Pride and Prejudice
1813 · 352 pages
Elizabeth Bennet and Darcy dislike each other on sight and spend the novel being wrong. Austen wrote conversation better than anyone in English, and readers return to it their whole lives.
★ 9.5
The Books canon
Sourced and shelved.
Every book chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 1,178 books or filter by subject, era, place, and author.
Browse all 1,178 books or filter by subject, era, place, and author.
Emma
1815 · 592 pages
Emma Woodhouse is rich, clever, and sure she knows what everyone needs, so she arranges marriages and ruins them. Austen puts you inside her head until you miss what she misses.
★ 8.1
The Importance of Being Earnest
1895 · 431 pages
Wilde gives two idle men imaginary people, a wicked brother and an invalid friend, to escape their obligations, then sets them courting women who will marry no one but a man named Ernest.
★ 8.0
A House for Mr. Biswas
1961 · 564 pages
Mohun Biswas is born unlucky in rural Trinidad, marries into a large domineering family, and spends his life trying to own a house. Naipaul makes those small defeats as large as any tragedy.
★ 7.8
The Remains of the Day
1989 · 245 pages
Driving across England in 1956 to see the housekeeper he worked beside, a butler remembers the Nazi sympathizer he served with pride. What he cannot bring himself to say is the whole novel.
★ 7.7
Sense and Sensibility
1811 · 353 pages
Left poor by their father's death, Elinor Dashwood hides her heartbreak while her sister Marianne broadcasts hers. Austen weighs the two ways of feeling and gives the sisters the real love story.
★ 7.2
The Pursuit of Love
1945 · 214 pages
Uncle Matthew hunts his children across the Oxfordshire fields with bloodhounds. Linda Radlett escapes that house into two bad marriages and a French duke, in the funniest English novel of the interwar aristocracy.
★ 5.2
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
1925 · 160 pages
Lorelei Lee, a blonde from Arkansas, keeps a diary about the men who buy her diamonds and gives away far more than she knows. Edith Wharton called it the great American novel.
★ 4.8