Author: George Eliot

Published: 1871

Making masterful use of a counterpointed plot, Eliot presents the stories of a number of denizens of a small English town on the eve of the Reform Bill of 1832. The main characters, Dorothea Brooke and Tertius Lydgate, each long for exceptional lives but are powerfully constrained by their own unrealistic expectations as well as conservative society. The novel is notable for its deep psychological insight and sophisticated character portraits.

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: 1875

Anna is the jewel of St. Petersburg society until she leaves her husband for the handsome and charming military officer, Count Vronsky. They fall in love, going beyond High Society's acceptance of trivial adulterous dalliances. But when Vronsky's love cools, Anna cannot bring herself to return to the husband she detests...
(Translated by Constance Garnett)

Published: 1881

Published: 1881

Published: 1899

The story tells of Charles Marlow, an Englishman who took a foreign assignment from a Belgian trading company as a ferry-boat captain in Africa. Although Conrad does not give the name of the river, at the time, Congo Free State, the location of the large and important Congo River was a private colony of Belgium's King Leopold II. Marlow is employed to transport ivory downriver. However, his more pressing assignment is to return Kurtz, another ivory trader, to civilization, in a cover-up. Kurtz has a reputation throughout the region. This symbolic story is a story within a story or frame narrative. It follows Marlow as he recounts from dusk through to late night, to a group of men aboard a ship anchored in the Thames Estuary his Congolese adventure. The passage of time and the darkening sky during the fictitious narrative-within-the-narrative parallel the atmosphere of the story. Wikipedia

Author: Marcel Proust

Published: 1922

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

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: 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: 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.

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.

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.

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: Thomas Hardy

Published: 1891

"Tess" is an exemplification of all the horrors of malignant destiny. By nature its heroine is incarnate goodness: every fibre of her being is pure; and yet, under the stress of circumstances, the compulsion of force and the beguilement of fraud, partly through ignorance, partly through delirium and desperation, she is harassed, degraded, despoiled, plunged into misery, goaded to the insane commission of homicide, and finally is hanged for murder.

Published: 1898

The War of the Worlds describes the fictional 1895 invasion of Earth by aliens from Mars who use laser-like Heat-Rays, chemical weapons, and mechanical three-legged ''fighting machines'' that could potentially be viewed as precursors to the tank. After defeating the resistance the Martians devastate much of eastern England, including London...

Published: 1770

Ostensibly Tristram's narration of his life story, one of the central jokes of the novel is that the main character cannot explain anything simply without making explanatory diversions to add context and colour to his tale, to the extent that we do not even reach Tristram's own birth until Volume III. Most of the action is concerned with domestic upsets or comic misunderstandings, which find humour in the opposing temperaments. In between such events, Tristram as narrator finds himself discoursing at length on sexual practices, insults, the influence of one's name, noses, as well as explorations of obstetrics, siege warfare and philosophy, as he struggles to marshall his material and finish the story of his life.

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: 1922

Ulysses chronicles the passage through Dublin of Leopold Bloom during an unremarkable day, June 16, 1904. The title alludes to the hero of Homer's Odyssey, and there are many parallels, both implicit and explicit, between the two works. Written from 1914 to 1921, the novel was serialized in the American journal The Little Review from 1918, until the publication of the Nausicaa episode led to a prosecution for obscenity. The book was first published in its entirety in Paris in 1922, but was banned in both the United States and United Kingdom until the 1930s. The work was blacklisted by Irish customs.

Author: Wilkie Collins

Published: 1868

Widely regarded as the precursor of the modern mystery and suspense novels, The Moonstone tells of the events surrounding the disappearance of a mysterious (and cursed) yellow diamond. T. S. Eliot called it 'the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels'. It contains a number of ideas which became common tropes of the genre, including a crime being investigated by talented amateurs who happen to be present when it is committed, and two police officers who exemplify respectively the 'Scotland Yard bungler' and the skilled, professional detective.

Published: 1853

To praise Cranford at this time of day is an idle task. After being overshadowed for a little, it has taken its place finally among the masterpieces of English fiction, along with Jane Austen and the Vicar of Wakefield. There has never been a more delightful and tender study of English village life, or one in which insight is so joined with kindliness.

Author: Mary Shelley

Published: 1818

The novel begins on a ship sailing north of the Arctic Circle, where the captain spots a figure traveling across the ice on a dog sled. This is Victor Frankenstein's creature, and close behind is Dr. Frankenstein himself. Invited onto the boat, the weak and ill Doctor tells the story of his alchemical studies and eventual construction of a man from inanimate matter.

Published: 1749

Author: Samuel Richardson

Published: 1748

Clarissa Harlowe, the tragic heroine of Clarissa, is a beautiful and virtuous young lady whose family has become very wealthy only in recent years and is now eager to become part of the aristocracy by acquiring estates and titles through advantageous pairings. Clarissa’s relatives attempt to force her to marry a rich but heartless man (Roger Solmes) against her will and, more importantly, against her own sense of virtue. Desperate to remain free, she is tricked by a young gentleman of her acquaintance, Lovelace, into escaping with him. However, she refuses to marry him, longing--unusual for a girl in her time--to live by herself in peace. (Summary by Wikipedia)

Author: Samuel Richardson

Published: 1748

Author: Samuel Richardson

Published: 1748

Author: Samuel Richardson

Published: 1748

Author: Samuel Richardson

Published: 1748

Author: Samuel Richardson

Published: 1748

Author: Samuel Richardson

Published: 1748

Published: 1862

As much a history or commentary as a work of fiction, Les Misérables is dominated by France's past. While the fictional aspects may seem to be an afterthought, Hugo's craft is apparent as he weaves multiple characters together. (Translated by Isabel F. Hapgood)

Published: 1855

The first of Trollope's ''Barsetshire'' series concerns Mr. Harding, elderly warden of Hiram's Hospital and Precentor of Barchester Cathedral. An engaging introduction to the life of the Victorian clergy and the behind-the-scenes politics that continue in Barchester Towers.

Published: 1905

One of the first novels of manners to emerge in American literature, and also one of Wharton's best-known works, The House of Mirth centers on Lily Bart, a New York socialite attempting to secure a husband and a place in affluent society.

Published: 1902

This may be the most popular of all of the Sherlock Holmes stories. Inspired by regional mythology of the British Isles concerning hell-hounds, the tale tells of detective Sherlock Holmes and his assistant Dr. Watson as they are called to investigate an alleged curse upon the house of the Baskervilles.

Published: 1884

The drifting journey of Huck and his friend Jim, a runaway slave, down the Mississippi River on their raft may be one of the most enduring images of escape and freedom in all of American literature. Although the society it satirized was already history at the time of publication, the book was quite controversial, and has remained so to this day.

Author: Jonathan Swift

Published: 1726

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

Published: 1886

The gripping novel of a London lawyer who investigates strange occurrences surrounding his old friend, Dr. Henry Jekyll, and the misanthropic Mr. Edward Hyde. The work is known for its vivid portrayal of a split personality, split in the sense that within the same person there is both an apparently good and an evil personality each being quite distinct from the other.

Published: 1866

From the Russian master of psychological characterizations, this novel portrays the carefully planned murder of a miserly, aged pawnbroker by a destitute Saint Petersburg student named Raskolnikov, followed by the emotional, mental, and physical effects of that action. Translated by Constance Garnett.

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: 1865

Followed by Through the Looking Glass.

Author: Emile Zola

Published: 1885

Translated by Havelock Ellis.

Published: 1844

The adventures of a young man named d'Artagnan after he leaves home to become a guard of the musketeers. D'Artagnan is not one of the musketeers of the title; those are his friends Athos, Porthos, and Aramis.

Published: 1834

Translated by Ellen Marriage.

Author: Shikibu Murasaki

Published: 1005

Translated into English by Suyematz Kenchio, 1900.

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

Author: Richard Burton

Published: 1885

Author: Richard Burton

Published: 1885

7. Nur Al-Din Ali and the Damsel Anis Al-Jalis
8. Tale of Ghanim Bin Ayyub, The Distraught, The Thrall O' Love
a. Tale of the First Eunuch, Bukhayt
b. Tale of the Second Eunuch, Kafur
9. Tale of King Omar Bin Al-Nu'uman and His Sons Sharrkan and
Zau Al-Makan
a. Tale of Taj Al-Muluk and the Princess Dunya
aa. Tale of Aziz and Azizah

Author: Richard Burton

Published: 1886

Author: Richard Burton

Published: 1887

Author: Richard Burton

Published: 1886

Author: Richard Burton

Published: 1886

Author: Sir Richard Francis Burton

Published: 1887

Author: Richard Burton

Published: 1886

Author: Richard Burton

Published: 1886

Author: Richard Burton

Author: Richard Burton

Published: 1887

Author: Richard Burton

Author: Richard Burton

Published: 1887

Author: Richard Burton