PagineFrom Chaucer and Shakespeare to Austen, Dickens, the Brontës and Orwell, British classics gave the world the modern novel. Here are 116 essential books of English literature — with the Irish writers who shaped it — sorted by era, with short guides to the great British authors, where to start, and dozens you can read free online right now. Studying for GCSE or A level? Many set texts are here.
New to British literature? Begin with one of these — or follow our step-by-step guide, What to Read for British Classics →
Full books, free in the Pagine e-reader on any phone, tablet or computer — no download.
Short biographies, what to read first, and every book of theirs on this list.
William Shakespeare is the most performed playwright in history and the writer who did most to shape the English language. A glove-maker’s son from Stratford-upon-Avon, he became an actor and shareholder in London’s Lord Chamberlain’s Men (later the King’s Men) at the Globe Theatre. He wrote about 37 plays — comedies such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Twelfth Night, histories, and the great tragedies Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth — plus 154 sonnets. Friends collected his plays in the First Folio of 1623, without which half of them might have been lost.
Reading order: Start with a comedy (A Midsummer Night’s Dream or Twelfth Night), then Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth — the shortest tragedy — before Hamlet and King Lear. Watching a performance first helps.
On this list: Romeo and Juliet · A Midsummer Night’s Dream · Hamlet · King Lear · Shakespeare’s Sonnets · Othello · Macbeth · Twelfth Night
Jane Austen wrote six novels that are still among the most read in the world — all published anonymously, “By a Lady.” The daughter of a country clergyman, she turned the small world of the English gentry — money, marriage and manners — into sharp, funny comedy with an ironic narrator who sees through everyone. Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1815) appeared in her lifetime; Northanger Abbey and Persuasion after her death at 41. Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy have inspired countless retellings.
Reading order: Jane Austen novels in order of publication: Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1815), then Northanger Abbey and Persuasion (1817). Most readers start with Pride and Prejudice.
On this list: Sense and Sensibility · Pride and Prejudice · Mansfield Park · Emma · Northanger Abbey · Persuasion
Mary Shelley was 18 when, during a rainy summer at Lake Geneva in 1816, Lord Byron challenged his guests to write a ghost story. Her answer became Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), often called the first science-fiction novel. The daughter of the feminist philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft and the political writer William Godwin, and wife of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, she also wrote The Last Man (1826), an early novel about a worldwide plague.
Where to start: Frankenstein
On this list: Frankenstein
Charlotte Brontë, the eldest of the three writing Brontë sisters, grew up in the parsonage at Haworth on the Yorkshire moors. Published under the male pen name Currer Bell, Jane Eyre (1847) — the plain, fiercely independent governess who falls for the brooding Mr Rochester — was an instant sensation, told in a passionate first-person voice that was new in English fiction. She followed it with Shirley (1849) and Villette (1853), and died during pregnancy at 38.
Where to start: Jane Eyre
On this list: Jane Eyre · Villette
Emily Brontë wrote just one novel — and it is one of the wildest in English. Wuthering Heights (1847), published as by “Ellis Bell,” tells of the obsessive love between Catherine Earnshaw and the foundling Heathcliff across two generations on the Yorkshire moors. Shy and fiercely private, she was also a remarkable poet. She died of tuberculosis at 30, a year after the novel appeared; her sister Anne (Agnes Grey, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall) died the following spring.
Where to start: Wuthering Heights
On this list: Wuthering Heights
Charles Dickens was the most popular novelist of the Victorian age and the creator of characters — Scrooge, Oliver Twist, the Artful Dodger, Miss Havisham, Mr Micawber — who still feel alive. When he was 12 his father was jailed for debt and Charles was sent to work in a boot-blacking factory, an experience that fired his lifelong anger at poverty and injustice. His novels came out in monthly parts that readers waited for like TV episodes: The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol (1843), David Copperfield (his favourite), Bleak House, A Tale of Two Cities (1859) and Great Expectations (1861). He is buried in Westminster Abbey.
Reading order: Dickens novels in order: The Pickwick Papers (1837), Oliver Twist (1838), Nicholas Nickleby (1839), A Christmas Carol (1843), David Copperfield (1850), Bleak House (1853), Hard Times (1854), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Great Expectations (1861), Our Mutual Friend (1865). Start with A Christmas Carol, then Great Expectations.
On this list: Oliver Twist · A Christmas Carol · David Copperfield · Bleak House · Hard Times · A Tale of Two Cities · Great Expectations · Our Mutual Friend
George Eliot was the pen name of Mary Ann Evans, who chose a man’s name so her novels would be taken seriously. A brilliant translator and journalist before she turned to fiction, she wrote some of the most intelligent and humane novels in English: Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), the short and moving Silas Marner (1861), and Middlemarch (1871–72), a portrait of a whole provincial town that Virginia Woolf called “one of the few English novels written for grown-up people.”
Where to start: Silas Marner
On this list: Adam Bede · The Mill on the Floss · Silas Marner · Middlemarch
Thomas Hardy, a stonemason’s son trained as an architect, set his novels in “Wessex,” a lightly fictionalised version of rural south-west England. Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1895) show ordinary people crushed by chance, class and convention. The storm over Jude made him give up novels; he spent his last thirty years writing poetry.
Where to start: Far from the Madding Crowd
On this list: Far from the Madding Crowd · The Return of the Native · The Mayor of Casterbridge · Tess of the d’Urbervilles · Jude the Obscure
Arthur Conan Doyle was a Scottish doctor who, while waiting for patients, invented the most famous detective in fiction. Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson first appeared in A Study in Scarlet (1887); four novels and 56 short stories followed, including The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902). Doyle also wrote historical novels and the dinosaur adventure The Lost World (1912).
Where to start: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
On this list: A Study in Scarlet · The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes · The Hound of the Baskervilles · The Lost World
Joseph Conrad was born to Polish parents, went to sea at 16, and only learned English in his twenties — yet became one of its greatest stylists. Drawing on twenty years as a sailor, he wrote Heart of Darkness (1899), a journey up the Congo River into the brutality of colonialism, Lord Jim (1900), Nostromo (1904) and The Secret Agent (1907). Chinua Achebe’s famous criticism of Heart of Darkness is now part of how it is taught.
Where to start: Heart of Darkness
On this list: Heart of Darkness · Lord Jim · Nostromo · The Secret Agent
Virginia Woolf changed what a novel could do, following the flow of characters’ thoughts rather than a conventional plot. A central figure of the Bloomsbury Group, she co-founded the Hogarth Press with her husband Leonard and wrote Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), Orlando (1928) and The Waves (1931), as well as the essay A Room of One’s Own (1929), with its argument that a woman needs “money and a room of her own” to write.
Where to start: Mrs Dalloway
On this list: Mrs Dalloway · To the Lighthouse · Orlando · A Room of One’s Own
George Orwell (born Eric Blair) was a police officer in Burma, lived among the poor of Paris and London, and fought in the Spanish Civil War before writing the two books that gave us “Orwellian.” Animal Farm (1945) is a fable about a revolution that betrays itself; Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) imagines a surveillance state with Big Brother, doublethink and the Thought Police. His essays, such as “Politics and the English Language,” are still models of clear writing.
Where to start: Animal Farm
On this list: Animal Farm · Nineteen Eighty-Four
41 of these are free to read in Pagine right now (📖 Read free). The rest link to a free public-domain edition or to Open Library, where many can be borrowed free.
Print it, save it as a PDF, email it to yourself or share it with a friend, book club or class. Every copy links back to pagineapp.com, and the free Pagine app tracks every book you finish.
iPhone & iPad
Android111 free books by British authors in Pagine — including titles beyond this list.
Every title on the list links to the free sources that may have it. Public-domain books are free to read and download; newer books can often be borrowed free.
English literature is long, so pick a thread. Love romance and wit? Follow Austen into Gaskell, the Brontës and Hardy. Love a big story? Read Dickens, then Collins, Stevenson and Conan Doyle. Want to see how the novel changed? Read Robinson Crusoe, then Middlemarch, then Mrs Dalloway. Many public-domain classics are free in the Pagine e-reader, and you can track every book you finish in the free Pagine app.
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, A Christmas Carol and Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë and Animal Farm by George Orwell are all readable, gripping first choices.
In publication order: Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1815), and Northanger Abbey and Persuasion (both 1817). Most people start with Pride and Prejudice.
A Christmas Carol is short and perfect for a first taste. For a full novel, Great Expectations is the most popular starting point, followed by Oliver Twist, David Copperfield and A Tale of Two Cities.
Yes. Books published in 1930 or earlier are in the US public domain, so Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens, the Brontës, Eliot, Hardy, Conan Doyle and many more are free to read in Pagine.
Common UK set texts include A Christmas Carol, Great Expectations, Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Frankenstein, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Sign of Four, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Animal Farm and Lord of the Flies. Check your exam board’s current list.
Writers such as Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker and James Joyce were Irish, not British, but they are central to literature in English and are usually studied alongside it. They have their own section here.
Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, Mikhail Lermontov and more
Explore →🗽Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville and more
Explore →🥖Molière, Voltaire, Stendhal and more
Explore →💃Miguel de Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Pedro Calderón de la Barca and more
Explore →🌎Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Machado de Assis, Rubén Darío and more
Explore →🌍Olaudah Equiano, Sol Plaatje, Chinua Achebe and more
Explore →🏰Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Brothers Grimm and more
Explore →🛶Hans Christian Andersen, Søren Kierkegaard, Henrik Ibsen and more
Explore →🍝Dante Alighieri, Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio and more
Explore →🏛️Homer, Aesop, Sophocles and more
Explore →🏮Confucius, Laozi, Cao Xueqin and more
Explore →☘️Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker and more
Explore →🍁Susanna Moodie, L. M. Montgomery, Stephen Leacock and more
Explore →🦘Henry Lawson, Banjo Paterson, Miles Franklin and more
Explore →