- Homer: The Iliad (c. 8th century BCE)
- Homer: The Odyssey (c. 8th century BCE)*
- Hesiod: Works and Days & Thoegony (c. 8th-7th century BCE)
- Aeschylus (Aiskhulos): Plays
- Agamemnon (458 BCE)
- The Libation Bearers (458 BCE)
- The Eumenides (458 BCE)
- Sophocles (Sophoklēs): Plays
- Antigone (c. 442 BCE)*
- Oedipus Rex [Oedipus the King] (c. 429 BCE)*
- Oedipus at Colonus (c. 406 BCE)
- Euripides: Plays
- Alcestis [Alkēstis] (438 BCE)
- Medea [Mēdeia] (431 BCE)*
- Hippolytus (428 BCE)
- Electra [Ēlektra] (c. 420 BCE)
- Trojan Women [Troades] (415 BCE)
- The Bacchae (405 BCE)
- Carson, Anne, translator: An Oresteia (5th century BCE)
- Aesop: Fables (c. 5th century BCE)
- Virgil: The Aeneid [Aeneis] (29-19 BCE)
- Ovid: Metamorphoses ( 8)*
Anonymous: Beowulf (between 8th-11th centuries)- Anonymous: The Poem of the Cid [El Cantar del Mio Cid] (12th century)
- Chaucer, Geoffrey: The Canterbury Tales (1380s)
- Montalvo, Garci Rodríguez de: Amadis of Gaul [Amadis de Gaula] (1508)
- Camões, Luís Vaz de: The Lusiad (1572)
- Shakespeare, William: Plays
The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1589-91)Taming of the Shrew (1590-91)Titus Andronicus (1592)A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595)*Much Ado About Nothing (1598-99)
- Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de: Don Quixote (1605, 1615)
- Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de: Three Exemplary Novels (1613)†§
- Bunyan, John: The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678)
- Defoe, Daniel: Robinson Crusoe (1719)
- Swift, Jonathan: Gulliver’s Travels (1726)
Walpole, Horace: The Castle of Otranto (1765)- Burney, Fanny: Evelina (1778)
- Radcliffe, Ann: The Italian (1797)
- Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von: Faust I, Faust II (1808, 1832)
Austen, Jane: Pride and Prejudice (1813)*- Austen, Jane: Persuasion (1818)*
- Hugo, Victor: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831)
- Poe, Edgar Allan: Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1830s-40s)
- Brontë, Anne: Agnes Grey (1847)
- Gaskell, Elizabeth: Mary Barton (1848)
- Dickens, Charles: Bleak House (1853)
- Gaskell, Elizabeth: Cranford (1853)
- Trollope, Anthony: The Warden (1855)
Melville, Herman: The Piazza Tales (1856)- Trollope, Anthony: Barchester Towers (1857)
- Dickens, Charles: A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
- Collins, Wilkie: The Woman in White (1860)
- Hawthorne, Nathaniel: The Marble Faun (1860)
- Dickens, Charles: Great Expectations (1861)*
- Hugo, Victor: Les Misérables (1862)
- Gaskell, Elizabeth: Wives and Daughters (1865)
- Tolstoy, Leo: War and Peace (1869)
- Verne, Jules: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870)
- Eliot, George: Middlemarch (1871-72)
- Tolstoy, Leo: Anna Karenina (1877)
- James, Henry: The Turn of the Screw and Other Short Fiction (1878-1908)‡
- James, Henry: The Portrait of a Lady (1881)
- Collodi, Carlo: Le avventure di Pinocchio. Storio di un burattino. [The Adventures of Pinocchio] (1883)¤
- Zola, Émile: Germinal (1885)
- Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan: The Sherlock Holmes stories & novels (1887-1927)
A Study in Scarlet (1887, Scotland)The Sign of Four(1890, Scotland)The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892, Scotland)The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894, Scotland)The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902, Scotland)[post 2]
The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905, Scotland)The Valley of Fear (1915, Scotland)His Last Bow (1917, Scotland)- The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927, Scotland)
- Hardy, Thomas: Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891)
- Wilde, Oscar: The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)*
- Wells, H. G.:The Time Machine (1895)
- Dreiser, Theodore: Sister Carrie (1900)
- Conrad, Joseph: Heart of Darkness (1902)
- Wharton, Edith: The House of Mirth (1905)
- Galsworthy, John: Forsyte Saga (1906-1929)
- Forster, E. M.: A Room with a View (1908)
- Lawrence, D. H.: Sons and Lovers (1913)
- Unamuno, Miguel de: Mist [Niebla] (1914, Spain)
- Joyce, James: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
- Fitzgerald, F. Scott: The Great Gatsby (1925)*
- Woolf, Virginia: Mrs. Dalloway (1925)
- Kafka, Franz: “Metamorphosis” (1915) and The Trial (1925)
- Cather, Willa: Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927)
- Arlt, Roberto: Seven Madmen [Los siete locos] (1929, Argentina)
- Ford, Ford Madox: Parade’s End (1928)
Faulkner, William: “The Bear” (1942) and As I Lay Dying (1930)- Huxley, Aldous: Brave New World (1932)
- Dinesen, Isak (Karen Blixen): Out of Africa (1937)
du Maurier, Daphne: Rebecca (1938)- Steinbeck, John: The Grapes of Wrath (1939)*
- Hemingway, Ernest: For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)
- Wright, Richard: Native Son (1940)
- Smith, Dodie: I Capture the Castle (1940)
- Green, Henry: Loving (1945)
- Orwell, George: Animal Farm (1945)
- Waugh, Evelyn: Brideshead Revisited (1945)
Asturias, Miguel Ángel: The President [El Señor Presidente] (1946)- Carpentier, Alego: Kingdom of This World [El reino de este mundo] (1949)
- Orwell, George: Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)
- Bradbury, Ray: The Martian Chronicles (1950)
- Cela, Camilo José: The Hive [La colmena] (1951)
- Asimov, Isaac: Foundation Trilogy (1951-53)
- Ellison, Ralph: Invisible Man (1952)
- Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr Isayev: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1952)
- Steinbeck, John: East of Eden (1952)
- Baldwin, James: Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)
Tolkien, J. R. R.: The Lord of the Rings (1954-56)*- Nabokov, Vladimir: Lolita (1955)
Rulfo, Juan: Pedro Páramo (1955)- Kerouac, Jack: On the Road (1957)
- Tomasi di Lampedusa, Giuseppe: The Leopard [Il Gattopardo] (1958)
- Jackson, Shirley: The Haunting of Hill House (1959)
- Spark, Muriel: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961)
- Sciascia, Leonardo: The Day of the Owl [Il giorno della civetta] (1961)
- Fuentes, Carlos: The Death of Artemio Cruz [La muerte de Artemio Cruz] (1962)
- Borges, Jorge Luis: Ficciones (1962) Post 1
- Vargas Llosa, Mario: The Time of the Heroes [La ciudad y los perros] (1962)
- Cortázar, Julio: Hopscotch [Rayuela] (1963)
- Various: El Cuento Hispanoamericano, vol. 1 & 2 (1964, Seymour Menton, ed.)§
- Pynchon, Thomas: The Crying of Lot 49 (1966)
- García Márquez, Gabriel: Cien años de soledad [One Hundred Years of Solitude] (1967)*§
- Dick, Philip K.: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)
- Vonnegut, Jr., Kurt: Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)
- Fowles, John: The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969)
Morrison, Toni: The Bluest Eye (1970)- Calvino, Italo: Invisible Cities [Le città invisibili] (1972)
- Doctorow, E.L.: Ragtime (1975)
Tolkien, J.R.R.: The Silmarillion (1977, posthumous)- Calvino, Italo: If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler [Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore] (1979)
- McCarthy, Cormac: Suttree (1979)
Eco, Umberto: The Name of the Rose [Il nome della rosa] (1980)- Rushdie, Salman: Midnight’s Children (1980)
- Walker, Alice: The Color Purple (1982)
- Saer, Juan José: The Witness [El entenado] (1983)
- García Márquez, Gabriel: Love in the Time of Cholera [El amor en los tiempos del cólera] (1985)
- Atwood, Margaret: The Handmaid’s Tale (1985)
- Marías, Javier: All Souls [Todas las almas] (1987)
- Morrison, Toni: Beloved (1987)
- Wallace, David Foster: Infinite Jest (1996)
- Bolaño, Roberto: Nazi Literature in the Americas [La literatura nazi en América] (1996)
- Vargas Llosa, Mario: The Feast of the Goat [La fiesta del chivo] (2000)
- Bolaño, Roberto: 2666 (2004)
* Indicates a reread.
† Vicente Llorens, ed., 1964. Includes El Licenciado Vidriera, El Casamiento Enganoso, and El Coloquio de los Perros
‡ Includes The Turn of the Screw, Daisy Miller*, Washington Square, The Beast in the Jungle, and The Jolly Corner
§ I hope to read in Spanish
¤ I hope to read in Italian
Last updated 20.05.2012
A very tempting selection! I have a few of them on my Classics Club list, but you have some I hadn’t considered.
Thanks! That was the goal of my list, that everything should be tempting so that I would actually read from it! Isn’t it fun to look at other people’s lists, though, and see so many other ideas?
Absolutely! 🙂