Classic books to read at least once in your lifetime

A tour de force of wit and sparkling dialogue, with characters and themes that still resonate today. Both a romance full of gowns and balls, and an incisive nineteenth-century satire, this is a novel that will pull on both your heart and your brain. Pride and Prejudice shows how the headstrong Elizabeth Bennet and the aristocratic Mr Darcy must have their pride humbled and their prejudices dissolved before they can acknowledge their love for each other.

One of the most renowned novels by this Victorian great, if you're looking for a Charles Dickens book to tick off of your literary bucket list, Great Expectations is a must-read. It tells the story of Pip, an orphan boy trying to transcend his humble origins who finds himself unexpectedly given the opportunity to live a life of wealth and respectability thanks to a mysterious benefactor. As time goes on, Pip comes to realise that the money he was gifted is tainted and the girl he has loved since childhood will never return his affections. Perhaps happiness can only be found in the very things he gave up in pursuit of a more sophisticated life.

A masterpiece of candid observation, emotional insight and transcending humour, Middlemarch is a truly monumental novel. Dorothea Brooke is a young woman set on filling her life with good deeds. She pursues the pompous Edward Casuabon, convinced that he embodies these principles, and becomes trapped in an unhappy marriage. Then there is Tertius Lydgate, an anguished progressive whose determination to bring modern medicine to the provinces is muddied by unrequited love. One of BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World, Middlemarch explores almost every subject of concern to modern life and so remains as culturally relevant today as it has ever been. 

Often copied but never bettered, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is the influential and shocking story of technology-created life, and is widely considered the first ever science-fiction novel. Born out of a competition between Mary Shelley and the poets Shelley and Byron over who could write the best horror story, Frankenstein is more relevant than ever in today’s world of boundary-pushing genetic experiments.

When Auld Jock, a shepherd, loses his job, he moves to Edinburgh in search of work. But the city isn’t kind to him and he falls into a life of poverty. Lonely, old and ill, his only companion is a plucky little Skye terrier named Bobby, who belonged to the farmer that dismissed Jock. When the farmer tries to take the dog back, Bobby escapes and finds his way back to town. From that day on, he stays devoted to Auld Jock, even guarding the old man’s grave in Greyfriars kirkyard for many years. Inspired by true events, Eleanor Atkinson's Greyfriars Bobby is the deeply touching story of an inseparable bond and a wonderful evocation of Edinburgh in the late nineteenth century.

Thousands of teenagers around the world have fallen in love with Marmee and her four daughters: Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy. This semi-autobiographical novel charts the highs and lows of the four sisters as they navigate their way from childhood to adulthood.

Following its immortal namesake through three centuries of history, Orlando is a whimsical exploration of perceptions of gender and love through the ages. Orlando is a young Elizabethan nobleman whose wealth and status afford him an extravagant lifestyle. Appointed ambassador in Constantinople, he wakes one morning to find he is a woman. Inspired by the life of her lover, Vita Sackville West, Virginia Woolf's wildly imaginative, comic story is a real trailblazer. 

Portraying a key moment in the anti-slavery movement, this unique memoir tells the incredible story of a man's escape from enslavement and journey to freedom. 

Maryland, 1818. Frederick Douglass is born into a life of slavery. Spending his youth being passed from enslaver to enslaver, city to field, he is subjected to unimaginable cruelty. After eventually managing to escape, his memoir became hugely influential in the abolition of slavery, a goal that Douglass devoted his live to. 

Charlotte Brontë's masterpiece introduced the world to one of fiction's most memorable protagonists. As a child, orphan Jane Eyre suffers under cruel guardians and harsh schooling, but her indomitable spirit shines through against the greatest odds, and when she takes a position as governess at Thornfield Hall, the last thing she expects is to fall in love with the brooding master of the house. An enduring love story and undisputed classic, Jane Eyre is full of passion, mystery, tragedy, and a strong-willed and beloved heroine. 

The book that best captures the flamboyance, the carelessness and the cruelty of the wealthy during America’s Jazz age. Evoking the glitz, glamour and the dark side of 1920s, The Great Gatsby is a cynical look at the limits of the American Dream.

H. G. Wells was among the first to express a plausible scientific method of time travel, and he also coined the term ‘time machine’ in this science fiction novella. The book has been adapted into three different films, and still influences science fiction writers today. The Time Machine is a pioneering classic that is considered by many to be the most influential sci-fi book of all time.

Cervantes’s satirical observation of the human condition is classed as Europe’s first ‘modern’ novel and has sold over 500 million copies since it was first published in the early seventeenth century. It follows Don Quixote and Sancho Panza as they journey through Spain in search of adventure. They face spirits, evil enchanters and giants in a quest to perform acts of valour worthy of Dulcinea, his lady love. Cervantes's words have made an impact across the globe; even and at over 1000 pages, we promise it's worth the time. 

The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement that saw an explosion of Black art, music and writing, yet few female creatives are remembered alongside their male counterparts. This vital anthology celebrates the women of colour at the heart of the movement, with poems and stories that explore subjects from love, loss and motherhood to jazz, passing and Jim Crow law. Showcasing popular authors alongside writers you might discover for the first time, this collection of daring and disruptive writing encapsulates early twentieth-century America in surprising and beautiful ways.

This groundbreaking novel examines race and class in America at the end of the nineteenth century. The narrator, who has lost his mother at a young age, is forced out of his comfortable middle-class life and into the world. His love of music takes him from an all-Black church in Georgia, to ragtime performances in New York, to the threats of the South. Here, the narrator abandons both his passion for music and his race, deciding to pass as white to survive.

Darwin’s record of his theory of evolution, which revolutionised our understanding of the natural world. On the Origin of Species is considered the foundation of evolutionary biology and is still hugely influential to this day.

Immerse yourself in 1920s New York through Nella Larsen's distinctive and revealing novel. The story centres around identity, belonging and two childhood friends who’ve long grown apart – Clare Kendry who is proud of her Harlem roots, and Irene Redford who has abandoned them altogether, ‘passing’ as white to her racist husband in the upper classes of New York. As their worlds intertwine once again, tensions lead up to a truly shocking conclusion. A classic far ahead of its time, Passing reads like the best of contemporary literary fiction.

Headstrong David Balfour, orphaned at seventeen, sets out from the Scottish Lowlands to seek his fortune in Edinburgh. Betrayed by his wealthy Uncle Ebenezer, he is carried away to sea to be sold into slavery in the Carolinas. On board, he secures a timely alliance with Jacobite adventurer Alan Breck, and together they make an epic escape across the western Highlands. Inspired by real events, Kidnapped is a swashbuckling adventure of bizarre encounters, political assassination and wild carousings with Robert Louis Stevenson’s unique counterpoint of low morals and high comedy threaded throughout.

Heathcliff and Cathy are one of the most romantic and passionate couples in literature and Wuthering Heights is unsurpassed in its depiction of destructive love. This haunting gothic romance is one of the great novels of the nineteenth century, and has influenced numerous songs and film adaptations.

With its extraordinary intensity sustained by mischievous irony and moments of exquisite beauty, Moby-Dick is both a great American epic and a profoundly imaginative literary creation. On board the whaling ship Pequod a crew of wise men and fools, renegades and seeming phantoms is hurled through treacherous seas by crazed Captain Ahab, a man hell-bent on hunting down the mythic White Whale. Herman Melville transforms the little world of the whale ship into a crucible where mankind's fears, faith and frailties are pitted against a relentless fate.

Mary Seacole was a pioneering nineteenth-century nurse, who travelled from her home in Jamaica to reach England, and went on – despite many obstacles – to fulfil her ambition of tending to soldiers fighting on the front line of the Crimean War. Overcoming prejudice, she became the toast of London society. An invaluable testimony.

Alice, the White Rabbit, the Cheshire Cat and the Queen of Hearts have kept readers spellbound for more than 150 years. This much loved book has never been out of print since it was first published, and has been adapted into dozens of films and TV series, plays and ballets, as well as influencing countless fantasy writers.

This 1856 novel about being trapped in a loveless marriage is still so poignant today, and remains one of the best, and saddest, portraits of a woman ever written. Flaubert’s debut novel is a pioneering work of literary realism which faced obscenity charges when it was originally published but is now considered a masterpiece.

Another unforgettable female character is Becky Sharp – a woman willing to use everything in her arsenal to secure a rich husband and live like a queen. This dazzlingly entertaining satire of early nineteenth-century high society is as popular now as it was upon publication.