Books to read before you die

1. Pre-1700 (0/8)

1. Oroonoko, Aphra Behn
2. The Princess of Clèves, Comtesse de La Fayette
3. The Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan
4. Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
5. Gargantua and Pantagruel, Françoise Rabelais
6. The Thousand and One Nights, Anonymous
7. The Golden Ass, Lucius Apuleius
8. Aesop’s Fables, Aesopus

2. The 1700’s (0/30)

1. The Monk, M.G. Lewis
2. The Mysteries of Udolpho, Ann Radcliffe
3. The Interesting Narrative, Olaudah Equiano
4. The Adventures of Caleb Williams, William Godwin
5. Cecilia, Fanny Burney
6. Confessions, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
7. Evelina, Fanny Burney
8. The Sorrows of Young Werther, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
9. Humphrey Clinker, Tobias George Smollett
10. The Man of Feeling, Henry Mackenzie
11. A Sentimental Journey, Laurence Sterne
12. Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne
13. The Vicar of Wakefield, Oliver Goldsmith
14. The Castle of Otranto, Horace Walpole
15. Émile; or, On Education, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
16. Rasselas, Samuel Johnson
17. Candide, Voltaire
18. Amelia, Henry Fielding
19. Peregrine Pickle, Tobias George Smollett
20. Fanny Hill, John Cleland
21. Tom Jones, Henry Fielding
22. Roderick Random, Tobias George Smollett
23. Clarissa, Samuel Richardson
24. Pamela, Samuel Richardson
25. Joseph Andrews, Henry Fielding
26. A Modest Proposal, Jonathan Swift
27. Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift
28. Moll Flanders, Daniel Defoe
29. Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe
30. A Tale of a Tub, Jonathan Swift

3. The 1800’s (4/120)

1. The Awakening, Kate Chopin
2. The Turn of the Screw, Henry James
3. The War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells
4. The Invisible Man, H.G. Wells
5. What Maisie Knew, Henry James
6. Dracula, Bram Stoker
7. Quo Vadis, Henryk Sienkiewicz
8. The Island of Dr. Moreau, H.G. Wells
9. The Time Machine, H.G. Wells
10. Effi Briest, Theodore Fontane
11. Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy
12. The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman
13. Born in Exile, George Gissing
14. Diary of a Nobody, George & Weedon Grossmith
15. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
16. News from Nowhere, William Morris
17. New Grub Street, George Gissing
18. Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
19. The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
20. The Kreutzer Sonata, Leo Tolstoy
21. Hunger, Knut Hamsun
22. The Master of Ballantrae, Robert Louis Stevenson
23. The Woodlanders, Thomas Hardy
24. She, H. Rider Haggard
25. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson
26. The Mayor of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy
27. Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson
28. King Solomon’s Mines, H. Rider Haggard
29. Germinal, Émile Zola
30. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
31. Marius the Epicurean, Walter Pater
32. Against the Grain, Joris-Karl Huysmans
33. A Woman’s Life, Guy de Maupassant
34. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
35. The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James
36. Ben-Hur, Lew Wallace
37. Nana, Émile Zola
38. The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky
39. Return of the Native, Thomas Hardy
40. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
41. Virgin Soil, Ivan Turgenev
42. Daniel Deronda, George Eliot
43. The Hand of Ethelberta, Thomas Hardy
44. Far from the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
45. Around the World in Eighty Days, Jules Verne
46. The Devils, Fyodor Dostoevsky
47. Erewhon, Samuel Butler
48. Middlemarch, George Eliot
49. Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There, Lewis Carroll
50. He Knew He Was Right, Anthony Trollope
51. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
52. Phineas Finn, Anthony Trollope
53. The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoevsky
54. The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins
55. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
56. Thérèse Raquin, Émile Zola
57. The Last Chronicle of Barset, Anthony Trollope
58. Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Jules Verne
59. Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
60. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
61. Our Mutual Friend, Charles Dickens
62. Uncle Silas, Sheridan Le Fanu
63. Notes from the Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky
64. The Water-Babies, Charles Kingsley
65. Les Misérables, Victor Hugo
66. Silas Marner, George Eliot
67. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
68. On the Eve, Ivan Turgenev
69. Castle Richmond, Anthony Trollope
70. The Mill on the Floss, George Eliot
71. The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins
72. The Marble Faun, Nathaniel Hawthorne
73. A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
74. Adam Bede, George Eliot
75. Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
76. North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell
77. Hard Times, Charles Dickens
78. Walden, Henry David Thoreau
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Villette, Charlotte Brontë
81. Cranford, Elizabeth Gaskell
82. Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lonely, Harriet Beecher Stowe
83. The Blithedale Romance, Nathaniel Hawthorne
84. The House of the Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne
85. Moby-Dick, Herman Melville
86. The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne
87. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
88. Mary Barton, Elizabeth Gaskell
89. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Brontë
90. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
91. Agnes Grey, Anne Brontë
92. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
93. Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray
94. The Count of Monte-Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
95. The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas
96. The Purloined Letter, Edgar Allan Poe
97. Martin Chuzzlewit, Charles Dickens
98. The Pit and the Pendulum, Edgar Allan Poe
99. Lost Illusions, Honoré de Balzac
100. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
101. Dead Souls, Nikolay Gogol
102. The Fall of the House of Usher, Edgar Allan Poe
103. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, Charles Dickens
104. Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens
105. Le Père Goriot, Honoré de Balzac
106. Eugénie Grandet, Honoré de Balzac
107. Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper
108. The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, James Hogg
109. The Monastery, Sir Walter Scott
110. Ivanhoe, Sir Walter Scott
111. Frankenstein, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
112. Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen
113. Persuasion, Jane Austen
114. Rob Roy, Sir Walter Scott
115. Emma, Jane Austen
116. Mansfield Park, Jane Austen
117. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
118. The Absentee, Maria Edgeworth
119. Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen
120. Castle Rackrent, Maria Edgeworth

4. The 1900’s (1/76)

1. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
2. Animal Farm, George Orwell
3. Coming Up for Air, George Orwell
4. The Years, Virginia Woolf
5. Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
6. Keep the Aspidistra Flying, George Orwell
7. At the Mountains of Madness, H.P. Lovecraft
8. Burmese Days, George Orwell
9. Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald
10. The Waves, Virginia Woolf
11. Her Privates We, Frederic Manning
12. Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas Wolfe
13. Orlando, Virginia Woolf
14. Lady Chatterley’s Lover, D.H. Lawrence
15. Remembrance of Things Past, Marcel Proust
16. To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
17. The Plumed Serpent, D.H. Lawrence
18. Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
19. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
20. The Trial, Franz Kafka
21. The Professor’s House, Willa Cather
22. The Garden Party, Katherine Mansfield
23. The Enormous Room, E.E. Cummings
24. Jacob’s Room, Virginia Woolf
25. Siddhartha, Herman Hesse
26. The Glimpses of the Moon, Edith Wharton
27. Life and Death of Harriett Frean, May Sinclair
28. Aaron’s Rod, D.H. Lawrence
29. Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis
30. Ulysses, James Joyce
31. The Fox, D.H. Lawrence
32. Crome Yellow, Aldous Huxley
33. The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
34. Main Street, Sinclair Lewis
35. Women in Love, D.H. Lawrence
36. Night and Day, Virginia Woolf
37. The Shadow Line, Joseph Conrad
38. Summer, Edith Wharton
39. Bunner Sisters, Edith Wharton
40. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
41. Under Fire, Henri Barbusse
42. Rashomon, Akutagawa Ryunosuke
43. The Good Soldier, Ford Madox Ford
44. The Voyage Out, Virginia Woolf
45. Of Human Bondage, William Somerset Maugham
46. The Rainbow, D.H. Lawrence
47. The Thirty-Nine Steps, John Buchan
48. Tarzan of the Apes, Edgar Rice Burroughs
49. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
50. Sons and Lovers, D.H. Lawrence
51. Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton
52. Howards End, E.M. Forster
53. Three Lives, Gertrude Stein
54. Martin Eden, Jack London
55. Tono-Bungay, H.G. Wells
56. The Inferno, Henri Barbusse
57. A Room With a View, E.M. Forster
58. The Iron Heel, Jack London
59. The Old Wives’ Tale, Arnold Bennett
60. The House on the Borderland, William Hope Hodgson
61. Mother, Maxim Gorky
62. The Secret Agent, Joseph Conrad
63. The Jungle, Upton Sinclair
64. The Forsyte Sage, John Galsworthy
65. The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton
66. Where Angels Fear to Tread, E.M. Forster
67. Nostromo, Joseph Conrad
68. The Golden Bowl, Henry James
69. The Ambassadors, Henry James
70. The Riddle of the Sands, Erskine Childers
71. The Wings of the Dove, Henry James
72. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
73. The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
74. Kim, Rudyard Kipling
75. Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser
76. Lord Jim, Joseph Conrad