50 classics

Odyssey

Homer's great epic describes the many adventures of Odysseus, Greek warrior, as he strives over many years to return to his home island of Ithaca after the Trojan War...

Antigone

The curse placed on Oedipus lingers and haunts a younger generation in this new and brilliant translation of Sophocles' classic drama. The daughter of Oedipus and...

The Confessions

An autobiographical account of Augustine's tempestuous early life until his conversation to practising the Catholic faith enthusiastically. It provides a vehicle for...

The Divine Comedy

A poem about life after death. The inferno (hell) is a conical funnel, purgatory a mountain with circular ledges for repentant sinners, and at the top is earthly...

Orlando furioso

One of the greatest epic poems of the Italian Renaissance, Orlando Furioso is an intricate tale of love and enchantment set at the time of the Holy Roman Emperor...

Utopia

Utopia (Libellus vere aureus, nec minus salutaris quam festivus, de optimo rei publicae statu deque nova insula Utopia) is a work of fiction and political...

La Araucana

La Araucana is an epic poem by the Spaniard Alonso de Ercilla that relates the first phase of the Arauco War between Spaniards and the Mapuche people, also known as...

Don Quixote

The humble gentleman Don Quixote is obsessed with tales of chivalry and decides to roam the world seeking adventures. He rides Rosinante and travels with Sancho Panza...

Hamlet

Hold Hamlet, the king of Denmark, is dead. His widow Gertrude marries his brother, Claudius, who becomes king. Hamlet's son sees a ghost of his father who tells his...

Life Is a Dream

One of the best-known plays by Calderón de la Barca. Follows the story of Segismundo, son of the king and heir to the kingdom, who was marked by a terrible prophecy...

The Imaginary Invalid

A hypochondriac, victimized by pompous physicians, tests the loyalty of a loving daughter and discovers the contempt of his scheming and greedy second wife. This...

Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe is shipwrecked and this is the story of his efforts to cope with solitude and making a tolerable existence with infinite ingenuity. He describes the...

Pride and Prejudice

Mr. and Mrs. Bennet have five daughters and live in Hertfordshire in England. Due to the lack of a male heir, the family fortune is due to fall to a cousin. A rich...

The Betrothed

In the Italian, called 'I Promessi Sposi'. Set in the 17th Century, it is at the time of the Spanish dominated Lombardy and the ravages of plague. Two poor silk...

The Captain's Daughter

Set during the Pugachov rebellion against Catherine the Great, The Captain’s Daughter was Pushkin’s only completed novel and remains one of his most popular works....

Apologia pro vita sua

Spiritual autobiography of a man who seeks his own consciousness. The book is a delight to read, literally fluid, well written, based on the documented facts of his...

The Scarlet Letter

Set in the harsh Puritan community of seventeenth-century Boston, this tale of an adulterous entanglement that results in an illegitimate birth reveals Nathaniel...

Dead Souls

Chichikov buys 400 servants, or "dead souls" at a low price in order to fake his possession but after a while the sellers become suspicious. From this point, Gogol...

Oliver Twist

Oliver was in a workhouse since his parents were unknown. He runs away to London and falls in with Fagin, Bill Sikes and Nancy, all thieves. The benevolent Mr....

Jane Eyre

A novel about the life of Jane, an English girl and an orphan, who is admitted into an orphanage until she starts work as a governess. She falls in love with the...

Wuthering Heights

The Heathcliff Linton house called Wuthering Heights is one of violence and incident, with the story told by the neighbour Lockwood, a tenant at the Grange. It is the...

Moby Dick

The young narrator, Ismael, decides to go to sea on the whaler Pequod, which was ultimately doomed. Here we are introduced to the harpooner Queequeg, the first-mate...

The Woman in White

The story is related by a series of characters involved in the intrigue of Walter Hartright's meeting of an agitated woman on a lonely road at midnight. She was...

Ben-Hur

Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1880) by Lew Wallace is one of the most popular and beloved 19th century American novels. This faithful New Testament tale combines the...

Around the World in Eighty Days

A rich Englishman, Fogg, makes a bet: according to him, it is possible to go around the world in 80 days. To win the bet, he embarks on a journey with Passepartout (a...

Anna Karenina

Anna, married, through a marriage of convenience, with a well-known public servant in Russian society, gives way to the solicitudes of Vronski, a soldier who woos her...

Little women

The beloved story of the March girls is a classic American novel, telling the story of four sisters: independent, tomboyish Jo; delicate, loving Beth; pretty, kind...

Martín Fierro

José Hernández’s Martín Fierro is considered the foremost work of the gaucho literary genre. The first part, a critique of the Argentine political system, details the...

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Tom Sawyer lives with his brother Sid and Aunt Polly in St Petersburg, Missouri. He is a great friend of Huckleberry Finn and this is an account of their adventures....

Tartarin of Tarascon

The Provençal town of Tarascon is so enthusiastic about hunting that no game lives anywhere near it, and its inhabitants resort to telling hunting stories and...

Far From the Madding Crowd

This is one of the Wessex tales centring on the romantic dalliances of four people. The shepherd Gabriel Oak is generous in his love, Bathsheba Everdene is innocent...

The Portrait of a Lady

When Isabel Archer, a beautiful, spirited American is brought to Europe by her wealthy aunt Touchett, it is expected that she will soon marry. But Isabel, resolved to...

Quo vadis?

Historical novel, set in imperial Rome, in the time of St. Peter, St. Paul and Nero (63 AD), based on many documented historical facts. The title of the book derives...

The Secret Garden

A selfish and unbearable girl is sent for a country house in the Yorkshire, and left to herself. Starting to explore the house she finds out a sick boy hidden from...

Pygmalion

After a bet, the professor of phonetics Henry Higgins, passes the humble flower seller Eliza Doolittle for a duchess. The woman rebels to be used in this way, and the...

A Study in Scarlet

First book of who would be one of the most famous detectives of all time, prototype of those who came next. The novels starring Sherlock Holmes are set in a police...

The Citadel

A young doctor begins his first practice in a small South Wales mining village, all idealistic and keen to improve the lives of his patients. Yet he soon comes to...

Treasure Island

Jim Hawkins narrates the story throughout. On the west coast of England in the 1700s his mother was the innkeeper at Admiral Benbow Inn. One day an old pirate arrived...