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Telegraph readers' favourite novels

Telegraph readers' favourite novels

Telegraph08-07-2025
To nominate the 20 greatest novels of all time, even if you've spent decades reading and writing about fiction, is far from an easy task. The attentive reader will immediately spot omissions from this list – and this is exactly what Telegraph readers did this weekend after Claire Allfree's list of the 20 greatest novels of all time was published. There were more than a thousand comments on the article – here, we've pulled out the top recommendations that should be on your reading list.
A Clockwork Orange
by Anthony Burgess
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (amongst others)
by Lewis Carroll
War and Peace, The Brothers Karamazov, Les Misérables, Moby-Dick, Pride and Prejudice, All Quiet on the Western Front, Absalom! Absalom!, The Scarlet Letter, The Sound and the Fury, Through the Looking Glass, An American Tragedy, Gone with the Wind, Nineteen Eighty Four, Animal Farm, Washington Square, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The Stranger, Treasure Island, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Roderick Guerry
Anna Karenina
by Leo Tolstoy
Well, you included my favourite novel, The Master and Margarita, and another favourite, Middlemarch. Tolstoy must be included but my choice would have been Anna Karenina. A glaring omission is A Glastonbury Romance by England's own Tolstoy, John Cowper Powys. An amazing novel. Charlotte Cowell
Buy the book
Wuthering Heights
by Emily Brontë
Must haves: Bleak House and/or Great Expectations (with original ending). 100 Years of Solitude. Wuthering Heights. The Iliad and/or The Odyssey. Toby Roberts
Buy the book
100 Years of Solitude
by Gabriel García Márquez
I would have included 100 Years of Solitude. Charlotte Cowell
Buy the book
Mrs Dalloway
by Virginia Woolf
Mrs Dalloway? Joe Doherty
Buy the book
To Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee
Suggested by
Buy the book
The Count of Monte Cristo
by Alexandre Dumas
I am honestly going to try and read as many as I can [from the original list ]. My favourite book is The Count of Monte Cristo. Kerry Rooke
Buy the book
The Magic Mountain
by Thomas Mann
The Magic Mountain and Tonio Kröger by Thomas Mann; Herzog by Saul Bellow; Drive your Plow over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk. For starters. Linda Sansbury
Buy the book
David Copperfield
by Charles Dickens
I'll throw in a few that seem not to have been mentioned: The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, by Henry Fielding; Three Men in a Boat, by Jerome K. Jerome; David Copperfield by Dickens; Don Camillo (all of them) by Giovanni Guareschi; and Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. Martin Bastone
Buy the book
Grapes of Wrath
by John Steinbeck
Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath and Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf are wonderful dramas that are beautifully crafted. Michael John Roarty
Buy the book
The Brothers Karamazov
By Fyodor Dostoevsky
…or Confederacy of Dunces by JK Toole. Eric Grey
Buy the book
And finally…
Graham Greene has been overlooked, too. Barbara Chapman
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