 | Old and Middle English: An Anthology (Blackwell Anthologies)
Buy used from: £11.74 An excellent anthology of Anglo Saxon and Medieval texts in translation. The best place to start if you want to explore further.
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 | Le Morte d'Arthur: v. 1 (English Library) by Thomas Malory
Buy new: £6.86 / Used from: £0.01 If you like King Arthur and all that stuff then this is what it's all about. Superbly pschological and lyrical.
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 | Paradise Lost (Penguin Classics) by John Milton
Buy new: £5.48 / Used from: £4.49 The best poem that goes on for ever...well, ever! Milton's masterpiece with an heroic Satan and dubious God.
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 | William Cowper: Everyman Poetry by William Cowper
Buy new: £3.99 / Used from: £0.01 Cowper is the only novelist/poet I can bear from this period, well, except, maybe Pope. I love The Castaway!
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 | Pride and Prejudice (Penguin Classics) by Jane Austen
Buy new: £3.98 / Used from: £0.06 Difficult to pick just one JA novel but P and P has to be the best love story ever, while Elizabeth Bennet will always be my favourite heroine.
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 | Frankenstein: Or, the Modern Prometheus (Penguin Classics) by Mary Shelley
Buy new: £4.03 / Used from: £0.66 I was really surprised by this novel thinking it would all be about science. In fact it's all about the destruction of the family instead!
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 | The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Oxford World's Classics) by Anne Brontë
Buy new: £5.39 / Used from: £0.01 In my opinion Anne is by far the greatest Bronte and this novel has more sexual repression than either Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre plus a better story!
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 | Daniel Deronda (Penguin Classics) by George Eliot
Buy new: £6.73 / Used from: £0.01 Again very diffcult to pick one GE novel but DD is a beautifully written tale about Daniel and Gwendolen's search for their identities! The end is highly traumatic!
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 | Selected Poems of Christina Rossetti (Wordsworth Poetry) (Wordsworth Poetry Library) by Christina Rossetti
Buy new: £3.99 / Used from: £0.01 CR writes the most beautiful poetry because it's outwardly simple so provokes an instant response while secretly complex which rewards time and time again.
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 | Ruth (Penguin Classics) by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
Buy new: £5.66 / Used from: £1.59 Gaskell is seriously neglected and I'm not sure why. Anything by her is fantastic but especially this. After you've finished you really feel like you want to be better.
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 | The Portrait of a Lady (Oxford World's Classics) by Henry James
Buy new: £5.39 / Used from: £0.01 This is my favourite novel. Isabel Archer's story is so complex yet so universial. I think anyone in their early twenties should read this, but not before 21 and not after 30! Sorry!
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 | A Room with a View by E M Forster
Buy new: £5.73 / Used from: £0.01 Read this for A Level and loved it! Again Lucy's story is for anyone whose confused about where their lives are going...also very, very funny! Plus this publication is soooo cute!
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 | The Rainbow (Penguin popular classics) by D.H. Lawrence
Buy used from: £0.01 Lawrence gets slagged off a lot (normally by women who like Virginia Woolf!) but for no really good reason. Try this novel first before going elsewhere.
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 | To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Buy new: £7.19 / Used from: £0.01 Mrs Dalloway is rubbish and so is everything else except for this one. I find Woolf smug and precocious but here she seems to tone it down. Nothing much happens but start here if you want to explore.
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 | The Waste Land and Other Poems (Penguin Classics) by T. S. Eliot
Buy new: £3.91 / Used from: £2.25 The Waste Land makes no sense except that it portrays a world morally,spiritually and sexually dead which perhaps does make a lot of sense when you think about today. Monumental and essential.
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 | Cold Comfort Farm (Essential Penguin) by Stella Gibbons
Buy new: £5.93 / Used from: £0.01 This is absolutely hilarious. Perfect for cheering you up! Flora Poste is extremely ridiculous and therefore excellent!
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 | I Capture the Castle (Virago Modern Classics) by Dodie Smith
Buy used from: £0.01 This novel creates a wonderful warm feeling inside and full of excellent insights and quotable moments.
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 | The End of the Affair (Twentieth Century Classics) by Graham Greene
Buy used from: £0.14 Very emotional and very readable. I don't know anyone who hasn't read this and failed to be moved.
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 | The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Buy new: £4.76 / Used from: £0.22 Plath's study of one girl's mental breakdown and sucide attempts is essential. It makes this difficult subject understandable and human while never becomming depressing.
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 | The Comforters by Muriel Spark
Buy used from: £3.67 It was a toss up between this and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, but The Comforters is so unusual that I think it's better!
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 | The Magic Toyshop (Virago modern classics) by Angela Carter
Buy new: £4.99 / Used from: £0.06 I'm a huge fan of Carter and think that anyone who hasn't read her should start here. The Bloody Chamber is also fab but go with these before you try The Passion of New Eve.
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 | Waterland (Picador thirty) by Graham Swift
Buy used from: £0.44 This is Swift's best. A beautifully written tale about history and its consequences.
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 | Emotionally Weird by Kate Atkinson
Buy new: £5.97 / Used from: £0.01 Love everything Atkinson does but Emotionally Weird has to be the best. Clever, witty and brave. I'm surprised so many people seem to dislike it!
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 | The Camomile Lawn (Black Swan) by Mary Wesley
Buy used from: £0.01 Mary Wesley is hugely under-rated. Don't be put off by the Mills and Boon esq frontcover as Wesley explores middle-class morality in great depth. This one is my favourite.
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 | The Shadow Of The Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Buy new: £7.49 / Used from: £0.01 Am reading this at the mo and it's fantastic! If you like Possession by AS Byatt and any Ruth Rendell then you'll also love this. I'll be sad when it finishes!
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Listmania!
