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28 Best English Books of All Time


Our goal: Find the best English books according to the internet (not just one random person's opinion).

    Here's what we did:
  1. Type "best english books" into our search engine and study the top 5 pages.
  2. Add only the books mentioned 2+ times.
  3. Rank the results neatly for you here! 😊
    (It was a lot of work. But hey! That's why we're here, right?)

(Updated 2023)

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  1. MOST RECOMMENDED!
    1

    1984

    George Orwell

  2. 2

    Jane Eyre

    Charlotte Bronte

  3. 3

    Middlemarch

    George Eliot

  4. 4

    Mrs. Dalloway

    Virginia Woolf

  5. 5

    The Great Gatsby

    F. Scott Fitzgerald

  6. 6
  7. 7

    Wuthering Heights

    Emily Brontë

  8. 8
  9. 9

    Frankenstein

    Mary Shelley

  10. 10

    Great Expectations

    Charles Dickens

  11. 11

    David Copperfield

    Charles Dickens

  12. 12

    Emma

    Jane Austen

  13. 13
  14. 15
  15. 16
  16. 17

    Ulysses

    James Joyce

  17. 18

    Beloved

    Toni Morrison

  18. 19

    Persuasion

    Jane Austen

  19. 21

    Heart of Darkness

    Joseph Conrad

  20. 22
  21. 23

    Vanity Fair

    William Makepeace Thackeray

  22. 24

    To The Lighthouse

    Virginia Woolf

  23. 25

    The Good Soldier

    Ford Madox Ford

  24. 26

    Jude The Obscure

    Thomas Hardy

  25. 27
  26. 28

FAQ

  • How was this English books list created?

    We searched for "best English books", found the top 5 articles, took every book mentioned in 2+ articles, and averaged their rankings.

  • How many English books are in this list?

    There are 28 books in this list.

  • Why did you create this English books list?

    We wanted to gather the most accurate list of English books on the internet.

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