The 27 Best 19th-Century English Novels

Drawing-room comedies sit beside gothic nightmares, social satires and detective puzzles, all from a century when the novel grew up. Expect beloved comfort reads and a few grim masterpieces that still split classrooms.

1. 1
   Pride and Prejudice

   Jane Austen's 1813 comedy of manners following Elizabeth Bennet and the proud Mr Darcy.
   1000pts
2. 2
   Villette

   Charlotte Brontë's darker, introspective story of a lonely English teacher in a Belgian town.
   693pts
3. 3
   Sense and Sensibility

   Two sisters with opposite temperaments navigate money, heartbreak and social ruin.
   682pts
4. 4
   A Tale of Two Cities

   Dickens's French Revolution drama of sacrifice, set between London and Paris.
   656pts
5. 5
   The Picture of Dorian Gray

   Oscar Wilde's only novel, about a beautiful young man whose portrait ages in his place.
   515pts
6. 6
   Our Mutual Friend

   Dickens's last completed novel, a murky Thames-side story about money, identity and dust heaps.
   515pts
7. 7
   Middlemarch

   George Eliot's panoramic study of a provincial town, often named the greatest English novel.
   515pts
8. 8
   Silas Marner

   A bitter miser finds redemption when an abandoned child wanders into his cottage.
   515pts
9. 9
   Emma

   Austen's 1815 portrait of a clever, meddling matchmaker who misreads everyone around her.
   515pts
10. 10
    Great Expectations

    Dickens's story of Pip, a blacksmith's boy raised by a secret fortune and a bitter dream.
    454pts
11. 11
    Mansfield Park

    A poor relation raised in a wealthy household tests her principles against a charming, careless crowd.
    454pts
12. 12
    Vanity Fair

    Thackeray's satire of ambition and snobbery, starring the unforgettable schemer Becky Sharp.
    454pts
13. 13
    Tess of the d'Urbervilles

    Hardy's tragic story of a country girl crushed by class, chance and a rigid moral code.
    454pts
14. 14
    David Copperfield

    Dickens's most personal novel, tracing an orphan's rise from hardship to authorship.
    384pts
15. 15
    Frankenstein

    Mary Shelley's 1818 tale of a scientist whose created being turns on him, often called the first science fiction novel.
    384pts
16. 16
    The Woman in White

    Wilkie Collins's twisting sensation novel of stolen identities and a ghostly figure on a moonlit road.
    384pts
17. 17
    Treasure Island

    Stevenson's pirate adventure of maps, mutiny and Long John Silver.
    303pts
18. 18
    The Mill on the Floss

    Eliot's tender, tragic story of a brother and sister bound together by the river of their childhood.
    303pts
19. 19
    Dracula

    Bram Stoker's 1897 epistolary horror classic that defined the modern vampire.
    303pts
20. 20
    Persuasion

    Austen's last completed novel, a quiet second-chance romance between Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth.
    303pts
21. 21
    The Moonstone

    Collins's cursed diamond mystery, widely regarded as the first English detective novel.
    303pts
22. 22
    Jane Eyre

    Charlotte Brontë's orphan-turned-governess who refuses to give up her independence for love.
    303pts
23. 23
    Oliver Twist

    A workhouse orphan falls in with London's pickpockets in Dickens's early social crusade.
    303pts
24. 24
    Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

    Lewis Carroll's 1865 fantasy of a girl tumbling down a rabbit hole into nonsense.
    303pts
25. 25
    Wuthering Heights

    Emily Brontë's savage, haunting story of Heathcliff and Catherine on the Yorkshire moors.
    206pts
26. 26
    Little Dorrit

    Dickens's tale of debtors' prison, bureaucracy and a quiet heroine born behind its walls.
    0pts
27. 27
    Bleak House

    A sprawling Dickens satire of a never-ending lawsuit and the lives it swallows.
    0pts

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