Classic books are must-reads for people who are wanting to set a reading challenge. The best classic books to read once in your lifetime are all on our ultimate list. This list of the very best classic novels you must read has something for everyone. Find all of the genres from contemporaries to mysteries and fantasies, and more all on this  must-read classic books list.

Last Updated:June 1, 2023

Classic Books

1. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

2. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

3. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

4. 1984 by George Orwell

5. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

6. Beloved by Toni Morrison

7. Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

8. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

9.  Lord of the Flies by William Golding

10. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

11. Emma by Jane Austen

12. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

13. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

14. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

15. Animal Farm by George Orwell

16. Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

17. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

18. Call of the Wild by Jack London

19. Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

20. Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery

21. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

22. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

23. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

24. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

25. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

26. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

27. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne

28. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

29. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

30. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

31. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

32. Flowers for Algernon by Damiel Keyes

33. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

34. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

35. Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote

36. Dracula by Bram Stoker

37. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

38. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

39. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White

40. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

41. The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence

42. The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe

43. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

44. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

45. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

46. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

47. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

48. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

49. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

50. Persuasion by Jane Austen

51. Hamlet by William Shakespeare

52. Les MIserables by Victor Hugo

53. Macbeth by William Shakespeare

54. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

55. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

56. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

57. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

58. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

59. A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare

60. East of Eden by John Steinbeck

61. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

62. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl  by Anne Frank

63. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

64. The Art of War by Sun Tzu

65. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

66. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

67. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

68. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster

69. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

70. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

71. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

72. The Color Purple by Alice Walker

73. Middlemarch by George Eliot

74. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James JOyce

75.  Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

76. The Crucible by Arthur Miller

77. The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle

78. The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

79. Atonement by Ian McEwan

80. A Room of One’s Own Virginia Woolf

81. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

82. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

83. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

84. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

85. 20, 000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne

86. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

87. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

88. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri

89. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

90. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

91. The SOund and the Fury by William Faulkner

92. The Chrysalids by John Wyndham

93. Dr, Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

94. The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

95. Paradise Lost by John Milton

96. 1001 Arabian Nights by Anonymous

97. A Separate Peace by John Knowles

98. The Giver by Lois Lowry

99. A Visit From St. Nicholas by Clement C. Moore

100. Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

Classic Books

Classic books are must-reads that you should read before you die. They are fantastic books to rediscover an old favourite or a totally new-to-you book that becomes a favourite. Some are required reading for school, and others are ones that have been enjoyed for generations. What are some of your favourite classic books to read?