- Anna Karenina(1878) and War & Peace(1869), both novels were written by the eminent Russian author Leo Tolstoy, and these two are considered as one of Tolstoy’s finest literary achievements and remains as an internationally acclaimed classic of world literature. Both these novels published as single ones but later they were published as series too.
According to Tolstoy, War & Peace is “not a novel, it is a historical chronicle”. The novel War & Peace chronicles the French invasion of Russia and the whack of the Napoleanic era on the Tsarist society.
Tolstoy views Anna Karenina as his first true novel. Anna Karenina is considered as the greatest work of literature ever, by many writers. It deals with the themes of family, marriage, faith, betrayal, desire, rural vs city life, and the Imperial Russian society.
2. The Tragedy of Hamlet – The tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark shortened as Hamlet, is a play written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 – 1601. Hamlet is Shakespeare’s longest play, having 30, 557 words. Hamlet is considered among the most influential and powerful works in world literature.
Set in Denmark, Hamlet portrays Prince Ham, let and his vengeance against his uncle, Claudius, who murdered Hamlet’s father to seize the throne and marry Hamlet’s mother.
3. The Lord of the Rings is an epic high-fantasy novel, written by English scholar and author JRR Tolkien. The Lord of the Rings series is seen in particular as a fundamentally religious and Catholic work because JRR Tolkien was a devout Roman Catholic from boyhood. The story began as a sequel to the children’s book The Hobbit and eventually developed into a larger piece of work, written during the period of 1937 and 1949. The Lord of the Rings is one of the best-sellers ever written and over 150 million copies were sold. It was named as Britain’s best novel of all time.
The Lord of the Rings sets in Middle earth, the central continent of the earth in Tolkien’s mythological past, and Gandalf, the protagonist and the ruler just like God rules the earth. The Lord of the Rings was actually a three series book named The Fellowship of Rings, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King. All these published sequels were filmed as movies with the same title.
4. The Iliad and Odyssey, the two epic poems, which are considered as the foundational figures of ancient Greek literature, written by the presumed author Homer. The Iliad is set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy. Odyssey depicts the ten-year journey of Odysseus, the king of Ithaca, after the fall of troy. The Iliad and Odyssey were written around
800 – 701 BCE.
5. Pride and Prejudice is an 1813 romantic novel written by Jane Austen. Pride And Prejudice portray the life of Elizabeth Bennet, the protagonist of the book. It has become one of the most-loved and popular books among itinerary scholars and sold more than 20 million copies. This novel contains a great content of humor and its humor lies in the honest depiction of manners, education, money, and marriage during the Regency era in Great Britain during 1811 – 1820 AD.
6. David Copperfield and Great Expectations, written by Charles Dickens, and are the 8th and 13th novels by him. David Copperfield is an autobiographical novel and contains few elements of Dickens’s own life. Great Expectations depicts the education of an orphan nicknamed Pip, set in the location of Kent and London.