Oxford University

This reading list is inspired by this video and this blog post by Benjamin McEvoy. Benjamin's Hardcore Literature Book Club, which we can heartily recommend, reads the great books and we have set a personal goal to read this Oxford University English Literature degree inspired reading list during our lifetime. 

If you decide you want to do this challenge you can find out more about it from Benjamin's pages, linked above. We have chosen Zadie Smith, Ian McEwan and F Scott Fitzgerald as our special authors. Feel free to chose whoever you feel passionate about. After all, this project should be one of personal pleasure. 

Books from the list we have read and reviewed will be hyperlinked to their corresponding review page. This is a lifetime project, the aim is to enjoy and understand the books, not to whizz through them at breakneck speed, as people on the degree are expected to do in just three years. Here at Literary Atelier we aim to really live the great books.


English Literature at Oxford – Year One:

  • Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
  • Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy 
  • Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
  • The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
  • Middlemarch by George Eliot 
  • Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
  • The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
  • Dracula by Bram Stoker 
  • The Collected Short Stories of Edgar Allen Poe
  • The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
  • Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray 
  • Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
  • Dubliners by James Joyce
  • Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
  • Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
  • Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas
  • Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
  • Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
  • A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
  • Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier 
  • Lord of the Flies by William Golding
  • Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie 
  • Beowulf
  • The First Poems In English by Michael Alexander

English Literature at Oxford – Year Two:

  • Oroonoko by Aphra Behn
  • The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan
  • The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
  • Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
  • Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
  • The History of Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
  • Paradise Lost by John Milton
  • The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy by L. Sterne
  • Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
  • Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
  • Dr Faustus by Christopher Marlowe
  • The Faerie Queen by Edmund Spenser
  • The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster
  • Utopia by Sir Thomas Moore
  • 'Tis Pity She's a Whore by John Ford
  • Clarissa by Samuel Richardson
  • Confessions of an English Opium-Eater by Thomas De Quincey
The Complete Novels of Jane Austen:
  • Sense and Sensibility
  • Pride and Prejudice
  • Mansfield Park
  • Emma
  • Northanger Abbey
  • Persuasion
  • Lady Susan
  • Sanditon

The Poems of:
  • William Blake
  • William Wordsworth
  • Lord Byron
  • John Keats
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

English Literature at Oxford – Year Three:

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare:
  • All’s Well That Ends Well
  • Antony and Cleopatra
  • As You Like It 
  • The Comedy of Errors 
  • Coriolanus 
  • Cymbeline 
  • Hamlet 
  • Henry IV, Part 1 
  • Henry IV, Part 2 
  • Henry V 
  • Henry VI, Part 1 
  • Henry VI, Part 2 
  • Henry VI, Part 3 
  • Henry VIII
  • Julius Caesar 
  • King John 
  • King Lear 
  • Love’s Labour’s Lost 
  • Macbeth 
  • Measure for Measure 
  • The Merchant of Venice 
  • The Merry Wives of Windsor 
  • A Midsummer Night’s Dream 
  • Much Ado About Nothing 
  • Othello 
  • Pericles 
  • Richard II 
  • Richard III 
  • Romeo and Juliet 
  • The Taming of the Shrew 
  • The Tempest 
  • Timon of Athens
  • Titus Andronicus
  • Troilus and Cressida
  • Twelfth Night
  • The Two Gentlemen of Verona
  • The Two Noble Kinsmen
  • The Winter’s Tale
  • The Rape of Lucrece
  • Venus and Adonis
  • The Sonnets
  • A Lover's Complaint

Special Authors

Zadie Smith
  • White Teeth (2000)
  • The Autograph Man (2002)
  • On Beauty (2005)
  • NW (2012)
  • Swing Time (2016)
  • The Fraud (2023)
  • The Wife of Willesden (2021)
  • The Embassy of Cambodia (2013)
  • Martha and Hanwell (2003)
  • Grand Union (2019)
  • The Burned Children of America (With: Dave Eggers)
  • The Book of Other People (2007)
  • Changing My Mind (2009)
  • Stop What You’re Doing and Read This! (2011)
  • Feel Free (2018)
  • Intimations (2020)


F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • This Side of Paradise (1920)
  • The Diamond as Big as the Ritz (1922)
  • The Beautiful and Damned (1922)
  • The Great Gatsby (1926)
  • Tender Is the Night (1934)
  • The Last Tycoon (1941)
  • Flappers and Philosophers (1920)
  • All the Sad Young Men (1926)
  • Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)
  • I’d Die for You and Other Lost Stories (2017)


Ian McEwan
  • The Cement Garden (1978)
  • The Comfort of Strangers (1981)
  • The Child in Time (1987)
  • The Innocent (1990)
  • Black Dogs (1992)
  • The Daydreamer (1994)
  • Enduring Love (1997)
  • Amsterdam (1998)
  • Atonement (2001)
  • Saturday (2005)
  • On Chesil Beach (2007)
  • For You (2008)
  • Solar (2010)
  • Sweet Tooth (2012)
  • The Children Act (2014)
  • Nutshell (2016)
  • Machines Like Me (2019)
  • Lessons 
  • My Purple Scented Novel (2016)
  • The Co*ckroach (2019)
  • Science (2019)
  • First Love, Last Rites (1975)
  • In Between the Sheets (1978)
  • The Imitation Game: Three Plays for Television (1981)
  • Or Shall We Die? (1983)
  • A Move Abroad (1989)
  • The Short Stories (1995)
  • The Ploughman’s Lunch (1985)
  • Soursweet (1989)
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