Jane Eyre
1847 · 284 pages
English fiction found its first fierce female voice in Jane, plain and poor and conceding nothing. She survives a brutal charity school, becomes a governess, and loves an employer with a secret.
★ 8.8
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.
Oliver Twist
1838 · 416 pages
Born in a workhouse, Oliver asks for more, is sold off, and runs to London, where Fagin's gang of child pickpockets takes him in. Dickens made child poverty impossible to ignore.
★ 7.1
Anne of Green Gables
1908 · 287 pages
Two aging siblings send for an orphan boy to work their Prince Edward Island farm and receive a talkative red-haired girl. Anne Shirley imagines the world into something better and never stops talking.
★ 7.0
Kim
1901 · 240 pages
Kim, a white orphan of the Lahore streets, serves two masters: a Tibetan lama searching for a sacred river, and the British officers who train him for the spy war against Russia.
★ 6.6
Of Human Bondage
1915 · 628 pages
Orphaned and clubfooted, Philip Carey tries Germany, Paris, painting, and medicine, then wrecks himself on a waitress who despises him. Nobody has written the humiliation of unreturned love more exactly.
★ 6.6