Fifty Classic Books

The following are books that we would suggest everyone try to read in English. This list is the result of a compilation of our favourite books and the books suggested by visitors to our site.

Reading is one of the best ways of improving your English.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien

Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

1984 by George Orwell

Animal Farm by George Orwell

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

The Island by Aldous Huxley

Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

 The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger

On The Road by Jack Kerouac

 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Winnie the Poo by A. A. Milne

She by H. Rider Haggard

The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Vanity Fair by WM Thackeray

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Lorna Doone by R. D. Blackmore

Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

Gullliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Naked Lunch by William Burroughs

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

The Complete Tales by Edgar Allan Poe

 What Maisie Knew by Henry James

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

 Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll

 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

 Middlemarch by George Eliot

 Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

The Time Machine by H. G. Wells

War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells

The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford

The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje

Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee

The Bachelor of Arts by R. K. Narayan

Just William by Richmal Crompton

The Harry Potter Books by J. K. Rowling

Suggest a book as a 'must read'