare 1609 British English
77 Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman 1855 American English
2416 Lyrical Ballads William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1798 British English
7954 Selected Poetry Yehuda Amichai 1971 Israeli Hebrew
178 The Flowers of Evil Charles Baudelaire 1857 French French
5862 Poems Of John Clare John Clare 1820 British English
15910 Songs And Sonnets John Donne 1633 English English
96 Faust Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1808 German German
17152 Station Island Seamus Heaney 1984 Irish English
15910 Montage Of A Dream Deferred Langston Hughes 1951 American English
5862 Twenty Love Poems And A Song Of Despair Pablo Neruda 1924 Chilean Spanish
12250 The Golden Gate Vikram Seth 1986 Indian English
17152 White Egrets Derek Walcott 2010 Saint Lucian English
529 Life Is a Dream Pedro Calderón de la Barca 1635 Spanish Spanish
1035 Uncle Vanya Anton Chekhov 1897 Russian Russian
3949 Top Girls Caryl Churchill 1982 British English
943 The Bacchae Euripides -405 Greek Ancient greek
1732 The Government Inspector Nikolai Gogol 1836 Russian Russian
9628 Largo Desolato Vaclav Havel 1985 Czech Czech
17152 Ghosts Unknown 2017 Unknown English
15910 Doctor Faustus And Other Plays Christopher Marlowe 1604 English English
14985 The Lieutenant Of Inishmore Martin McDonagh 2001 Irish English
428 Death Of A Salesman Arthur Miller 1949 American English
3584 The Would-Be Gentleman Molière 1670 French French
3533 The Birthday Party Harold Pinter 1958 British English
1661 A Midsummer Night's Dream William Shakespeare 1595 British English
71 Hamlet William Shakespeare 1600 British English
106 Oedipus the King Sophocles -429 Greek Ancient greek
876 Lysistrata Aristophanes -411 Greek Ancient greek
101 Waiting for Godot Samuel Beckett 1953 Irish French
14152 The Rover Aphra Behn 1677 British English
14154 The Vortex Noel Coward 1924 British English
2246 The Bald Soprano Eugène Ionesco 1950 French French
17152 Insignificance Terry Johnson 1982 British English
14985 Blasted Sarah Kane 1995 British English
17152 Enron Lucy Prebble 2009 British English
4167 Miss Julie August Strindberg 1888 Swedish Swedish
17152 I Will Marry When I Want Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o 1977 Kenyan Gikuyu
224 Watership Down Richard Adams 1972 British English
1444 James and the Giant Peach Roald Dahl 1961 British English
136 The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame 1908 British English
2080 A Little Princess Frances Hodgson Burnett 1905 British English
2249 Emil And The Detectives Erich Kästner 1929 German German
13349 Just So Stories Rudyard Kipling 1902 British English
381 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe C. S. Lewis 1950 British English
267 Pippi Longstocking Astrid Lindgren 1945 Swedish Swedish
17152 The Doll People Ann M. Martin 2000 American English
165 Winnie the Pooh A. A. Milne 1926 British English
44 The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 1943 French French
17152 The Child That Books Built Francis Spufford 2002 British English
146 The Hobbit J. R. R. Tolkien 1937 British English
926 Journey to the Center of the Earth Jules Verne 1864 French French
102 Charlotte's Web E. B. White 1952 American English
2743 The Little White Horse Elizabeth Goudge 1946 British English
814 The Secret Garden Frances Hodgson Burnett 1911 British English
15910 How The Whale Became Ted Hughes 1963 British English
522 The Phantom Tollbooth Norton Juster 1961 American English
15910 Stig Of The Dump Clive King 1963 British English
236 Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone J. K. Rowling 1997 British English
17152 A Boy And A Bear In A Boat Dave Shelton 2012 British English
867 Heidi Johanna Spyri 1881 Swiss German
1380 The Sword in the Stone T. H. White 1938 British English
1853 The Velveteen Rabbit Margery Williams 1922 British English
4366 Kitchen Confidential Anthony Bourdain 2000 American English
2249 The Physiology Of Taste Or Meditations On Transcendental Gastronomy Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin 1825 French French
14788 French Country Cooking Elizabeth David 1951 British English
1334 Hangover Square Patrick Hamilton 1941 British English
17152 How To Eat Nigella Lawson 1998 British English
4751 The Omnivore's Dilemma Michael Pollan 2006 American English
5573 Fast Food Nation Eric Schlosser 2001 American English
17152 The Minotaur Takes A Cigarette Break Steven Sherrill 2000 American English
17152 The Kitchen Diaries, Volume I + Ii Nigel Slater 2005 British English
14985 The Man Who Ate Everything Jeffrey Steingarten 1997 American English
17152 Thai Food David Thompson 2002 Australian English