The 74 Greatest Books of the 19th Century

1. Crime and Punishment

Crime and Punishment is a novel by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky. It was first published in the literary journal The Russian Messenger in twelve monthly installments during 1866. It was later published in a single volume.

2. Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice is an 1813 novel of manners written by Jane Austen. The novel follows the character development of Elizabeth Bennet, the dynamic protagonist of the book who learns about the repercussions of hasty judgments and comes to appreciate the difference between superficial goodness and actual goodness.

3. Madame Bovary

Charles Bovary, médecin de campagne, veuf d'une mégère, fait lors d'une tournée la rencontre du père Rouault et de sa fille, Emma. Après leur mariage, Emma reste insatisfaite et rêve d'une nouvelle vie. Son premier amant lui donne le goût du luxe et fait miroiter un avenir à deux avant de l'abandonner.

4. Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights is an 1847 novel by Emily Brontë, initially published under the pseudonym Ellis Bell. It concerns two families of the landed gentry living on the West Yorkshire moors, the Earnshaws and the Lintons, and their turbulent relationships with Earnshaw's adopted son, Heathcliff. The novel was influenced by Romanticism and Gothic fiction.

5. Moby-Dick

"Command the murderous chalices! Drink ye harpooners! Drink and swear, ye men that man the deathful whaleboat's bow -- Death to Moby Dick!" So Captain Ahab binds his crew to fulfil his obsession -- the destruction of the great white whale. Under his lordly but maniacal command the Pequod's commercial mission is perverted to one of vengeance.

6. Jane Eyre

The novel is set somewhere in the north of England. Jane's childhood at Gateshead Hall, where she is emotionally and physically abused by her aunt and cousins; her education at Lowood School, where she acquires friends and role models but also suffers privations and oppression; her time as the governess of Thornfield Hall, where she falls in love with her Byronic employer, Edward Rochester; her ti…

7. Middlemarch

Eliot’s epic of 19th century provincial social life, set in a fictitious Midlands town in the years 1830-32, has several interlocking storylines blended effortlessly together to form a fully coherent narrative. Its main themes are the status of women, social expectations and hypocrisy, religion, political reform and education. It has often been called the greatest novel in the English language.

8. War and Peace

Resurrection (pre-reform Russian: Воскресеніе; post-reform Russian: Воскресение, romanized: Voskreséniye, also translated as The Awakening), first published in December 1899, was the last novel written by Leo Tolstoy. The book is the final of his major long fiction works published in his lifetime.

9. Frankenstein

*Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus* is an 1818 novel written by English author Mary Shelley. Frankenstein tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. Shelley started writing the story when she was 18, and the first edition was published anonymously in London on 1 January 1818, when she was 20.

10. Anna Karenina

Anna Karenina is a 2012 historical romantic drama film directed by Joe Wright. Adapted by Tom Stoppard from Leo Tolstoy's 1878 novel, the film depicts the tragedy of Russian aristocrat and socialite Anna Karenina, wife of senior statesman Alexei Karenin, and her affair with the affluent cavalry officer Count Vronsky.

11. Great Expectations

Great Expectations is the thirteenth novel by Charles Dickens and his penultimate completed novel. It depicts the education of an orphan nicknamed Pip (the book is a bildungsroman; a coming-of-age story). It is Dickens' second novel, after David Copperfield, to be fully narrated in the first person.

12. The Red and the Black

Le Rouge et le Noir (French pronunciation: [lə ʁuʒ e l(ə) nwaʁ]; meaning The Red and the Black) is a psychological novel in two volumes by Stendhal, published in 1830. It chronicles the attempts of a provincial young man to rise socially beyond his modest upbringing through a combination of talent, hard work, deception, and hypocrisy. He ultimately allows his passions to betray him.

13. Huckleberry Finn

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or as it is known in more recent editions, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is a novel by American author Mark Twain, which was first published in the United Kingdom in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885.

14. Le Père Goriot

Le Père Goriot (French pronunciation: [lə pɛʁ ɡɔʁjo], "Old Goriot" or "Father Goriot") is an 1835 novel by French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850), included in the Scènes de la vie privée section of his novel sequence La Comédie humaine.

15. Little Women

Louisa May Alcotts classic novel, set during the Civil War, has always captivated even the most reluctant readers. Little girls, especially, love following the adventures of the four March sisters--Meg, Beth, Amy, and most of all, the tomboy Jo--as they experience the joys and disappointments, tragedies and triumphs, of growing up.

16. Les Misérables

In this story of the trials of the peasant Jean Valjean--a man unjustly imprisoned, baffled by destiny, and hounded by his nemesis, the magnificently realized, ambiguously malevolent police detective Javert--Hugo achieves the sort of rare imaginative resonance that allows a work of art to transcend its genre.

17. Vanity Fair

No one is better equipped in the struggle for wealth and worldly success than the alluring and ruthless Becky Sharp, who defies her impoverished background to clamber up the class ladder. Her sentimental companion Amelia, however, longs only for caddish soldier George.

18. Bleak House

As the interminable case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce grinds its way through the Court of Chancery, it draws together a disparate group of people: Ada and Richard Clare, whose inheritance is gradually being devoured by legal costs; Esther Summerson, a ward of court, whose parentage is a source of deepening mystery; the menacing lawyer Tulkinghorn; the determined sleuth Inspector Bucket; and even Jo, t…

19. Dead Souls

Dead Souls (Russian: Мёртвые души Myórtvyye dúshi, pre-reform spelling: Мертвыя души) is a novel by Nikolai Gogol, first published in 1842, and widely regarded as an exemplar of 19th-century Russian literature. The novel chronicles the travels and adventures of Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov and the people whom he encounters. These people typify the Russian middle aristocracy of the time.

20. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (commonly Alice in Wonderland) is an 1865 English children's novel by Lewis Carroll. A young girl named Alice falls through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of anthropomorphic creatures. It is seen as an example of the literary nonsense genre.

21. David Copperfield

It adds to the charm of this book to remember that it is virtually a picture of the author's own boyhood. It is an excellent picture of the life of a struggling English youth in the middle of the last century. The pictures of Canterbury and London are true pictures and through these pages walk one of Dickens' wonderful processions of characters, quaint and humorous, villainous and tragic.

22. Uncle Tom’s Cabin

This unforgettable novel tells the story of Tom, a devoutly Christian slave who chooses not to escape bondage for fear of embarrassing his master. However, he is soon sold to a slave trader and sent down the Mississippi, where he must endure brutal treatment. This is a powerful tale of the extreme cruelties of slavery, as well as the price of loyalty and morality.

23. Hunger

Hunger (Norwegian: Sult) is a novel by the Norwegian author Knut Hamsun published in 1890 by P.G. Philipsens Forlag. The novel has been hailed as the literary opening of the 20th century and an outstanding example of modern, psychology-driven literature. Hunger portrays the irrationality of the human mind in an intriguing and sometimes humorous manner.

24. The Count of Monte Cristo

The Count of Monte Cristo (French: Le Comte de Monte-Cristo) is an adventure novel by the French writer Alexandre Dumas. It was serialised from 1844 to 1846, then published in book form in 1846. It is one of his most popular works, along with The Three Musketeers (1844) and Man in the Iron Mask (1850).

25. Persuasion

Persuasion tells the love story of Anne Elliot and Captain Frederick Wentworth, whose sister rents Miss Elliot's father's house, after the Napoleonic Wars come to an end. The story is set in 1814. The book itself is Jane Austen's last published book, published posthumously in December of 1818.

26. The Scarlet Letter

A stark and allegorical tale of adultery, guilt, and social repression in Puritan New England, The Scarlet Letter is a foundational work of American literature.

27. Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness (1899) is a novella by Polish-English novelist Joseph Conrad, about a voyage up the Congo River into the Congo Free State, in the heart of Africa, by the story's narrator Charles Marlow. Marlow tells his story to friends aboard a boat anchored on the River Thames. Joseph Conrad is one of the greatest English writers, and Heart of Darkness is considered his best.

28. Dracula

Na história, um casal e seus amigos são atormentados por Conde Drácula, uma entidade sobrenatural e hematófoga que, presa em uma maldição contagiosa, pretende se mudar de seu recluso castelo na Transilvânia para a efervescente Londres do século XIX. Com a ajuda do professor Van Helsing, o grupo de amigos pretende enfrentar o morto-vivo, mesmo com todos os perigos que a ofensiva trará.

29. Portrait of a Lady

Young American Isabel Archer charms European society, but falls prey to the machinations of a calculating older woman.

30. The Idiot

The Gambler (Russian: Игрокъ, romanized: Igrok; modern spelling Игрок) is a short novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky about a young tutor in the employment of a formerly wealthy Russian general. Set in a hotel and casino in a German city, the theme of gambling reflects Dostoevsky's own experience of addiction to roulette.

31. The Picture of Dorian Gray

**The Picture of Dorian Gray** is a philosophical novel by Irish writer Oscar Wilde. A shorter novella-length version was published in the July 1890 issue of the American periodical *Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine*. The novel-length version was published in April 1891.

32. Treasure Island

Traditionally considered a coming-of-age story, Treasure Island is an adventure tale known for its atmosphere, characters and action, and also as a wry commentary on the ambiguity of morality — as seen in Long John Silver — unusual for children's literature then and now. It is one of the most frequently dramatized of all novels.

33. Jude the Obscure

Hardy's last work of fiction, Jude the Obscure is also one of his most gloomily fatalistic, depicting the lives of individuals who are trapped by forces beyond their control. Jude Fawley, a poor villager, wants to enter the divinity school at Christminster. Sidetracked by Arabella Donn, an earthy country girl who pretends to be pregnant by him, Jude marries her and is then deserted.

34. The Woman in White

The Woman in White famously opens with Walter Hartright's eerie encounter on a moonlit London road. Engaged as a drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie, Walter is drawn into the sinister intrigues of Sir Percival Glyde and his 'charming' friend Count Fosco, who has a taste for white mice, vanilla bonbons and poison.

35. Fathers and Sons

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev (1818–1883) was a Russian novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, translator and popularizer of Russian literature in the West. His first major publication, a short story collection titled A Sportsman's Sketches (1852), was a milestone of Russian realism. His novel Fathers and Sons (1862) is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century fiction.

36. A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities is a historical novel published in 1859 by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. The novel tells the story of the French Doctor Manette, his 18-year-long imprisonment in the Bastille in Paris, and his release to live in London with his daughter Lucie whom he had never met.

37. Far From the Madding Crowd

Independent and spirited Bathsheba Everdene has come to Weatherbury to take up her position as a farmer on the largest estate in the area. Her bold presence draws three very different suitors: the gentleman-farmer Boldwood, soldier-seducer Sergeant Troy and the devoted shepherd Gabriel Oak.

38. The Brothers Karamazov

The Brothers Karamazov (Russian: Братья Карамазовы, romanized: Brat'ya Karamazovy, IPA: [ˈbratʲjə kərɐˈmazəvɨ]), also translated as The Karamazov Brothers, is the sixteenth and final novel by Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky spent nearly two years writing The Brothers Karamazov, which was published as a serial in The Russian Messenger from January 1879 to November 1880.

39. Sentimental Education

Sentimental Education: History of a Young Man (French: L'éducation sentimentale : histoire d'un jeune homme) is an 1869 novel by Gustave Flaubert. It focuses on the romantic life of a young man named Frédéric Moreau at the time of the French Revolution of 1848 and the founding of the Second French Empire.

40. The Moonstone

One of the first English detective novels, this mystery involves the disappearance of a valuable diamond, originally stolen from a Hindu idol, given to a young woman on her eighteenth birthday, and then stolen again. A classic of 19th-century literature.

41. The Mayor of Casterbridge

<p>Like many of <a href="https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/thomas-hardy">Hardy’s</a> novels, <i>The Mayor of Casterbridge</i> is set in the fictional county of Wessex in the mid 1800s. It begins with Michael Henchard, a young hay-trusser, drunk on rum, auctioning off his wife and baby daughter at a village fair. The next day, overcome with remorse, Henchard resolves to turn his life around.

42. A Christmas Carol

A retelling of the story about a miser whose life is changed by Christmas.

43. Germinal

The thirteenth novel in Emile Zola's great Rougon-Macquart sequence, Germinal expresses outrage at the exploitation of the many by the few, but also shows humanity's capacity for compassion and hope.Etienne Lantier, an unemployed railway worker, is a clever but uneducated young man with a dangerous temper.

44. Oliver Twist

Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress, is the second novel by English author Charles Dickens. It was originally published as a serial from 1837 to 1839, and as a three-volume book in 1838.

45. The Three Musketeers

46. Cranford

<p><i>Cranford</i> was first serialized in <a href="https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/charles-dickens">Charles Dickens’</a> magazine <i>Household Words</i> between 1851 and 1853.

47. Silas Marner

Eliot's touching novel of a miser and a little child combines the charm of a fairy tale with the humor and pathos of realistic fiction. The gentle linen weaver, Silas Marner, exiles himself to the town of Raveloe after being falsely accused of a heinous theft.

48. Mansfield Park

Fanny Price is born to a poor family, but is sent to her mother's rich relations to be brought up with her cousins. There she is treated as an inferior by all except her cousin Edmund, whose kindness towards her earns him her steadfast love.

49. The War of the Worlds

The ultimate science fiction classic: for more than one hundred years, this compelling tale of the Martian invasion of Earth has enthralled readers with a combination of imagination and incisive commentary on the imbalance of power that continues to be relevant today.

50. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Mark Twain created the memorable characters Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn drawing from the experiences of boys he grew up with in Missouri. Set by the Mississippi River in the 1840's, it follows these boys as they get into predicament after predicament.

51. The Mill on the Floss

From the author of MIDDLEMARCH and SILAS MARNER, a story of frustrated intelligence and longing, featuring the intelligent Maggie, who yearns to be loved, and her brother Tom, who is forced to study. When Maggie is cast out by Tom, she is ostracized by society, and must face the consequences of renunciation.

52. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Mr. Gabriel Utterson is a serious, austere lawyer living a humdrum life in Victorian London. Yet there is a strange clause in his friend, Dr. Henry Jekyll's will: should he disappear for more than 3 months, everything will be inherited by Hyde. But after Edward Hyde's darker nature is revealed one dark winters night, Mr.

53. Hard Times

Dickens scathing portrait of Victorian industrial society and its misapplied utilitarian philosophy, Hard Times features schoolmaster Thomas Gradgrind, one of his most richly dimensional, memorable characters. Filled with the details and wonders of small-town life, it is also a daring novel of ideas and ultimately, a celebration of love, hope, and limitless possibilities of the imagination.

54. The Betrothed

Renzo and Lucia fly from the villainous Don Rodrigo and are separated. Their flight takes them out of their peaceful village life into turbulent history; violent bread riots in Milan, the ravages of the 30 years war, famine, and finally the plague, with all its attendant horrors.

55. Eugenie Grandet

Published in 1833 Part of Balzac's "Comédie Humaine"…

56. Adam Bede

Adam Bede is a hardy young carpenter who cares for his aging mother. His one weakness is the woman he loves blindly: the trifling town beauty, Hetty Sorrel, whose only delights are her baubles-and the delusion that the careless Captain Donnithorne may ask for her hand.

57. The Red Badge of Courage

The Red Badge of Courage is a war novel by American author Stephen Crane (1871–1900). Taking place during the American Civil War, the story is about a young private of the Union Army, Henry Fleming, who flees from the field of battle. Overcome with shame, he longs for a wound, a "red badge of courage," to counteract his cowardice.

58. Emma

Emma, by Jane Austen, is a novel about youthful hubris and the perils of misconstrued romance. The novel was first published in December 1815. As in her other novels, Austen explores the concerns and difficulties of genteel women living in Georgian-Regency England; she also creates a lively comedy of manners among her characters.

59. Sense and Sensibility

When Mr. Dashwood dies, he must leave the bulk of his estate to the son by his first marriage, which leaves his second wife and three daughters (Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret) in straitened circumstances. They are taken in by a kindly cousin, but their lack of fortune affects the marriageability of both practical Elinor and romantic Marianne.

60. Ivanhoe

The father of the historical novel, Sir Walter Scott invented a literary form that has remained popular for over one hundred and fifty years.

61. The House of the Seven Gables

In a sleepy little New England village stands a dark, weather-beaten, many-gabled house. This brooding mansion is haunted by a centuries-old curse that casts the shadow of ancestral sin upon the last four members of the distinctive Pyncheon family. Mysterious deaths threaten the living. Musty documents nestle behind hidden panels carrying the secret of the family's salvation -- or its downfall.

62. Northanger Abbey

Northanger Abbey is both a perfectly aimed literary parody and a withering satire of the commercial aspects of marriage among the English gentry at the turn of the nineteenth century.

63. Around the World in Eighty Days

64. Daniel Deronda

As Daniel Deronda opens, Gwendolen Harleth is poised at the roulette-table, prepared to throw away her family fortune. She is observed by Daniel Deronda, a young man groomed in the finest tradition of the English upper-classes. And while Gwendolen loses everything and becomes trapped in an oppressive marriage, Deronda's fortunes take a different turn.

65. Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There

Hunting of the snark. Through the looking-glass and what Alice found there. Rhyme? And reason? Tangled tale. Alice's adventures under ground. Sylvie and Bruno. Sylvie and Bruno concluded. Three sunsets and other poems.

66. The Charterhouse of Parma

67. Black Beauty

(Ages 9-12, Gr. 4-7) An **animal rights classic** that's also an engaging read, **BLACK BEAUTY follows the life of an ebony horse from birth to old age**, and from pasture to the cobblestone streets of **19th century England** This morality tale and **animal "autobiography"** gives a sweet and kind horse **a voice that's relatable yet unsentimental.**.

68. Kidnapped

KIDNAPPED is an adventure story that has become the model for any thriller of escape and suspense.

69. The Time Machine

70. The Return of the Native

The native of the title is Clym Yeobright, who returns to the area from the bright society of Paris and, as any reader of Hardy knows, all is not smooth. He is quickly taken by and marries the one woman he should not--Eustacia Vye. The suffering that follows is mitigated somewhat by the ending.

71. Tess of the D'Urbervilles

An intimate portrait of a woman, one of literature's most admirable and tragic heroines...Tess Durbeyfield knows what it is to work hard and expect little. But her life is about to veer from the path trod by her mother and grandmother.

72. Nicholas Nickleby

Nicholas Nickleby is left responsible for his mother and sister when his father dies. The novel follows his attempt to succeed in supporting them, despite his uncle Ralph's antagonistic lack of belief in him. It is one of Dickens' early comic novels.

73. Shirley

<p><i>Shirley</i>, published in 1849, was <a href="https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/charlotte-bronte">Charlotte Brontë’s</a> second novel after <i><a href="https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/charlotte-bronte/jane-eyre">Jane Eyre</a></i>. Published under her pseudonym of “Currer Bell,” it differs in several respects from that earlier work.

74. The Pickwick Papers

Dickens’ first novel was originally written and published as a serial. It is a comedy relating the misadventures of the members of The Pickwick Club, whose main purpose is to discover and relate quaint and curious phenomena of social life and customs throughout England.