This document lists 101 masterpieces of English literature, ranging from the anonymous epic poem Beowulf from the 8th century to Vikram Seth's 1993 novel A Suitable Boy. Some of the notable works mentioned include works by Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens, Joyce, Woolf, and Atwood. The list spans different time periods and genres within English literature over nearly a millennium.
Here are the novels from which to choose for your final College Comp research paper. You must choose TWO (unless otherwise noted) from the list. Your final research paper will be a comparison of the novels.
1. 101 Masterpieces of Literature in
25. Lord Byron - Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812-1818)
English
1. Beowulf (anon, abt. 8th century)
26. Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice (1813)
2. Geoffrey Chaucer - The Canterbury Tales (bef. 1400)
27. Mary Shelley - Frankenstein (1818)
28. James Fenimore Cooper - The Last of the Mohicans (1826)
3. Christopher Marlowe - Doctor Faustus (abt.1589)
4. Edmund Spenser - The Faerie Queene (1590)
29. Edgar Allan Poe - The Fall of the House of Usher (1839)
5. Philip Sidney - Astrophil and Stella (bef. 1591)
6. William Shakespeare - A Midsummer Night's Dream (abt. 1596)
30. Charlotte Brontë - Jane Eyre (1847)
7. William Shakespeare - Romeo and Juliet (abt. 1597)
31. Emily Brontë - Wuthering heights (1847)
8. William Shakespeare - Hamlet (abt. 1602)
32. William Makepeace Thackeray - Vanity Fair (1848)
9. William Shakespeare - Othello (abt. 1604)
33. Herman Melville - Moby-Dick (1851)
10. Ben Jonson - Volpone (1605)
34. Harriet Beecher Stowe - Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)
11. Thomas Hobbes - Leviathan (1651)
35. Anthony Trollope - Barchester Towers (1857)
12. Samuel Pepys - The Diary of Samuel Pepys (1660-1669)
36. Charles Dickens - A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
37. Edward FitzGerald - The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (1859)
13. John Milton - Paradise Lost (1667)
38. Wilkie Collins - The Woman in White (1860)
14. John Bunyan - The Pilgrim's Progress (1678)
39. Charles Dickens - Great Expectations (1860-1861)
15. Daniel Defoe - Robinson Crusoe (1719)
40. George Eliot - Silas Marner (1861)
16. Daniel Defoe - Moll Flanders (1722)
41. Anthony Trollope - Framley Parsonage (1861)
17. Jonathan Swift - Gulliver's Travels (1726)
42. Lewis Carroll - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
18. Alexander Pope - Essay on Man (1734)
19. Laurence Sterne - The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy,
Gentleman (1759-1767)
43. George Eliot - Middlemarch (1871-1872)
20. Oliver Goldsmith - The Vicar of Wakefield (1766)
21. Laurence Sterne - A Sentimental Journey Through France and
44. Mark Twain - The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876)
Italy (1768)
22. William Blake - Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1789- 45. Thomas Hardy - The Return of the Native (1878)
1794) 46. Henry James - Daisy Miller (1878)
23. William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Lyrical
47. Robert Louis Stevenson - Treasure Island (1883)
Ballads (1798)
48. Mark Twain - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
24. Jane Austen - Sense and Sensibility (1811)
2. 49. Thomas Hardy - The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) 75. Robert Graves - I, Claudius (1934)
50. Robert Louis Stevenson - The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
76. Henry Miller - Tropic of Cancer (1934)
Hyde (1886)
77. William Faulkner - Absalom, Absalom! (1936)
51. Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) 78. J. R. R. Tolkien - The Hobbit or There and Back Again (1937)
52. Thomas Hardy - Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891)
53. Oscar Wilde - The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) 79. Ernest Hemingway - For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)
80. John Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
54. Bram Stoker - Dracula (1897) 81. George Orwell - Animal Farm (1945)
55. Oscar Wilde - The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898) 82. Alan Paton - Cry, The Beloved Country (1948)
56. Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness (1899) 83. Arthur Miller - Death of a Salesman (1949)
57. Rudyard Kipling - Kim (1901) 84. George Orwell - Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)
58. Arthur Conan Doyle - The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) 85. Ernest Hemingway - The Old Man and the Sea (1952)
86. Saul Bellow - The Adventures of Augie March (1953)
59. Henry James - The Ambassadors (1903) 87. Samuel Beckett - Waiting for Godot (1954)
60. J.M. Barrie - Peter Pan (1904) 88. William Golding - Lord of the Flies (1954)
61. E. M. Forster - Howards End (1910) 89. J. R. R. Tolkien - The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955)
62. G.K. Chesterton - The Innocence Of Father Brown (1911) 90. Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita (1955)
91. Jack Kerouac - On the Road (1957)
63. George Bernard Shaw - Pygmalion (1912) 92. Harper Lee- To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)
64. James Joyce - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
93. Joseph Heller - Catch-22 (1961)
94. Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar (1963)
65. Edith Wharton - The Age of Innocence (1920)
95. Truman Capote - In Cold Blood (1965)
66. T.S. Eliot - The Waste Land (1922)
67. James Joyce - Ulysses (1922) 96. Maya Angelou - I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)
68. E. M. Forster - A Passage to India (1924) 97. Charles Bukowski - Post Office (1971)
98. Raymond Carver - Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (1976)
69. Virginia Woolf - Mrs. Dalloway (1925)
99. Douglas Adams - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979-
70. F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby (1925)
1992)
71. A. A. Milne - Winnie-the-Pooh (1926)
100. Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale (1985)
72. D.H. Lawrence - Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)
101. Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy (1993)
73. Virginia Woolf - A Room of One's Own (1929)
74. Aldous Huxley - Brave New World (1932)