Archive Collection
100 Classic Books Everyone Should Read
1605–1899
These 100 classic books shaped world literature long before modern literary prizes existed. The list runs from Don Quixote in 1605 through the great novels of the nineteenth century, and every entry includes a summary and the historical moment that produced it.
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| Year | Title & Author | Historical Context |
|---|---|---|
| 1899 | The Awakening | Herbert S. Stone and Co. published The Awakening on 22 April 1899 under a working title Chopin had considered, A Solitary Soul, before settling on… |
| 1899 | Heart of Darkness | Blackwood's Magazine serialized Heart of Darkness across three issues in February, March, and April 1899, marking the magazine's thousandth number,… |
| 1898 | The Turn of the Screw | Collier's Weekly serialized The Turn of the Screw from 27 January to 16 April 1898, paying James nine hundred dollars for the rights, and Macmillan… |
| 1898 | The War of the Worlds | Pearson's Magazine serialized The War of the Worlds in Britain from April to December 1897, with Cosmopolitan running it simultaneously in America,… |
| 1897 | Dracula | Archibald Constable and Company published Dracula in London around 26 May 1897, bound in plain yellow cloth and priced at six shillings, under a… |
| 1895 | Jude the Obscure | Harper's New Monthly Magazine serialized a bowdlerized version of the novel from December 1894 to November 1895 under the titles The Simpletons and… |
| 1895 | The Red Badge of Courage | The Philadelphia Press serialized an abbreviated eighteen thousand word version in December 1894, and D. Appleton and Company published the full… |
| 1895 | The Time Machine | The New Review serialized The Time Machine from January to May 1895 after an earlier partial version had run in the National Observer the previous… |
| 1894 | The Jungle Book | Macmillan published The Jungle Book in 1894, following individual story publication in magazines through 1893 and 1894, with illustrations by… |
| 1892 | The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes | The Strand Magazine serialized the twelve stories from July 1891 to June 1892, paying Doyle thirty guineas apiece and watching its own circulation… |
| 1891 | Tess of the d'Urbervilles | The Graphic serialized a censored version of the novel through 1891 before Hardy published it complete in three volumes that same year and as a… |
| 1890 | The Picture of Dorian Gray | Lippincott's Monthly Magazine published a shorter version of the novel in July 1890, censored by roughly five hundred words at the American editor's… |
| 1889 | A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court | Chatto and Windus published the novel in England in December 1889 as A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur, with Charles L. Webster and Company… |
| 1889 | Three Men in a Boat | J. W. Arrowsmith published Three Men in a Boat in August 1889. Reviewers at the time were largely unkind, sneering at the book's slangy,… |
| 1887 | A Study in Scarlet | A Study in Scarlet first appeared in Beeton's Christmas Annual for December 1887 and drew little notice at the time, so few copies of that annual… |
| 1886 | Kidnapped | Young Folks magazine serialized Kidnapped from May to July 1886, and Cassell and Company published it as a book that same year. It sold well and was… |
| 1886 | The Mayor of Casterbridge | The Graphic serialized The Mayor of Casterbridge weekly from January 1886, with illustrations by Robert Barnes, and Smith, Elder and Co. published it… |
| 1886 | Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde | Longmans, Green and Co. published the novella in London in January 1886, with Scribner's issuing it in New York the same month, priced as a cheap… |
| 1885 | The Rise of Silas Lapham | The Century Magazine began serializing the novel in November 1884, and it appeared as a complete book in 1885, published the same year Mark Twain's… |
| 1885 | King Solomon's Mines | Cassell and Company published King Solomon's Mines in September 1885 after several other publishers had turned it down, advertising it with… |
| 1885 | Germinal | Zola wrote Germinal between April 1884 and January 1885, and Gil Blas serialized it from November 1884 to February 1885 before its publication as a… |
| 1884 | Adventures of Huckleberry Finn | Chatto and Windus published the novel in Britain on 10 December 1884, with the American edition from Charles L. Webster following on 18 February… |
| 1883 | The Adventures of Pinocchio | Collodi serialized the story as La storia di un burattino in the Giornale per i bambini from July 1881, initially stopping at the puppet's hanging,… |
| 1883 | Treasure Island | Treasure Island ran in the boys' magazine Young Folks from October 1881 to January 1882 under the pseudonym Captain George North, before Cassell and… |
| 1881 | The Portrait of a Lady | The Portrait of a Lady ran simultaneously in The Atlantic Monthly and Macmillan's Magazine through 1880 and 1881 before its book publication that… |
| 1880 | Heidi | Friedrich Andreas Perthes published the story in two parts, in 1880 and 1881, under the fuller titles Heidi: Her Years of Wandering and Learning and… |
| 1880 | The Brothers Karamazov | The Brothers Karamazov ran serially in The Russian Messenger from January 1879 to November 1880 and appeared as a complete novel that same year;… |
| 1878 | The Return of the Native | The Return of the Native ran in twelve monthly installments in Belgravia, a magazine known for its taste for sensation, from January to December… |
| 1877 | Black Beauty | Jarrold and Sons published Black Beauty on 24 November 1877. Within two years, a million copies were already circulating in the United States alone,… |
| 1877 | Anna Karenina | Anna Karenina ran serially in The Russian Messenger from 1875 to 1877 before its complete publication in book form in 1878. Dostoevsky, reviewing it… |
| 1876 | The Adventures of Tom Sawyer | The American Publishing Company issued the first illustrated American edition in December 1876, following an earlier unillustrated printing from… |
| 1875 | The Way We Live Now | Trollope wrote the novel between May and December 1873, and Chapman and Hall serialized it in twenty monthly parts starting in February 1874 before… |
| 1874 | Far from the Madding Crowd | Far from the Madding Crowd ran anonymously in Cornhill Magazine before Smith, Elder and Co. published it as a complete novel on 23 November 1874.… |
| 1872 | Around the World in Eighty Days | Le Temps began serializing the novel in French on 6 November 1872, and Pierre Jules Hetzel published it as a book on 30 January 1873, part of Verne's… |
| 1871 | Middlemarch | William Blackwood and Sons published Middlemarch in eight parts between December 1871 and December 1872, a serial format George Henry Lewes, Eliot's… |
| 1871 | Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There | Macmillan published Through the Looking Glass in December 1871, dated 1872 on the title page, as a sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and it… |
| 1870 | Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas | Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas ran serially from March 1869 to June 1870 in Pierre Jules Hetzel's Magasin d'education et de recreation before… |
| 1869 | War and Peace | Tolstoy serialized the novel's early chapters in The Russian Messenger from 1865 under the title The Year 1805 and published the complete work in… |
| 1869 | The Idiot | The Idiot was serialised in The Russian Messenger through 1868 and 1869, written while Dostoevsky lived abroad in considerable poverty, interrupted… |
| 1868 | Little Women | Roberts Brothers published the first volume of Little Women in 1868 and a second volume, published in Britain as Good Wives, in 1869. The publisher… |
| 1868 | The Moonstone | The Moonstone was serialised in All the Year Round and simultaneously in Harper's in the United States between January and August 1868, with the book… |
| 1866 | Crime and Punishment | Crime and Punishment appeared in twelve monthly instalments in The Russian Messenger across 1866, from the January issue to the December one, and its… |
| 1865 | Alice's Adventures in Wonderland | Contemporary reaction called the book, in one period description, "exquisitely wild, fantastic, impossible," and the Victorian writer Walter Besant… |
| 1864 | Notes from Underground | Notes from Underground ran in the journal Epoch across its January to April 1864 issues, appearing at a low point in Dostoevsky's own life, not long… |
| 1864 | Journey to the Center of the Earth | Journey to the Center of the Earth was first published in French in 1864 by Pierre Jules Hetzel as Voyage au centre de la Terre, with the expanded… |
| 1862 | Les Misérables | Les Misérables was published in Brussels on 31 March 1862 while Hugo was living in political exile on Guernsey, then in Paris three days later,… |
| 1862 | Fathers and Sons | Fathers and Sons first appeared in full in the Moscow journal The Russian Messenger in early 1862, and Turgenev revised the text for a separate… |
| 1861 | Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl | Thayer and Eldridge published Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl in January 1861; when the firm collapsed shortly afterward, Jacobs herself bought… |
| 1861 | Silas Marner | Silas Marner, published in full as Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe, appeared on 2 April 1861 from William Blackwood and Sons, coming between The… |
| 1861 | Great Expectations | Great Expectations ran in thirty six weekly parts in All the Year Round from December 1860 to August 1861, and Dickens started it specifically to… |
| 1860 | The Mill on the Floss | The Mill on the Floss was published on 4 April 1860 in three volumes by William Blackwood and Sons, with an American edition from Harper and Brothers… |
| 1860 | The Woman in White | The Woman in White ran simultaneously in Charles Dickens's All the Year Round in Britain and Harper's Weekly in America through 1859 and 1860, and… |
| 1859 | Oblomov | Oblomov was published serially in the journal Otechestvennye Zapiski beginning 14 January 1859. The critic Nikolai Dobrolyubov's essay that year,… |
| 1859 | A Tale of Two Cities | A Tale of Two Cities ran in thirty one weekly instalments in All the Year Round, the periodical Dickens founded and edited himself, from April to… |
| 1859 | Adam Bede | Published on 1 February 1859 by John Blackwood as George Eliot's first full novel, Adam Bede appeared under a pseudonym that hid the fact that its… |
| 1857 | Barchester Towers | William Longman, Trollope's own publisher, initially balked at the manuscript, finding parts of it full of vulgarity and exaggeration, and Trollope… |
| 1857 | Madame Bovary | Madame Bovary ran in the Revue de Paris from October to December 1856, and the journal's editors cut passages they feared would draw prosecution… |
| 1855 | North and South | North and South ran in twenty weekly instalments in Household Words, the magazine Charles Dickens edited, from September 1854 to January 1855, and… |
| 1855 | Leaves of Grass | Ralph Waldo Emerson, sent an early copy, wrote back on 21 July 1855 that he found it "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has… |
| 1854 | Walden | Published on 9 August 1854 by Ticknor and Fields, Walden sold slowly at first, taking five years to move two thousand copies and falling out of print… |
| 1853 | Cranford | Serialised in Household Words, the magazine Charles Dickens edited, from December 1851 to May 1853, Cranford was not widely reviewed on first… |
| 1853 | Twelve Years a Slave | Published in 1853, a year after Uncle Tom's Cabin, Twelve Years a Slave was promoted by antislavery organisations and Northern newspapers as factual… |
| 1853 | Bleak House | Serialised from March 1852 to September 1853, Bleak House targeted the real Court of Chancery, whose interminable, expensive suits were a well known… |
| 1852 | Uncle Tom's Cabin | Serialised beginning in June 1851 and published as a book the following year, Uncle Tom's Cabin sold three thousand copies on its first day and three… |
| 1851 | Moby-Dick; or, The Whale | Moby Dick failed. Published in 1851, it sold around three thousand copies in Melville's lifetime and split the reviewers, London's John Bull found… |
| 1850 | The Scarlet Letter | Published in March 1850 by Ticknor, Reed and Fields, the novel provoked immediate objection in Salem over Hawthorne's introductory essay, a satirical… |
| 1850 | David Copperfield | Serialised in nineteen monthly instalments from May 1849 to November 1850, illustrated throughout by Hablot Knight Browne under the name Phiz, David… |
| 1848 | The Tenant of Wildfell Hall | Reviewers in 1848 were split: Charles Kingsley in Fraser's Magazine allowed that society owed the book thanks for exposing an ugly hypocritical… |
| 1848 | Vanity Fair | Contemporary critics offered strong praise mixed with unease at the book's unrelentingly dark view of human motive; Charlotte Bronte, admiring the… |
| 1847 | Wuthering Heights | Early reviews were largely hostile. Graham's Lady Magazine called it a compound of vulgar depravity and unnatural horrors, and The Examiner found it… |
| 1847 | Jane Eyre | Published on 19 October 1847 by Smith, Elder and Co under the pseudonym Currer Bell, Jane Eyre provoked immediate and divided reaction: George Henry… |
| 1845 | Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass | Published in May 1845 by the Anti Slavery Office, the Narrative sold five thousand copies within four months and roughly thirty thousand by 1860, and… |
| 1846 | The Count of Monte Cristo | Serialised in the Journal des Debats from August 1844 to January 1846 and issued by Pétion in eighteen volumes across 1844 and 1845, the novel was,… |
| 1844 | The Three Musketeers | Serialised in the newspaper Le Siecle from March to July 1844 and published in book form the same year, The Three Musketeers set off two sequels,… |
| 1843 | A Christmas Carol | Published on 19 December 1843 by Chapman and Hall, the first printing of six thousand copies sold out by Christmas Eve, and thirteen editions had… |
| 1842 | Dead Souls | Published in 1842 as The Wanderings of Chichikov, or Dead Souls, the book landed as both comedy and indictment of a serf economy that let a man's… |
| 1840 | A Hero of Our Time | Written in 1839 and published in 1840, with a revised edition the following year, A Hero of Our Time became the second landmark portrait, after… |
| 1838 | Oliver Twist | Serialised in Bentley's Miscellany from February 1837 to April 1839 and published in three volumes in 1838, with George Cruikshank supplying the… |
| 1835 | Père Goriot | Serialised in the Revue de Paris over the winter of 1834 and 1835 before appearing as a book, Père Goriot became the keystone of Balzac's vast… |
| 1833 | Eugene Onegin | Published in instalments through the late 1820s and gathered complete in 1833, Eugene Onegin became the book against which Russian fiction measured… |
| 1831 | The Hunchback of Notre-Dame | Hugo wrote the book partly as an act of advocacy for a building then crumbling and unfashionable, and it worked better than any campaign in… |
| 1830 | The Red and the Black | The title's red and black are generally read as the army and the church, the two careers open to ambition under the Bourbon Restoration, and the… |
| 1827 | The Betrothed | No other novel occupies the place this one holds in its national culture: it is commonly called the most famous and most read novel in Italian, it is… |
| 1826 | The Last of the Mohicans | Cooper conceived the novel after visiting the caves at Glens Falls in 1825 and wrote it in three or four months, anchoring it to the real siege of… |
| 1819 | Ivanhoe | Reviewers praised its descriptive power, and Rebecca was admired almost unanimously; Thackeray spoke for generations of dissatisfied readers with… |
| 1818 | Frankenstein | Early reviews split on party lines, Walter Scott praising the author's uncommon powers of poetic imagination in the belief that Percy Shelley had… |
| 1817 | Persuasion | Austen wrote Persuasion in declining health in about a year, beginning it while Emma was in the press and finishing a first draft in July 1816, and… |
| 1815 | Emma | The dedication has a comic backstory: the Prince Regent's librarian gave Austen a tour of Carlton House and conveyed that a dedication would be… |
| 1813 | Pride and Prejudice | It was fashionable from the first season, and the compliments came from useful quarters: Anne Isabella Milbanke, the future Lady Byron, called it the… |
| 1811 | Sense and Sensibility | The earliest version was an epistolary tale called Elinor and Marianne, drafted in the 1790s and rewritten into narrative over more than a decade, so… |
| 1782 | Dangerous Liaisons | Contemporaries read it as scandal rather than prophecy, and its first audiences included the aristocrats it anatomised. Only later did it come to… |
| 1774 | The Sorrows of Young Werther | The response became a phenomenon with its own name, Werther Fever. Young men across Europe dressed in Werther's blue coat and yellow waistcoat; there… |
| 1759 | Tristram Shandy | Samuel Johnson ruled against it, nothing odd will do long, and has been losing that argument for two hundred and fifty years. Contemporaries were… |
| 1759 | Candide | The book is an argument with a specific idea, the optimism of Leibniz, and a specific event, the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, which killed tens of… |
| 1749 | Tom Jones | The novel was attacked on publication for lowness, for its frankness about sex and for making a fornicator its hero; it was also an immediate… |
| 1726 | Gulliver's Travels | The satire had live targets: the Royal Society's projectors sat for the scientists of Laputa, and Whig politics for Lilliput's heel heights and egg… |
| 1719 | Robinson Crusoe | The story's likely seed was Alexander Selkirk, the Scottish sailor marooned four years on a Pacific island until 1709, though Defoe neither confirmed… |
| 1678 | The Pilgrim's Progress | Few books have travelled like this one. It was in Dutch by 1681, German by 1703, Swedish by 1727, and a North American edition appeared within three… |
| 1667 | Paradise Lost | Milton had planned a national epic on a legendary British king, Arthur among the candidates, before settling on a subject larger than any nation. The… |
| 1605 | Don Quixote | Part one appeared in January 1605 and succeeded immediately; an English translation followed within seven years, and French, German and Italian… |