Classic English Literature
Last updated: October 01, 2024
The classics of English literature: whether you're reading for school or for pleasure, it can be hard to get a grip on the Western canon—and even harder to understand it. Thankfully, out of the 1500+ interviews on Five Books, scores of them cover every topic and most major authors you’re likely to encounter in a survey English literature course. You can treat these interviews as study guides, intelligent scholarly discussions, reading lists, or even collectively a syllabus, beginning with the time of Chaucer and Shakespeare moving through Romantic poetry, Victorian fiction, modernism and even previously overlooked female authors now gaining in critical heft like Daphne du Maurier and Iris Murdoch.
Middle English to Shakespeare
Troilus and Criseyde
Chaucer
Shakespeare
Victorian and 19th-Century American Literature
Victorian Fiction
The Gothic
Gothic Fiction
George Eliot
Oscar Wilde
DH Lawrence
Wilkie Collins
Charles Dickens
HG Wells
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Victorian Essays
Sex in Victorian Literature
Romantic Literature
Jane Austen; the alternative Jane Austen
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Greatest Romantic Poems
William and Dorothy Wordsworth
Reading the Romantics
20th-Century British Literature
Modernism
Iris Murdoch
Samuel Beckett
George Orwell
Evelyn Waugh & the Bright Young Things
PG Wodehouse
Agatha Christie
Daphne du Maurier
20th-Century American Literature
African American Literature
American Poetry
Ernest Hemingway
The Great Gatsby
Cormac McCarthy
Sylvia Plath
Vladimir Nabokov
Best American Stories
Essential New York Novels
New York Writers
9/11 Literature
The Best Jane Austen Books, recommended by Patricia Meyer Spacks
Jane Austen was a British novelist who died in 1817 at the age of just 41, but whose books have stood the test of time. In the 21st century, her novels continue to be not only studied in school but also read for pleasure. We asked the distinguished Austen scholar Patricia Meyer Spacks to talk us through the best Jane Austen novels and explain what it is that makes them special.
The Best Novels in English, recommended by Robert McCrum
Journalist Robert McCrum spent two years selecting the best novels ever written in English. Here he narrows it down to just five: a perfect introduction to the best fiction the English language has to offer.
The Best Virginia Woolf Books, recommended by Hermione Lee
Virginia Woolf was long dismissed as a ‘minor modernist’ but now stands as one of the giants of 20th century literature. Her biographer, Hermione Lee, talks us through the novels, essays, and diaries of Virginia Woolf.
The Best George Orwell Books, recommended by D J Taylor
Three-quarters of a century on from its initial publication, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is just as resonant in today’s era of misinformation and fake news as it was in the incipient Cold War era. D J Taylor, author of a prizewinning biography of Orwell, takes us through the extraordinary impact of the author’s fiction and reportage.
The best books on Oscar Wilde, recommended by Sos Eltis
Oscar Wilde cultivated an image of himself as an idle genius, dashing off masterpieces with a lazy brilliance. But below the glittering linguistic surface of his works, suggests Sos Eltis, lies an anarchic politics and a phenomenal analysis of power.
Shakespeare’s Best Plays, recommended by Emma Smith
Shakespearean scholar Emma Smith picks her five favourite plays by the Bard, and controversially argues that not only are some of his plays just too long, but also that the most moving moments in Shakespeare’s oeuvre are where we might not expect them
The Canterbury Tales: A Reading List, recommended by Marion Turner
Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales not only revolutionized English poetry—they’re also extremely funny and moving. Oxford Professor Marion Turner, who has written the first full-length biography of Chaucer in a generation, tells us about the extraordinary man who wrote them and why we should all read the Canterbury Tales.
The Best Anthony Trollope Books, recommended by Francesca Simon
Anthony Trollope compared being a writer to being a cobbler and wrote highly readable novels that nonetheless exposed all our human foibles. Bestselling children’s author and Trollope enthusiast Francesca Simon explains her fascination with Anthony Trollope and recommends some of her favourite books by the Victorian novelist.
René Weis on The Best Plays of Shakespeare
In the second of a Five Books series marking the 400th year since the world’s most popular playwright’s death, eminent Shakespearean René Weis picks his five favourite plays, and explains why King Lear will change your life.
The best books on William and Dorothy Wordsworth, recommended by Lucy Newlyn
William Wordsworth probably did not get his greatest creative impetus from solitude, but from his extremely close relationship with his sister, suggests Oxford scholar Lucy Newlyn