Penguin's Must-Read Classics

Updated 23 days ago
100 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.

https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2022/05/100-must-read-classic-books

Position	Details	Rating	Readers Count
#1	Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen	4.17	2,240 reads
#2	To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee	4.17	3,284 reads
#3	The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald	3.72	3,338 reads
#4	One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez	4.09	1,008 reads
#5	In Cold Blood Truman Capote	4.1	558 reads
#6	Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys	3.44	150 reads
#7	Brave New World Aldous Huxley	3.88	2,439 reads
#8	I Capture the Castle Dodie Smith	3.82	94 reads
#9	Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë	4	1,349 reads
#10	Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky Richard Pevear (Translator) Larissa Volokhonsky (Translator)	4.25	1,117 reads
#11	The Secret History Donna Tartt	4.07	1,085 reads
#12	The Call of the Wild Jack London	3.66	513 reads
#13	Persuasion Jane Austen	4.07	554 reads
#14	Les Misérables Victor Hugo Norman Denny (Translator)	4.17	437 reads
#15	Moby Dick Herman Melville Lucien Jacques (Translator) Joan Smith (Translator)	3.56	667 reads
#16	To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf	3.75	275 reads
#17	The Death of the Heart Elizabeth Bowen	3.57	10 reads
#18	Frankenstein Mary Shelley	3.85	2,094 reads
#19	The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov Katherine Tiernan O'Connor (Translator) Diana Lewis Burgin (Translator)	4.16	516 reads
#20	The Go-Between L.P. Hartley	4.09	14 reads
#21	The Iliad Homer	3.99	93 reads
#22	One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Ken Kesey	4.07	588 reads
#23	1984 George Orwell	4.21	5,164 reads
#24	The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger	3.6	2,565 reads
#25	Beloved Toni Morrison	3.91	437 reads
#26	The Code of the Woosters P.G. Wodehouse	4.5	10 reads
#27	Dracula Bram Stoker	3.86	1,572 reads
#28	The Outsiders S. E. Hinton	3.95	1,028 reads
#29	The Chrysalids John Wyndham	3.73	109 reads
#30	War and Peace Leo Tolstoy Marcy Kahan Mike Walker	4.07	363 reads
#31	Great Expectations Charles Dickens	3.54	640 reads
#32	Another Country James Baldwin	3.98	41 reads
#33	Catch-22 Joseph Heller	4	909 reads
#34	The Age of Innocence Edith Wharton	4.02	134 reads
#35	Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe	3.63	491 reads
#36	Middlemarch George Eliot	4.2	177 reads
#37	Rebecca Daphne du Maurier	4.13	591 reads
#38	Tess of the D'Urbervilles Thomas Hardy	3.68	207 reads
#39	Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray	3.6	64 reads
#40	Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh	3.75	102 reads
#41	Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert Sérgio Duarte (Translator)	3.59	321 reads
#42	The Mill on the Floss George Eliot	3.8	50 reads
#43	Barchester Towers Anthony Trollope	4.06	18 reads
#44	Lady Chatterley's Lover D.H. Lawrence	3.46	62 reads
#45	The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas	4.31	956 reads
#46	The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck	3.81	780 reads
#47	Ulysses James Joyce	4	8 reads
#48	East of Eden John Steinbeck	4.47	620 reads
#49	The Lord of the Rings J.R.R. Tolkien	4.54	1,401 reads
#50	The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky Constance Garnett (Translator)	4.39	470 reads
#51	Buddenbrooks Thomas Mann	4.05	27 reads
#52	Lolita Vladimir Nabokov	3.9	1,013 reads
#53	The Secret Garden Frances Hodgson Burnett	4.04	792 reads
#54	Scoop Evelyn Waugh	3.74	24 reads
#55	Love in a Cold Climate Nancy Mitford	4	12 reads
#56	A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens	3.63	671 reads
#57	The Diary of a Nobody George Grossmith Weedon Grossmith	3.33	23 reads
#58	Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy Richard Pevear (Translator) Larissa Volokhonsky (Translator)	3.99	633 reads
#59	The betrothed Alessandro Manzoni	3.2	14 reads
#60	Orlando Virginia Woolf	3.8	143 reads
#61	Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand	3.19	417 reads
#62	The Time Machine H. G. Wells	3.69	953 reads
#63	The Art of War Sun Tzu	3.68	640 reads
#64	The Forsyte Saga John Galsworthy	4.14	19 reads
#65	Travels with Charley John Steinbeck	4.08	100 reads
#66	Tropic of Cancer Henry Miller	3.3	79 reads
#67	Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes Edith Grossman	3.93	20 reads
#68	Staying On Paul Scott	4	5 reads
#69	Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame	4	3 reads
#70	The Quiet American Graham Greene	3.88	90 reads
#71	Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë	3.64	1,186 reads
#72	Perfume Patrick Suskind	3.6	6 reads
#73	The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain	3.58	1,106 reads
#74	Of Human Bondage W. Somerset Maugham	4.21	55 reads
#75	Bleak House Charles Dickens	4.02	97 reads
#76	Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen Sam Ngo	3.83	677 reads
#77	The Picture of Dorian Grey Oscar Wilde	4.06	1,740 reads
#78	A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens	4.05	884 reads
#79	Silas Marner George Eliot	3.48	81 reads
#80	Mrs Dalloway Virginia Woolf	3.74	363 reads
#81	Little Women Louisa May Alcott	3.96	1,050 reads
#82	The Sea, the Sea Iris Murdoch	4.14	27 reads
#83	David Copperfield Charles Dickens	3.97	254 reads
#84	The Castle Franz Kafka Mark Harman (Translator)	3.76	124 reads
#85	I, Claudius Robert Graves Stephen Alcorn	4.1	90 reads
#86	I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelou	4.14	312 reads
#87	A Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole	3.85	350 reads
#88	The Razor's Edge W. Somerset Maugham	4.14	39 reads
#89	Lark Rise to Candleford Flora Thompson	5	2 reads
#90	The Return of the Native Thomas Hardy	3.8	39 reads
#91	A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce	3.57	261 reads
#92	Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad	3.31	796 reads
#93	North and South Elizabeth Gaskell	4.06	139 reads
#94	The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood	4.09	2,193 reads
#95	Giovanni's Room James Baldwin	4.39	221 reads
#96	The Godfather Mario Puzo	4.29	362 reads
#97	The Woman in White Wilkie Collins	4.01	140 reads
#98	One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn	3.85	146 reads
#99	White Nights Fyodor Dostoevsky Fyodor Dostoyevsky	3.95	241 reads
#100	Hard Times Charles Dickens	3.25	79 reads