The Greatest Books of All Time Set in United Kingdom

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This list represents a comprehensive and trusted collection of the greatest books. Developed through a specialized algorithm, it brings together 759 'best of' book lists to form a definitive guide to the world's most acclaimed books. For those interested in how these books are chosen, additional details can be found on the rankings page.

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Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
27 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf 1927 British English
89 The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde 1890 Irish English
105 Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray 1847 British English
129 First Folio William Shakespeare 1623 British English
158 Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys 1966 British English
180 On the Origin of Species Charles Darwin 1859 British English
233 The Spy Who Came in From the Cold John le Carré 1963 British English
254 Gravity's Rainbow Thomas Pynchon 1973 American English
300 The Life of Samuel Johnson James Boswell 1791 British English
319 The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money John Maynard Keynes 1936 British English
324 Communist Manifesto Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels 1848 German German
328 Das Kapital Karl Marx 1867 German German
343 The Sonnets William Shakespeare 1609 British English
344 The Thirty-Nine Steps John Buchan 1915 British English
369 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Ludwig Wittgenstein 1921 Austrian German
379 The Second World War Winston Churchill 1948 British English
427 Cloud Atlas David Mitchell 2004 British English
438 Philosophical Investigations Ludwig Wittgenstein 1953 Austrian German
442 The Magus John Fowles 1965 British English
487 Rainbow D.H. Lawrence 1915 British English
495 Casino Royale Ian Fleming 1953 British English
516 Season of Migration to the North Al-Tayyib Salih 1966 Sudanese Arabic
531 The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith 1776 Scottish English
534 Satanic Verses Salman Rushdie 1988 British English
615 Ghost Stories Of An Antiquary M. R. James 1904 British English
618 Poems of W. H. Auden W. H. Auden 1930 British English
633 Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy John le Carré 1974 British English
682 The Open Society and Its Enemies Karl Popper 1945 British English
697 The Rings of Saturn W. G. Sebald 1995 German German
707 Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson Alfred Tennyson 1830 British English
708 Captain Hornblower R.N. C. S. Forester 1937 British English
714 Encyclopedia Britannica Encyclopedia Britannica 1768 British English
723 The Line of Beauty Alan Hollinghurst 2004 British English
743 On Liberty John Stuart Mill 1859 British English
760 Decline and Fall Evelyn Waugh 1928 British English
774 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman Mary Wollstonecraft 1792 British English
812 Collected Poems of T.S. Eliot T. S. Eliot 1963 British English
819 Burmese Days George Orwell 1934 British English
829 The Road to Serfdom Friedrich von Hayek 1944 Austrian English
831 Riddle of the Sands Erskine Childers 1903 British English
849 Regeneration Pat Barker 1991 British English
880 Orthodoxy G. K. Chesterton 1908 British English
897 The Darkroom Of Damocles W.F. Hermans 1958 Dutch Dutch
919 The Poems Of Gerard Manley Hopkins Gerald Manley Hopkins 1918 British English
923 The World Of Yesterday Stefan Zweig 1942 Austrian German
941 Collected Essays of George Orwell George Orwell 1968 British English
952 Two Treatises of Government John Locke 1689 British English
965 Eminent Victorians Lytton Strachey 1918 British English
974 The Poems of John Keats John Keats 1817 British English
988 Flaubert's Parrot Julian Barnes 1984 British English
989 The Lonely Londoners Sam Selvon 1956 Trinidadian English
1005 The Dark Is Rising Susan Cooper 1973 British English
1010 Fingersmith Sarah Waters 2002 British English
1011 Mere Christianity C. S. Lewis 1952 British English
1045 Selected Essays of T. S. Eliot T. S. Eliot 1932 British English
1056 Maurice E. M. Forster 1971 British English
1074 The Da Vinci Code Dan Brown 2003 American English
1100 Collected Poems Of Edward Thomas Edward Thomas 1920 British English
1112 The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake William Blake 1827 British English
1179 Living Henry Green 1929 British English
1189 A Writer's Diary Virginia Woolf 1953 British English
1229 Songs of Innocence and Experience William Blake 1789 British English
1239 The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Donne John Donne 1952 British English
1243 Kidnapped Robert Louis Stevenson 1886 British English
1245 Down and Out in Paris and London George Orwell 1933 British English
1259 The Female Eunuch Germaine Greer 1970 Australian English
1273 Robert Browning's Poetry Robert Browning 1833 British English
1273 Selected Poems of Lord Byron Lord Byron 1800 British English
1306 Widdershins G. Oliver Onions 1911 British English
1327 An Essay Concerning Human Understanding John Locke 1689 British English
1334 Hangover Square Patrick Hamilton 1941 British English
1355 Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas Dylan Thomas 1952 British English
1356 Towards The End Of The Morning Michael Frayn 1967 British English
1374 Earthly Powers Anthony Burgess 1980 British English
1400 The Great Railway Bazaar Paul Theroux 1975 American English
1403 The Outsider Colin Wilson 1956 British English
1412 The Constitution of Liberty Friedrich von Hayek 1960 Austrian English
1451 The Children of Men P. D. James 1992 British English
1456 Flights Olga Tokarczuk 2007 Polish Polish
1477 An Essay on the Principle of Population Thomas Robert Malthus 1798 British English
1490 The Garden Party And Other Stories Katherine Mansfield 1922 New Zealand English
1512 The Beast Must Die Nicholas Blake 1938 British English
1524 Greenmantle John Buchan 1916 British English
1526 A History of Western Philosophy Bertrand Russell 1945 British English
1537 The Owl Service Alan Garner 1967 British English
1564 G. John Berger 1972 British English
1580 The Struggle for Europe Chester Wilmot 1952 British English
1588 The Guns of August Barbara Wertheim Tuchman 1962 American English
1600 Studies in the Psychology of Sex Havelock Ellis 1897 British English
1641 Disraeli Robert Blake 1966 British English
1663 The Making of the English Working Class E. P. Thompson 1963 British English
1674 London Fields Martin Amis 1989 British English
1706 The Principia Mathematica Alfred North Whitehead, Bertrand Russell 1910 British English
1746 Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion David Hume 1779 British English
1754 Changing Places David Lodge 1975 British English
1763 Small Is Beautiful E. F. Schumacher 1973 British English
1794 My Past And Thoughts Alexander Herzen 1861 Russian Russian
1803 The Problems of Philosophy Bertrand Russell 1912 British English
1815 The Collected Poems of A. E. Housman A. E. Housman 1939 British English
1871 Brief Lives John Aubrey 1898 British English
1925 The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano Olaudah Equiano 1789 African English
1952 The Idea of History R. G. Collingwood 1946 British English
1989 Your Face Tomorrow Javier Marias 2002 Spanish Spanish
1991 All about H. Hatterr G. V. Desani 1948 Indian English
1995 Say Nothing Patrick Radden Keefe 2018 American English
1997 An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding David Hume 1748 Scottish English
2016 The Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley Percy Bysshe Shelley 1810 British English
2031 In Parenthesis David Jones 1937 British English
2067 How Late It Was, How Late James Kelman 1994 Scottish English
2079 Rationalism in Politics Michael Oakeshott 1962 British English
2089 Parkinson's Law C. Northcote Parkinson 1957 British English
2099 From Russia with Love Ian Fleming 1957 British English
2102 Collected Short Stories of Saki Saki 1930 British English
2104 Someone Like You Roald Dahl 1953 British English
2109 Oxford English Dictionary Oxford University Press 1884 British English
2123 The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes Arthur Conan Doyle 1892 British English
2145 Cryptonomicon Neal Stephenson 1999 American English
2156 The Green Man Kingsley Amis 1969 British English
2161 The Uses of Literacy Richard Hoggart 1957 British English
2161 The Poetical Works Of William Wordsworth William Wordsworth 1807 British English