The Top 99
The nearly a thousand entries on The Greatest Literature of All Time list can be daunting. So much to read. So little time. Here's a stripped down and ranked version of the list you may find easier to handle.
You may also be interested in The Top 99 Novels, The Top 99 Stories, The Top 99 Poems and The Top 99 Plays.
Latest update: February 12, 2026
1. Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Spain, novel, 1605–1615
2. In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust, France, novel, 1913–1927
3. Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert, France, novel, 1857
4. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy, Russia, novel, 1865–1869
5. Iliad, Homer, Greece, epic poem, c.750 BCE
6. The Odyssey, Homer, Greece, epic poem, c.750 BCE
7. Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Russia, novel, 1866
8. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez, Colombia, novel, 1967
9. The Divine Comedy, Alighieri Dante, Italy, epic poem, 1307
10. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy, Russia, novel, 1878
11. Ulysses, James Joyce, Ireland, novel, 1922
12. The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Russia, novel, 1880
13. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell, England, novel, 1949
14. Moby Dick, Herman Melville, United States, novel, 1851
15. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov, Russia, novel, 1955
16. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen, England, novel, 1813
17. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë, England, novel, 1847
18. Beloved, Toni Morrison, United States, novel, 1987
19. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, England, novel, 1818
20. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, United States, novel, 1925
21. Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe, Nigeria, novel, 1958
22. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain, United States, novel, 1884
23. Middlemarch, George Eliot, England, novel, 1872
24. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood, Canada, novel, 1985
25. Trial, Franz Kafka, Austria, novel, 1925
26. Oedipus Rex, Sophocles, Greece, play, 429 BCE
27. Aeneid, Virgil, Rome, epic poem, c.29–19 BCE
28. Hamlet, William Shakespeare, England, play, 1601
29. Oresteia, Aeschylus, Greece, play series, 458 BCE
30. Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift, Ireland, novel, 1726
31. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien, England, novel, 1954–1955
32. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë, England, novel, 1847
33. Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne, England, novel, 1759–1767
34. The Red and the Black, Stendhal, France, novel, 1831
35. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll, England, novella, 1865
36. Les Misérables, Victor Hugo, France, novel, 1862
37. The Tale of Genji, Murasaki Shikibu, Japan, novel, c.1020
38. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner, United States, novel, 1929
39. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie, India, novel, 1981
40. One Thousand and One Nights, Anonymous, Persia, story collection, c.800–1400
41. The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer, England, Prose and poetry collection, c.1387–1400
42. The Count of Monte-Cristo, Alexandre Dumas, France, novel, 1844–1846
43. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee, United States, novel, 1960
44. Fictions, Jorge Luis Borges, Argentina, story collection, 1941–1956
45. Antigone, Sophocles, Greece, play, 442–441 BCE
46. Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison, United States, novel, 1952
47. The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann, Germany, novel, 1924
48. Dracula, Bram Stoker, Ireland, novel, 1897
49. The Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio, Italy, story collection, c.1370
50. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad, England, novella, 1902
51. Epic of Gilgamesh, Anonymous, Babylon, epic poem, c.2100–1200 BCE
52. The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger, United States, novel, 1951
53. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck, United States, novel, 1939
54. The Outsider, Albert Camus, Algeria, novella, 1942
55. Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf, England, novel, 1925
56. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka, Austria, novella, 1916
57. The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James, United States, novel, 1881
58. The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde, Ireland, novel, 1891
59. King Lear, William Shakespeare, England, play, c.1606
60. A Sentimental Education, Gustave Flaubert, France, novel, 1869
61. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens, England, novel, 1861
62. The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco, Italy, novel, 1980
63. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley, England, novel, 1932
64. Candide, Voltaire, France, novella, 1759
65. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce, Ireland, novel, 1916
66. The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing, England, novel, 1959
67. Metamorphoses, Ovid, Rome, epic poem, c.8
68. The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov, Russia, novel, 1967
69. All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Remarque, Germany, novel, 1929
70. Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett, Ireland, play, 1952
71. Faust, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany, play, 1808-1832
72. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf, England, novel, 1927
73. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez, Colombia, novel, 1985
74. Emma, Jane Austen, England, novel, 1815
75. The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, France, novella, 1943
76. Medea, Euripides, Greece, play, 431 BCE
77. Animal Farm, George Orwell, England, novella, 1945
78. The Man Without Qualities, Robert Musil, Austria, novel, 1930–1943
79. Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe, England, novel, 1719
80. Memoirs of Hadrian, Marguerite Yourcenar, Belgium, novel, 1951
81. For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway, United States, novel, 1940
82. Fathers and Sons, Ivan Turgenev, Russia, novel, 1862
83. The Life of Gargantua and Pantagruel, François Rabelais, France, novel, 1532–1564
84. Absalom, Absalom!, William Faulkner, United States, novel, 1936
85. Dead Souls, Nikolai Gogol, Ukraine, novel, 1842
86. The Leopard, Giusseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Italy, novel, 1958
87. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens, England, novel, 1850
88. Blindness, José Saramago, Portugal, novel, 1995
89. On the Road, Jack Kerouac, United States, novel, 1957
90. The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas, France, novel, 1844
91. Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling, England, novel series, 1997–2007
92. The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton, United States, novel, 1920
93. Life of Pi, Yann Martel, Canada, novel, 2001
94. The Sorrows of Young Werther, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany, novel, 1774
95. The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Russia, novel, 1874
96. A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens, England, novel, 1859
97. The Charterhouse of Parma, Stendhal, France, novel, 1839
98. Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry, England, novel, 1947
99. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell, United States, novel, 1936
Bonus reads
For your additional reading pleasure, here are a few titles that didn't quite make this Top 99 but are also considered among the most acclaimed works of literature:
Tom Jones, Henry Fielding, England, novel, 1749
Bleak House, Charles Dickens, England, novel, 1853
Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak, Russia, novel, 1957
Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray, England, novel, 1848
Journey to the End of the Night , Louis-Ferdinand Céline, France, novel, 1932
Paradise Lost, John Milton, England, long poem, 1667
Lord of the Flies, William Golding, England, novel, 1954
Macbeth, William Shakespeare, England, play, c.1606
The War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells, England, novel, 1898
The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis, England, novel series, 1950–1956
A Passage to India, E.M. Forster, England, novel, 1924
Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys, England, novel, 1966
Catch-23, Joseph Heller, United States, novel, 1961
The Flowers of Evil, Charles Baudelaire, France, poetry collection, 1857
Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier, England, novel, 1938
Hunger, Knut Hamsun, Norway, novel, 1899
The Hound of the Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle, England, novel, 1902
Dream of the Red Chamber, Cao Xueqin, China, novel, 1791–1792
The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot, England, long poem, 1922
Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe, United States, novel, 1852
