50 Masterpieces you have to read before you die vol: 1

by Joseph Conrad, D.H. Lawrence, George Eliot

This 1st volume contains the following 50 works, arranged alphabetically by authors’ last names:

Alcott, Louisa May: Little Women
Austen, Jane: Pride and Prejudice
Austen, Jane: Emma
Balzac, Honoré de: Father Goriot
Barbusse, Henri: The Inferno
Brontë, Anne: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Brontë, Charlotte: Jane Eyre
Brontë, Emily: Wuthering Heights
Burroughs, Edgar Rice: Tarzan of the Apes
Butler, Samuel: The Way of All Flesh
Carroll, Lewis: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Cather, Willa: My Ántonia
Cervantes, Miguel de: Don Quixote
Chopin, Kate: The Awakening
Cleland, John: Fanny Hill
Collins, Wilkie: The Moonstone
Conrad, Joseph: Heart of Darkness
Conrad, Joseph: Nostromo
Cooper, James Fenimore: The Last of the Mohicans
Crane, Stephen: The Red Badge of Courage
Cummings, E. E.: The Enormous Room
Defoe, Daniel: Robinson Crusoe
Defoe, Daniel: Moll Flanders
Dickens, Charles: Bleak House
Dickens, Charles: Great Expectations
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor: Crime and Punishment
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor: The Idiot
Doyle, Arthur Conan: The Hound of the Baskervilles
Dreiser, Theodore: Sister Carrie
Dumas, Alexandre: The Three Musketeers
Dumas, Alexandre: The Count of Monte Cristo
Eliot, George: Middlemarch
Fielding, Henry: Tom Jones
Flaubert, Gustave: Madame Bovary
Flaubert, Gustave: Sentimental Education
Ford, Ford Madox: The Good Soldier
Forster, E. M.: A Room With a View
Forster, E. M.: Howards End
Gaskell, Elizabeth: North and South
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von: The Sorrows of Young Werther
Gogol, Nikolai: Dead Souls
Gorky, Maxim: The Mother
Haggard, H. Rider: King Solomon’s Mines
Hardy, Thomas: Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Hawthorne, Nathaniel: The Scarlet Letter
Homer: The Odyssey
Hugo, Victor: The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hugo, Victor: Les Misérables
Huxley, Aldous: Crome Yellow
James, Henry: The Portrait of a Lady

Genres: Classics, Fiction, Ebooks, Reference, Anthologies, Literature, Amazon

12348 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 22, 2026

About the author

Joseph Conrad was a Polish-British novelist and story writer. He is regarded as one of the greatest writers in the English language and, although he did not speak English fluently until his twenties, he became a master prose stylist who brought a non-English sensibility into English literature. He wrote novels and stories, many in nautical settings, that depict crises of human individuality in the midst of what he saw as an indifferent, inscrutable, and amoral world.
Conrad is considered a literary impressionist by some and an early modernist by others, though his works also contain elements of 19th-century realism. His narrative style and anti-heroic characters, as in Lord Jim, for example, have influenced numerous authors. Many dramatic films have been adapted from and inspired by his works. Numerous writers and critics have commented that his fictional works, written largely in the first two decades of the 20th century, seem to have anticipated later world events.
Writing near the peak of the British Empire, Conrad drew on the national experiences of his native Poland—during nearly all his life, parceled out among three occupying empires—and on his own experiences in the French and British merchant navies, to create short stories and novels that reflect aspects of a European-dominated world—including imperialism and colonialism—and that profoundly explore the human psyche.

Reviews

[John Gwynant · Rating 3 out of 5]

curates egg

[Rebel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Boring

Some classic literature is more "thesis" writing than it is for simple reading enjoyment. This is one of them. Boring!

[Kyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Their all there! Can’t say I’ve read close to all.

[Justin · Rating 5 out of 5]

For one dollar you have access to so many amazing works in the western cannon. I read Father Goriot on a whim and was so surprised by its depth. A year later and I’m still thinking about it.

[Brian McLoughlin · Rating 1 out of 5]

The contents would be magnificent if only I could read them on my Kindle. It malfunctioned and got stuck while reading ! Repeatedly. So I had to give up and delete it. It seems that the Kindle cannot handle the whole set of novels,

[Margaret Lamb]

I just bought this because it includes so many books that I want to read, and more that I have read and would like to read again. I'm sure I won't read all 50 books, but it was a real bargain from Kobo, so it will be worth the price even if I only end up reading 5 or 10 of them.

[Richard L Colemere · Rating 1 out of 5]

Too big of a bore. Can't stay with it. Give it up. Wasted time.

[Bill Geertsen · Rating 3 out of 5]

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don't like tolstoy twain aaaaaaaaaa bbbbbbbbb ccccccccccccc dddddddddddddd eeeeeeeeeeeee ffffffffffff gggggggggggggg h i j k l m n




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[Mr Donald J Murray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Classic writing - timeless.

[Kathleen Markrush Sousa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read this many years ago , loved the series but only got to the 7th heaven. I decided to start over.

[Susan Feaster · Rating 5 out of 5]

I downloaded this to my Kindle for just $1. What a great investment! A numbers of favorites are the included as well as some I hadn’t previously read.

[Malcolm Watson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A useful compendium of "Classics", however, I did not get as much out of this as I did the first volume.
There are great stories here, many of which I had read.
A useful book to dip into.

[Karlene Gould · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just had to read and indulge in the next set too! Come on and read to enjoy the classics.

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

A more accurate title would be - 50 books the snob literary elite class as masterpieces that you should at least attempt to get past page 5 on before you die....

[Peter Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Volume one of all the works of this incomparable author. Brilliant value. Superb and I have not read much of the lesser known works previously. Literally a great read

[Eric]

This edition that starts with The Divine Comedy is considered by Goodreads to be effectively the same as another that I -also- have downloaded- atm this review will therefore appear with both- that begins with Little Women and continues with Pride & Prejudice. They should be separated, as they are not in any way basically the same.

[Glenda Person · Rating 1 out of 5]

So many errors in ‘Little Women’ I had to stop reading. I kept getting returned to previous pages, or maybe the pages were repeated, I didn’t check, this has happened to me before with collections.
I do not recommend ever purchasing Collections. I suppose you could try removing the download, and download again, that will probably reset the collection to the beginning.