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Early editions of any of these (if you do get an early one maybe try and get a beautiful wooden box to keep it in - maybe walnut):


1. Don Quixote Miguel De Cervantes

The story of the gentle knight and his servant Sancho Panza has entranced readers for centuries.


2. Pilgrim's Progress John Bunyan

The one with the Slough of Despond and Vanity Fair.


3. Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe

The first English novel.


4. Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift

A wonderful satire that still works for all ages, despite the savagery of Swift's vision.


5. Tom Jones Henry Fielding

The adventures of a high-spirited orphan boy: an unbeatable plot and a lot of sex ending in a blissful marriage.


6. Clarissa Samuel Richardson

One of the longest novels in the English language, but unputdownable.


7. Tristram Shandy Laurence Sterne

One of the first bestsellers, dismissed by Dr Johnson as too fashionable for its own good.


8. Dangerous Liaisons Pierre Choderlos De Laclos

An epistolary novel and a handbook for seducers: foppish, French, and ferocious.


9. Emma Jane Austen

Near impossible choice between this and Pride and Prejudice. But Emma never fails to fascinate and annoy.


10. Frankenstein Mary Shelley

Inspired by spending too much time with Shelley and Byron.


11. Nightmare Abbey Thomas Love Peacock

A classic miniature: a brilliant satire on the Romantic novel.


12. The Black Sheep Honore De Balzac

Two rivals fight for the love of a femme fatale. Wrongly overlooked.


13. The Charterhouse of Parma Stendhal

Penetrating and compelling chronicle of life in an Italian court in post-Napoleonic France.


14. The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas

A revenge thriller also set in France after Bonaparte: a masterpiece of adventure writing.


15. Sybil Benjamin Disraeli

Apart from Churchill, no other British political figure shows literary genius.


16. David Copperfield Charles Dickens

This highly autobiographical novel is the one its author liked best.


17. Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte

Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff have passed into the language. Impossible to ignore.


18. Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte

Obsessive emotional grip and haunting narrative.


19. Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray

The improving tale of Becky Sharp.


20. The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne

A classic investigation of the American mind.


21. Moby-Dick Herman Melville

'Call me Ishmael' is one of the most famous opening sentences of any novel.



22. Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert

You could summarise this as a story of adultery in provincial France, and miss the point entirely.



23. The Woman in White Wilkie Collins

Gripping mystery novel of concealed identity, abduction, fraud and mental cruelty.


24. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland Lewis Carroll

A story written for the nine-year-old daughter of an Oxford don that still baffles most kids.


25. Little Women Louisa M. Alcott

Victorian bestseller about a New England family of girls.


26. The Way We Live Now Anthony Trollope

A majestic assault on the corruption of late Victorian England.


27. Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy

The supreme novel of the married woman's passion for a younger man.


28. Daniel Deronda George Eliot

A passion and an exotic grandeur that is strange and unsettling.


29. The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky

Mystical tragedy by the author of Crime and Punishment.


30. The Portrait of a Lady Henry James

The story of Isabel Archer shows James at his witty and polished best.

Huguenot Wrote:

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> How about some sort of Victoriana first edition

> family cookbook?


That's a great suggestion. Or get those gorgeous hard-backed cookbooks that each specialise in cuisines from around the world (as they like food and travel). Can't remember book titles offhand but there's a series of them and they're beautifully photographed with simple, authentic recipes from each country.

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