This 1st volume of "100 Books You Must Read Before You Die" contains the following 100 works, arranged alphabetically by authors' last
Little Women [Louisa May Alcott] Emma, Pride and Prejudice [Jane Austen] Father Goriot [Honoré de Balzac] Beauty And The Beast [Barbot de Villeneuve, Gabrielle-Suzanne] The Law [Frédéric Bastiat] Cabin Fever [B. M. Bower] The Tenant of Wildfell Hall , Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights [Brontë Sisters] Tarzan of the Apes [Edgar Rice Burroughs] The Way of All Flesh [Samuel Butler] Alice's Adventures in Wonderland [Lewis Carroll] My Ántonia [Willa Cather] Don Quixote [Miguel Cervantes] The Awakening [Kate Chopin] Fanny Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure [John Cleland] The Moonstone [Wilkie Collins] Heart of Darkness, Nostromo [Joseph Conrad] The Last of the Mohicans [James Fenimore Cooper] Moll Flanders, Robinson Crusoe [Daniel Defoe] Discourse on the Method [Descartes] Great Expectations [Charles Dickens] Crime and Punishment ,The Idiot [F.Dostoyevsky] The Hound of the Baskervilles [Arthur Conan Doyle] Sister Carrie [Theodore Dreiser] The Count of Monte Cristo,The Three Musketeers [Alexandre Dumas] Middlemarch [George Eliot] A Simple Soul, Madame Bovary, Salammbô [Flaubert] The Good Soldier [Ford Madox Ford] A Room with a View, Howards End [ E. M. Forster] North and South [Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell] The Sorrows of Young Werther [Johann Wolfgang von Goethe] Dead Souls [Nikolai Gogol] The Enormous Room [E. E. Cummings ] Mother [Maxim Gorky] King Solomon's Mines [Henry Rider Haggard] Tess of the d'Urbervilles [Thomas Hardy] The Scarlet Letter [Nathaniel Hawthorne] The Iliad & The Odyssey [Homer] Les Misérables,The Hunchback of Notre Dame [Victor Hugo] Crome Yellow [Aldous Huxley] The Legend of Sleepy Hollow [Washington Irving] The Portrait of a Lady [Henry James] Three Men in a Boat [Jerome Klapka Jerome] A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Ma, Ulysses [James Joyce] The Water-Babies [Charles Kingsley] Kim [Rudyard Kipling] and .
Emily Brontë was an English novelist and poet whose singular contribution to literature, Wuthering Heights, is now celebrated as one of the most powerful and original novels in the English language. Born into the remarkable Brontë family on 30 July 1818 in Thornton, Yorkshire, she was the fifth of six children of Maria Branwell and Patrick Brontë, an Irish clergyman. Her early life was marked by both intellectual curiosity and profound loss. After the death of her mother in 1821 and the subsequent deaths of her two eldest sisters in 1825, Emily and her surviving siblings— Charlotte, Anne, and Branwell—were raised in relative seclusion in the moorland village of Haworth, where their imaginations flourished in a household shaped by books, storytelling, and emotional intensity. The Brontë children created elaborate fictional worlds, notably Angria and later Gondal, which served as an outlet for their creative energies. Emily, in particular, gravitated toward Gondal, a mysterious, windswept imaginary land she developed with her sister Anne. Her early poetry, much of it steeped in the mythology and characters of Gondal, demonstrated a remarkable lyrical force and emotional depth. These poems remained private until discovered by Charlotte in 1845, after which Emily reluctantly agreed to publish them in the 1846 collection Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, using the pseudonym Ellis Bell to conceal her gender. Though the volume sold few copies, critics identified Emily’s poems as the strongest in the collection, lauding her for their music, power, and visionary quality. Emily was intensely private and reclusive by nature. She briefly attended schools in Cowan Bridge and Roe Head but was plagued by homesickness and preferred the solitude of the Yorkshire moors, which inspired much of her work. She worked briefly as a teacher but found the demands of the profession exhausting. She also studied in Brussels with Charlotte in 1842, but again found herself alienated and yearning for home. Throughout her life, Emily remained closely bonded with her siblings, particularly Anne, and with the landscape of Haworth, where she drew on the raw, untamed beauty of the moors for both her poetry and her fiction. Her only novel, Wuthering Heights, was published in 1847, a year after the poetry collection, under her pseudonym Ellis Bell. Initially met with a mixture of admiration and shock, the novel’s structure, emotional intensity, and portrayal of violent passion and moral ambiguity stood in stark contrast to the conventions of Victorian fiction. Many readers, unable to reconcile its power with the expected gentility of a woman writer, assumed it had been written by a man. The novel tells the story of Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw—two characters driven by obsessive love, cruelty, and vengeance—and explores themes of nature, the supernatural, and the destructive power of unresolved emotion. Though controversial at the time, Wuthering Heights is now considered a landmark in English literature, acclaimed for its originality, psychological insight, and poetic vision. Emily's personality has been the subject of much speculation, shaped in part by her sister Charlotte’s later writings and by Victorian biographies that often sought to romanticize or domesticate her character. While some accounts depict her as intensely shy and austere, others highlight her fierce independence, deep empathy with animals, and profound inner life. She is remembered as a solitary figure, closely attuned to the rhythms of the natural world, with a quiet but formidable intellect and a passion for truth and freedom. Her dog, Keeper, was a constant companion and, according to many, a window into her capacity for fierce, loyal love. Emily Brontë died of tuberculosis on 19 December 1848 at the age of thirty, just a year after the publication of her novel. Her early death, following those of her brother Branwell and soon to
Last year I started reading this collection with the personal goal that I would finish the whole darn thing. After about 30 books, I lost steam at The Three Musketeers and could never get past it. It's now been way too long since I've read any of these classics, so I'm going to do what any normal, non compulsive person would do and stop forcing myself to read them in order of their placement in this book, and instead will be reading them as they catch my fancy. I am keeping track of which books I've read below.
Little Women ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Emma ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Pride and Prejudice ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Father Goriot ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Beauty And The Beast ⭐️ The Law ⭐️ Cabin Fever ⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Tenant of Wildfell Hall ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Jane Eyre ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Wuthering Heights ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Tarzan of the Apes ⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Way of All Flesh ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Alice's Adventures in Wonderland ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ My Ántonia ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Don Quixote ⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Awakening ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure ⭐️⭐️ The Moonstone ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Heart of Darkness ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Nostromo ⭐️ The Last of the Mohicans ⭐️ Moll Flanders, ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Robinson Crusoe ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Discourse on the Method ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Great Expectations ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Crime and Punishment ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Idiot ⭐️⭐️ The Hound of the Baskervilles ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Sister Carrie ⭐️ The Count of Monte Cristo ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Three Musketeers ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Middlemarch ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ A Simple Heart ⭐️⭐️ Madame Bovary ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Salammbô ⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Good Soldier ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ A Room with a View ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Howards End ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ North and South ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Sorrows of Young Werther ⭐️⭐️ Dead Souls The Enormous Room Mother King Solomon's Mines ⭐️ Tess of the d'Urbervilles ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Scarlet Letter ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Iliad The Odyssey ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Les Misérables ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Hunchback of Notre Dame ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Crome Yellow ⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Legend of Sleepy Hollow ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Portrait of a Lady Three Men in a Boat A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Ulysses ⭐️⭐️ The Water-Babies Kim Sons and Lovers The Rainbow The Confessions of Arsene Lupin Arsene Lupin The Phantom of the Opera The Monk ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Babbitt The Call of the Wild ⭐️⭐️⭐️ At the Mountains of Madness The Princess of Cleves ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Of Human Bondage Bel-Ami Moby-Dick The Fall of the House of Usher ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Swann’s Way Gargantua The Mysteries of Udolpho ⭐️⭐️ The Confessions Frankenstein ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Quo Vadis The Jungle The Charterhouse of Parma The Red and The Black Dracula ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Uncle Tom’s Cabin The Elements of Style ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Gulliver’s Travels Vanity Fair Anna Karenina ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ War and Peace ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Way We Live Now Fathers and SOns The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea A Journey to the Center of the Earth ⭐️⭐️⭐️ A Mysterious Island Candide ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ The Time Machine ⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Age of Innocence ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Tess of the Storm Country The Picture of Dorian Gray ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Nana
Good selection of books. The Kindle edition is the pits. It gets an error and must be deleted and re-downloaded at least once in each reading session. Horrible reading experience. I will change to a proper book for what I'm reading now.
Of the many works collected here, I have previously read:
* “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen * “Emma” by Jane Austen * “Father Goriot” by Honore de Balzac (in French) * “Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll * “Fanny Hill” by John Cleland * “Heart Of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad * “The Hound Of The Baskervilles” by Arthur Conan Doyle * “The Three Musketeers” by Alexandre Dumas (in French) * “The Count Of Monte Cristo” by Alexandre Dumas (in French) * “Madame Bovary” by Gustavo Flaubert (in French) * “Tess Of The D’Urbervilles” by Thomas Hardy * “The Hunchback Of Notre Dame” by Victor Hugo (in French)
1. Little Women 2. The Golden Ass 3. Pride and Prejudice (other edition) 4. Emma 5. Father Goriot 6. The Inferno 7. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall 8. Jane Eyre (other edition) 9. Wuthering Heights (before 2017) 10. The Way of All Flesh 11. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (before 2017) 12. Don Quixote 13. The Travels of Persiles and Sigismunda 14. The Awakening 15. Fanny Hill 16. The Moonstone 17. Heart of Darkness 18. Nostromo 19. The Last of the Mohicans 20. The Red Badge of Courage 21. Robinson Crusoe 22. Moll Flanders 23. Bleak House 24. Great Expectations 25. Crime and Punishment 26. The Idiot 27. The Hound of the Baskervilles 28. Sister Carrie 29. The Three Musketeers 30. The Count of Monte Cristo 31. Middlemarch 32. Tom Jones 33. The Great Gatsby 34. Tender is the Night 35. Madame Bovary 36. Sentimental Education 37. The Good Soldier 38. North and South 39. The Sorrows of Young Werther (before 2017) 40. Dead Souls 41. The Mother 42. King Solomon's Mines 43. The Well of Loneliness 44. Tess of the D'Urbervilles 45. The Scarlet Letter 46. The Odyssey 47. The Hunchback of Notre Dame 48. Les Misérables 49. The Portrait of a Lady 50. Three Men in a Boat