Published: 1615

Translated by John Ormsby.
One of the earliest novels in a modern European language, one which many people consider the finest book in the Spanish language.

Published: 1604

Author: William Makepeace Thackeray

Published: 1848

A satire of 19th-century British society.

Published: 1857

In a provincial village far from Paris, a doctor named Charles Bovary marries a beautiful farm girl: Emma. She rapidly grows bored with him and takes a rich landowner as a lover. When her lover rejects her, she takes up with a law clerk. Her husband knows nothing of her romances, nor does he know that Emma has ruined him with her waste, poor management, and self-indulgence...

Published: 1865

Followed by Through the Looking Glass.

Author: Lewis Carroll

Published: 1871

A sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Published: 1719

Sometimes considered to be the first novel in English, this book is a fictional autobiography of a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical island near Venezuela.

Author: Mrs Oliphant

Published: 1896

Published: 1919

Loosely based on the life of the painter Paul Gauguin, the story is told as a series of glimpses into the life of Charles Strickland, a middle-aged English stock broker who abandons his wife and children in order to pursue painting in Tahiti.

Published: 1849

or The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery (which he never meant to publish on any account).

It adds to the charm of this book to remember that it is virtually a picture of the author's own boyhood. It is an excellent picture of the life of a struggling English youth in the middle of the last century. The pictures of Canterbury and London are true pictures and through these pages walk one of Dickens' wonderful processions of characters, quaint and humorous, villainous and tragic. Nobody cares for Dickens heroines, least of all for Dora, but take it all in al,l this book is enjoyed by young people more than any other of the great novelist. After having read this you will wish to read Nicholas Nickleby for its mingling of pathos and humor, Martin Chuzzlewit for its pictures of American life as seen through English eyes, and Pickwick Papers for its crude but boisterous humor.

The Ethics of Aristotle is one half of a single treatise of which his Politics is the other half. Both deal with one and the same subject. This subject is what Aristotle calls in one place the "philosophy of human affairs;" but more frequently Political or Social Science. In the two works taken together we have their author's whole theory of human conduct or practical activity, that is, of all human activity which is not directed merely to knowledge or truth.

Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Published: 1881

Published: 1774

A loosely autobiographical novel, this was Goethe's first major success, turning him from an unknown into a celebrated author practically overnight. The majority of the story is a collection of letters written by Werther, a young artist with a very sensitive and passionate temperament, sent to his friend Wilhelm. In these letters Werther gives a very intimate account of his stay in the fictive village Wahlheim, where he meets and falls in love with Charlotte, who is, however, already engaged to an older man named Albert. Despite the pain this causes Werther, he spends the next several months cultivating a close friendship with both of them. Translated by R.D. Boylan and Edited by Nathen Haskell Dole

Translated by Benjamin Jowett.

Published: 1813

Austen's finest comedy of manners portrays life in the genteel rural society of the early 1800s, and tells of the initial misunderstandings (and mutual enlightenment) between lively and quick witted Elizabeth Bennet and the haughty Mr. Darcy.

Although everything that Schopenhauer wrote was written more or less as evidence to support his main philosophical thesis, his unifying philosophical principle, the essays in this volume have an interest, if not altogether apart, at least of a sufficiently independent interest to enable them to be considered on their own merits, without relation to his main idea. Translated by Mrs. Rudolf Dircks.

Published: 1888

Author: Jonathan Swift

Published: 1726

Edited with Introduction and Notes by Thomas M. Balliet, 1900.

Author: Charlotte Brontë

Published: 1847

A poor governess, Jane Eyre, captures the heart of her enigmatic employer, Edward Rochester. Jane discovers that he has a secret that could jeopardize any hope of happiness between them.

Published: 1869

The novel tells the story of a number of aristocratic families and the entanglements of their personal lives with Napoleon's invasion of Russia. As events proceed, Tolstoy systematically denies his subjects any significant free choice: the onward roll of history determines happiness and tragedy alike. (Translated by Aylmer and Louise Shanks Maude.)

Author: Herman Melville

Published: 1851

The voyage of the whaling ship Pequod, commanded by Captain Ahab, who leads his crew on a hunt for the great whale Moby Dick, reveals a profound meditation on society, nature, and the human struggle for meaning, happiness, and salvation. Often considered the epitome of American Romanticism, the novel is now considered one of the greatest novels in the English language.

Published: 1876

"A young boy grows up in the antebellum South on the Mississippi River in the town of St. Petersberg, based on the town of Hannibal, Missouri."--Wikipedia

Published: 1836

Written for publication as a serial, The Pickwick Papers is a sequence of loosely-related adventures. Its main literary value and appeal is formed by its numerous memorable characters. Each character in The Pickwick Papers, as in many other Dickens novels, is drawn comically, often with exaggerated personalities. --Wikipedia

Published: 1925

Josef K. awakens one morning and, for reasons never revealed, is arrested and subjected to the rigours of the judicial process for an unspecified crime. Translated by David Wyllie.

Published: 1891

One of the best known American poems.

Published: 1847

Emily Brontë's only novel, this tale portrays Catherine and Heathcliff, their all-encompassing love for one another, and how this unresolved passion eventually destroys them both, leading Heathcliff to shun and abuse society. First published in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell, Wuthering Heights is considered to be a classic of English literature.

Author: Daniel Defoe

Published: 1722

A fictionalised account of one man's experiences of the year 1665, in which the Great Plague struck the city of London.

Published: 1663

Author: François Rabelais

Published: 1653

Translated by Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromarty and Peter Antony Motteux. The text of the first Two Books of Rabelais has been reprinted from the first edition (1653) of Urquhart's translation. Footnotes initialled 'M.' are drawn from the Maitland Club edition (1838); other footnotes are by the translator. Urquhart's translation of Book III. appeared posthumously in 1693, with a new edition of Books I. and II., under Motteux's editorship. Motteux's rendering of Books IV. and V. followed in 1708. Occasionally (as the footnotes indicate) passages omitted by Motteux have been restored from the 1738 copy edited by Ozell.

Published: 1883

Translated from the Italian by Carol Della Chiesa

Author: Marcel Proust

Published: 1913

Published: 1939

A Shocking Tale of Vile, Ruthless Gangsterism -- The Toughest Novel You'll Ever Read!

Author: Marcel Proust

Published: 1922

Translated from the French by C. K. Scott Moncrieff.

Published: 1890

The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.

Published: 1678

An allegorical novel, written while Bunyan was imprisoned for conducting un-authorized religious services outside the Church of England.

Published: 1513

Translated by W.K. Marriott.

Author: Robert Louis Stevenson

Published: 1896

With the words last printed "a wilful convulsion of brute nature," the romance of Weir of Hermiston breaks off. They were dictated, I believe, on the very morning of the writer's sudden seizure and death. Weir of Hermiston thus remains in the work of Stevenson what Edwin Drood is in the work of Dickens, or Denis Duval in that of Thackeray, or rather it remains relatively more--for if each of those fragments holds an honourable place among its author's writings, among Stevenson's the fragment of Weir holds certainly the highest.