Penguin's Must-Read Classics

Updated 3 months ago
64 Books

They broke boundaries and challenged conceptions. We asked you for your must-read classics; from iconic bestsellers to lesser-known gems, these are your essential recommends.

Position	Details	Rating	Readers Count
#1	Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen	4.18	2,056 reads
#2	To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee	4.17	3,079 reads
#3	The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald	3.73	3,116 reads
#4	One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez Gregory Rabassa (Translator)	4.09	941 reads
#5	In Cold Blood Truman Capote	4.11	500 reads
#6	Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys	3.44	143 reads
#7	Brave New World Aldous Huxley	3.88	2,264 reads
#8	I Capture the Castle Dodie Smith	3.78	90 reads
#9	Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë	3.99	1,270 reads
#10	Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky Richard Pevear (Translator) Larissa Volokhonsky (Translator)	4.26	1,029 reads
#11	The Secret History Donna Tartt	4.05	1,012 reads
#12	The Call of the Wild Jack London	3.65	485 reads
#13	Persuasion Jane Austen	4.08	523 reads
#14	Les Miserables Victor Hugo	4.25	30 reads
#15	Moby-Dick: or, The Whale Herman Melville	3.53	576 reads
#16	To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf	3.74	259 reads
#17	The Death of the Heart Elizabeth Bowen	3.67	8 reads
#18	Frankenstein Mary Shelley	3.85	1,932 reads
#19	The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov Katherine Tiernan O'Connor (Translator) Diana Lewis Burgin (Translator)	4.17	478 reads
#20	The Go-Between L.P. Hartley	4.09	14 reads
#21	The Iliad Homer	3.99	90 reads
#22	One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Ken Kesey	4.07	545 reads
#23	1984 George Orwell	4.21	4,775 reads
#24	The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger	3.59	2,378 reads
#25	Beloved Toni Morrison	3.91	412 reads
#26	The Code of the Woosters P.G. Wodehouse	4.5	10 reads
#27	Dracula Bram Stoker	3.86	1,466 reads
#28	The Outsiders S. E. Hinton	3.94	970 reads
#29	The Chrysalids John Wyndham	3.71	107 reads
#30	War and Peace Leo Tolstoy Marcy Kahan Mike Walker	4.09	341 reads
#31	Great Expectations Charles Dickens	3.51	612 reads
#32	Another Country James Baldwin	4.02	39 reads
#33	Catch-22 Joseph Heller	3.99	846 reads
#34	The Age of Innocence Edith Wharton	3.99	128 reads
#35	Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe	3.64	463 reads
#36	Middlemarch George Eliot	4.22	166 reads
#37	Rebecca Daphne du Maurier	4.14	561 reads
#38	Tess of the D'Urbervilles Thomas Hardy	3.64	198 reads
#39	Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray	3.6	61 reads
#40	Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh	3.76	101 reads
#41	Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert Sérgio Duarte (Translator)	3.58	300 reads
#42	The Mill on the Floss George Eliot	3.83	49 reads
#43	Barchester Towers Anthony Trollope	4.06	18 reads
#44	Lady Chatterley's Lover D.H. Lawrence	3.41	59 reads
#45	The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas	4.31	887 reads
#46	The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck	3.8	736 reads
#47	Ulysses James Joyce	4	7 reads
#48	East of Eden John Steinbeck	4.48	571 reads
#49	The Lord of the Rings J.R.R. Tolkien	4.54	1,285 reads
#50	The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky Constance Garnett (Translator)	4.38	432 reads
#51	Buddenbrooks Thomas Mann	4.05	26 reads
#52	Lolita Vladimir Nabokov	3.88	950 reads
#53	The Secret Garden Frances Hodgson Burnett	4.03	763 reads
#54	Scoop Evelyn Waugh	3.74	24 reads
#55	Love in a Cold Climate Nancy Mitford	4	11 reads
#56	A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens	3.62	639 reads
#57	The Diary of a Nobody George Grossmith Weedon Grossmith	3.41	22 reads
#58	Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy Richard Pevear (Translator) Larissa Volokhonsky (Translator)	4	599 reads
#59	The betrothed Alessandro Manzoni	3.2	14 reads
#60	Orlando Virginia Woolf	3.79	128 reads
#61	Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand	3.19	390 reads
#62	The Time Machine H. G. Wells	3.69	843 reads
#63	The Art of War Sun Tzu	3.69	605 reads
#64	The Forsyte Saga John Galsworthy	4.08	18 reads