Below you will find a list of 48 books spanning the last 300 years that have been recommended by the English Department - to be read whilst studying GCSE English Literature and Language.

​

18th/19th Century:

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

Little Women - Louisa May Alcott

Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle

Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

Mayor of Casterbridge - Thomas Hardy

White Fang - Jack London

Call of the Wild - Jack London

Black Beauty - Anna Sewell

Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain

Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain

The Picture of Dorian Gray

​

20th Century:

The Guardians - John Christopher​

Dear Nobody - Berlie Dohert

A Gathering Light - Jennifer Donnelly

The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Diary of Anne Frank - Otto Frank

Brighton Rock - Graham Greene

The Go-Between - L.P. Hartley

Fever Pitch - Nick Hornby

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee

Goodnight Mister Tom - Marjorie Magorian 

1984 - George Orwell

Animal Farm - George Orwell

His Dark Materials Trilogy - Philip Pullman

The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien

​

21st Century:

Noughts and Crosses - Malorie Blackman

Martyn Pig - Kevin Brooks

The Road - Cormac McCarthy

The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner

The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman

The Fault in our Stars - John Green

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon

The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

Never Let Me Go - Zazuo Ishiguro

Atonement - Ian McEwan

The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern

The Knife of Never Letting Go - Patrick Ness

Divergent Series - Veronica Roth

The Lovely Bones - Alice Seabold

The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The Book Thief - Marcus Zusak

​