The 100 best romance novels

No. 11 on this list. Sense and Sensibility · Jane Austen · 1811

Taught in schools: OCR GCSE and A-level English Literature (UK), WJEC/Eduqas GCSE and A-level English Literature (UK)

Austen first published novel. Less celebrated than Pride and Prejudice or Emma but firmly canonical.

No. 12 on this list. Jane Eyre · Charlotte Brontë · 1847

Taught in schools: AQA GCSE and A-level English Literature (UK), Common Core text exemplars (Appendix B) (US), CSEC English B – Caribbean Examinations Council

Appears on 6,194 university syllabi according to Open Syllabus — placing it at the 94.8th percentile — and its Wikipedia article spans 59 languages with dedicated Reception and Adaptations sections. Jane Eyre is a fixture of Victorian literature courses worldwide and features on both the Open Syllabus Top 500 Literature list and the BBC Big Read Top 100.

No. 13 on this list. A Farewell to Arms · Ernest Hemingway · 1929

Taught in schools: AQA GCSE and A-level English Literature (UK), Common Core text exemplars (Appendix B) (US), CSEC English B – Caribbean Examinations Council

Included in: UNESCO Collection of Representative Works

A Farewell to Arms secured canonical status immediately upon publication in 1929, establishing itself as a foundational modernist war narrative and remains a standard text in American literature curricula. Its influence on subsequent war fiction and its representation of the Lost Generation make it exemplary of early 20th-century literary achievement.

No. 14 on this list. The Tempest · William Shakespeare · 1611

Taught in schools: Pearson Edexcel GCSE and A-level English Literature (UK), UNAM Escuela Nacional Preparatoria – programas de Literatura (Mexico), WJEC/Eduqas GCSE and A-level English Literature (UK)

Included in: Great Books of the Western World

Prospero's island stages Shakespeare's final reckoning with his own art—the magician who conjures storms, manipulates lovers, and then drowns his book. Caliban's "Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises" is the most haunting speech given to a character the play calls a monster.

No. 15 on this list. Romeo and Juliet · William Shakespeare · 1597

Taught in schools: Kazakh literature curriculum (Kazakhstan)

Included in: Great Books of the Western World, UNESCO Collection of Representative Works

The balcony scene and the double suicide in the Capulet tomb gave Western culture its permanent template for doomed young love. Shakespeare was twenty-nine when he fused Petrarchan lyricism with streetfight prose into a dramatic structure playwrights still cannot improve on.

No. 16 on this list. Pamela · Samuel Richardson · 1740

Pamela Andrews is fifteen years old and in service when her mistress dies and the mistress's son, Mr. B, begins a campaign to seduce her. She refuses. He escalates — intercepting her letters, relocating her to a remote estate, locking her in — and she keeps writing, to her parents and in a secret journal she hides in her clothing. What makes the novel strange is that we only have Pamela's account: earnest, relentlessly self-observing, written in the knowledge that Mr. B may one day read every word she has set down. Published in 1740, Pamela invented something — not just the epistolary novel, but the novel's peculiar project of making a single consciousness the center of a world. Richardson called his method 'writing to the moment': the heroine records events as they happen, before she knows how they will turn out. Readers have been arguing about Pamela's sincerity ever since. Henry Fielding published Shamela the following year, certain the whole performance was calculation dressed as virtue. That argument — is Pamela genuinely good, or is goodness here just the strategy that worked? — has never been settled. The novel is slow by design: captivity is repetitive, and Richardson wants you to feel it. But the compression of one young woman's inner life, the surveillance she endures and returns in kind, and the original sin of a marriage that rewards persistence over refusal make Pamela one of the most uncomfortable triumphs in English fiction.

No. 17 on this list. Their Eyes Were Watching God · Zora Neale Hurston · 1937

Taught in schools: Common Core text exemplars (Appendix B) (US)

Appears on 3,011 university syllabi according to the Open Syllabus Project (86.97th percentile), placing it among the most-taught American novels. Featured on TIME's All-TIME 100 Novels list and published in prestigious Library of America and Everyman's Library editions — markers of sustained institutional recognition. Available in 9 Wikipedia languages, reflecting global reach in academic and literary circles.

No. 18 on this list. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight · The Pearl Poet · 1375

Required reading in virtually every medieval and Middle English literature course at anglophone universities. The poem appears on thousands of syllabi and features in Great Books curricula worldwide. Tolkien and E.V. Gordon's 1925 scholarly edition set the standard text; Simon Armitage's 2007 translation reached mainstream audiences. The poem occupies the same canonical tier as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales for the period it represents.

No. 19 on this list. If Beale Street Could Talk · James Baldwin · 1974

Firmly embedded in the American literary canon, the novel appears on major school and university syllabi, was adapted into an Academy Award-winning 2018 film, and is routinely included in retrospectives of 20th-century African American literature. Its status as one of Baldwin's essential works is uncontested.

No. 20 on this list. The Captain's Daughter · Alexander Pushkin · 1836

The Captain's Daughter anchors the Russian literary canon alongside Eugene Onegin. It appears in virtually every Russian literature survey course worldwide, is part of the secondary school curriculum in Russia, and has been continuously in print since 1836. No syllabus data was returned from the database, but its foundational status in Slavic studies is unambiguous.

No. 21 on this list. A Tale of Two Cities · Charles Dickens · 1859

Taught in schools: Turkish edebiyat curriculum (Turkey)

One of Dickens's most famous novels; its opening sentence is the most recognized in English literature.

No. 22 on this list. The Charterhouse of Parma · Stendhal · 1839

A cornerstone of the 19th-century European novel, regularly taught in French literature and comparative literature courses. The novel exemplifies early psychological realism and remains essential reading for understanding the development of the modern novel.

No. 23 on this list. Eugene Onegin · Alexander Pushkin · 1833

Taught in schools: Hungarian literature curriculum (magyar nyelv és irodalom) (Hungary), Russian FGOS literature standard

Foundation of Russian literary tradition, taught universally in Russian literature courses worldwide. Pushkin's masterpiece anchors the curriculum; canonical status unquestioned since publication, marking the emergence of Russian literature as a major European force.

No. 24 on this list. Love in the Time of Cholera · Gabriel García Márquez · 1985

Included in: Bokklubben World Library

Widely taught in world literature and Latin American literature courses, second only to One Hundred Years of Solitude among Garcia Marquez's works. Regularly appears on 'greatest novels' lists and has become a touchstone for discussions of love in literature.

No. 25 on this list. Orlando Furioso · Ludovico Ariosto · 1516

Taught in schools: UNAM Escuela Nacional Preparatoria – programas de Literatura (Mexico)

Orlando Furioso stands as one of the defining works of Italian Renaissance literature, a fixture in Italian university curricula and comparative literature courses worldwide. Its influence on Spenser, Milton, Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Voltaire makes it indispensable to the study of early modern literature. While less taught in English-language universities than Greek and Roman epic, it appears on virtually every world literature and Renaissance literature syllabus.

No. 26 on this list. Ivanhoe · Walter Scott · 1819

Ivanhoe is a fixture of British Romantic literature curricula and appears on virtually every survey of the historical novel as the genre's foundational text in English. While syllabus data was not captured in the database, the novel's Wikipedia article spans well over 50 languages and it remains one of the most recognized works of 19th-century British fiction. It gave the English language the cultural template for medieval chivalry — the Crusades, Normans vs. Saxons, Robin Hood — that persists in popular imagination today.

No. 27 on this list. Tom Jones · Henry Fielding · 1749

Included in: Great Books of the Western World

Tom Jones is a foundling, discovered as an infant in the bed of the wealthy Somerset squire Allworthy, who raises him alongside the scheming Blifil. Tom grows up handsome, generous, impulsive, and entirely unsuited to the careful management of reputation—which in 18th-century England is fatal. He loves Sophia Western, the spirited daughter of his neighbor, but his illegitimate birth and his talent for getting into trouble conspire against him. Expelled from Allworthy's estate, he sets out across England, stumbling through inns and battlefields and drawing rooms, pursued by Sophia, who is fleeing her own forced marriage. Fielding narrates all of this with a wit that never lets you forget he's in the room. Each book opens with a chapter of authorial commentary—on writing, morality, criticism, the reader's expectations—before he returns to the story. The effect is of a novelist who has invented the form and wants you to watch him think about it. Beneath the comedy, the novel asks a serious question: whether goodness of heart can survive a world that rewards calculation. Tom's answer, delivered across 900 pages of mishap and delight, is stubbornly, improbably yes.

No. 28 on this list. Doctor Zhivago · Boris Pasternak · 1957

Taught in schools: Russian FGOS literature standard

Doctor Zhivago holds a secure place in the canon of twentieth-century world literature, taught in Russian literature surveys, modernism courses, and Cold War cultural studies. Its controversial publication history and Nobel Prize make it historically indispensable.

No. 29 on this list. The Age of Innocence · Edith Wharton · 1921

The Age of Innocence is a cornerstone of American literature curricula, taught extensively in courses on American Realism, the Gilded Age, and women's writing. It appears on virtually every list of essential American novels and is a standard text in both high school AP courses and university seminars.

No. 30 on this list. The Peony Pavilion · Tang Xianzu · 1598

The most celebrated play in the Chinese repertory, taught alongside The Story of the Western Wing in every premodern survey and published in a complete Indiana University Press translation.