Harvard Classics Books
Oliver Twist
Charles DickensThe second novel by Dickens, and considered one of his best, Oliver Twist is the story of an orphan boy who is essentially born into an English workhouse. There he must suffer the abject miseries of p..
Sense and Sensibility
Jane AustenJane Austen (1775-1817) is one of the best known and widely read English novelists out there, and her 1811 book Sense and Sensibility, which she signed anonymously "A Lady," was the book that kicked o..
Through the Looking Glass
Lewis CarrollThrough the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871) is the sequel to Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, which takes place 6 months after Alice's trip down the rabbit hole. This time it's a ..
Of Human Bondage
W. Somerset MaughamOf Human Bondage is W. Somerset Maugham's 1915 masterpiece featuring the young Philip Carey. The work is considered autobiographical, though Maugham claims that most was "pure invention." The novel is..
Sophocles' Oedipus Trilogy
SophoclesOedipus Rex ie the first in the trilogy is one of the most powerful dramas I've had the chance to read. It defines the term 'epic' both in scale and emotion; its narrative is grand and gripping, and t..
Pygmalion
George Bernard ShawGeorge Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion: A Romance in Five Acts (1912) is one of greatest comic masterpieces of the 20th century. It's hard now to imagine how a play about a phonetics expert who decides to co..
Heidi
Johanna SpyriHeidi is a work of children's fiction published in 1881 by Swiss author Johanna Spyri, originally published in two parts as Heidi: Her Years of Wandering and Learning and Heidi: How She Used What She ..