The Greatest Collection of all Time - 131 Books You Must Read Before You Die

by Alexandre Dumas, Robert W. Chambers, H.P. Lovecraft

WHATS
Please check out the third page of the book to know the complete list of titles included, along with the authors' names.

ACTION AND ADVENTURE
(15 NOVELS)

1. Around the World in Eighty Days
2. El Dorado
3. Moby-Dick
4. Robinson Crusoe
5. Tarzan of the Apes
6. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
7. The Call of the Wild
8. The Count of Monte Cristo
9. The Game
10. The Hidden Children
11. The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood
12. The Most Dangerous Game
13. The Sea Wolf
14. The Story of the Treasure Seekers
15. Treasure Island


FANTASY
(6 NOVELS)

1. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
2. Peter Pan (Peter and Wendy)
3. The Enchanted Castle
4. The Jungle Book
5. The Wind in the Willows
6. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

HORROR
(40 NOVELS)

1. At the Mountains of Madness
2. Berenice
3. Curious, If True
4. Dagon
5. Dracula
6. Frankenstein
7. Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
8. Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque
9. The Beast in the Cave
10. The Beetle
11. The Burial of the Rats
12. The Call of Cthulhu
13. The Damned Thing
14. The Demon Spell
15. The Devil in the Belfry
16. The Doom That Came to
17. The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
18. The Dualitists
19. The Dunwich Horror
20. The Ghost Pirates
21. The House of the Vampire
22. The Jewel of Seven Stars
23. The King in Yellow
24. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
25. The Man
26. The Masque of the Red Death
27. The Metamorphosis
28. The Night Land
29. The Power of Darkness
30. The Raven
31. The Shadow out of Time
32. The Shadow Over Innsmouth
33. The Signal-Man
34. The Tell-Tale Heart
35. The Terror
36. The Thing on the Doorstep
37. The Three Strangers
38. The Whisperer in Darkness
39. The White People
40. The Yellow Wallpaper

MYSTERY AND DETECTIVE
(20 NOVELS)

1. A Silent Witness
2. A Study in Scarlet
3. Hunted Down
4. No Name
5. Rodney Stone
6. Room 13
7. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
8. The Czar's Spy
9. The Daffodil Mystery
10.The Hound of the Baskervilles
11. The Innocence of Father Brown
12. The Island Mystery
13. The Legacy of Cain
14. The Moonstone
15. The Murders in the Rue Morgue
16. The Old Man in the Corner
17. The Phantom of the Opera
18. The Seven Secrets
19. The Spider
20. The Wisdom of Father Brown

NON FICTION
(10 NOVELS)

1. Karma Yoga
2. Meditations
3. Tao Te Ching
4. The Art of War
5. The Bhagavad Gita
6. The Book of Five Rings
7. The Kama Sutra
8. The Prince
9. The Republic
10. Twelve Years a Slave

ROMANCE
(20 NOVELS)

1. A Voice in the Wilderness
2. Anna Karenina
3. Cleopatra
4. Jane Eyre
5. North and South
6. Oblomov
7. Pride and Prejudice
8. Romeo and Juliet
9. Sense and Sensibility
10. Tess of the d'Urbervilles
11. That Girl Montana
12. The Blithedale Romance
13. The Charterhouse of Parma
14. The Great Gatsby
15. The Hunchback of Notre Dame
16. The Little Lady of the Big House
17. The Man
18.The Three Musketeers
19. Women in Love
20. Wuthering Heights

SCIENCE FICTION
(20 NOVELS)

1. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
2. A Journey into the Center of the Earth
3. A Modern Utopia
4. A Princess of Mars
5. A Tale of Negative Gravity
6. Herland
7. In the Year 2889
8. Lord of the World
9. Tales of Space and Time
10. The Coming Race
11. The Green Mouse
12. The Invisible Man
13. The Last Man
14. The Machine Stops
15. The Master of the World
16. The Monster Men
17. The Mysterious Island
18. The Scarlet Plague
19. The Time Machine
20. The War of the Worlds

31115 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 12, 2020

About the author

This note regards Alexandre Dumas, père, the father of Alexandre Dumas, fils (son). For the son, see Alexandre Dumas fils.

Alexandre Dumas père, born Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie, was a towering figure of 19th-century French literature whose historical novels and adventure tales earned global renown. Best known for The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo, and other swashbuckling epics, Dumas crafted stories filled with daring heroes, dramatic twists, and vivid historical backdrops. His works, often serialized and immensely popular with the public, helped shape the modern adventure genre and remain enduring staples of world literature.
Dumas was the son of Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, a celebrated general in Revolutionary France and the highest-ranking man of African descent in a European army at the time. His father’s early death left the family in poverty, but Dumas’s upbringing was nonetheless marked by strong personal ambition and a deep admiration for his father’s achievements. He moved to Paris as a young man and began his literary career writing for the theatre, quickly rising to prominence in the Romantic movement with successful plays like Henri III et sa cour and Antony.
In the 1840s, Dumas turned increasingly toward prose fiction, particularly serialized novels, which reached vast audiences through French newspapers. His collaboration with Auguste Maquet, a skilled plotter and historian, proved fruitful. While Maquet drafted outlines and conducted research, Dumas infused the narratives with flair, dialogue, and color. The result was a string of literary triumphs, including The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, both published in 1844. These novels exemplified Dumas’s flair for suspenseful pacing, memorable characters, and grand themes of justice, loyalty, and revenge.
The D’Artagnan Romances—The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, and The Vicomte of Bragelonne—cemented his fame. They follow the adventures of the titular Gascon hero and his comrades Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, blending historical fact and fiction into richly imagined narratives. The Count of Monte Cristo offered a darker, more introspective tale of betrayal and retribution, with intricate plotting and a deeply philosophical core.
Dumas was also active in journalism and theater. He founded the Théâtre Historique in Paris, which staged dramatizations of his own novels. A prolific and energetic writer, he is estimated to have written or co-written over 100,000 pages of fiction, plays, memoirs, travel books, and essays. He also had a strong interest in food and published a massive culinary encyclopedia, Le Grand Dictionnaire de cuisine, filled with recipes, anecdotes, and reflections on gastronomy.
Despite his enormous success, Dumas was frequently plagued by financial troubles. He led a lavish lifestyle, building the ornate Château de Monte-Cristo near Paris, employing large staffs, and supporting many friends and relatives. His generosity and appetite for life often outpaced his income, leading to mounting debts. Still, his creative drive rarely waned.
Dumas’s mixed-race background was a source of both pride and tension in his life. He was outspoken about his heritage and used his platform to address race and injustice. In his novel Georges, he explored issues of colonialism and identity through a Creole protagonist. Though he encountered racism, he refused to be silenced, famously replying to a racial insult by pointing to his ancestry and achievements with dignity and wit.
Later in life, Dumas continued writing and traveling, spending time in Belgium, Italy, and Russia. He supported nationalist causes, particularly Italian unification, and even founded a newspaper to advocate for Giuseppe Garibaldi. Though his popularity waned somewhat in his final years, his literary legacy grew steadily. He wrote in a style that was accessible, entertaining, and emotionally reso