Literature · Curated list
Don Quixote, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Animal Farm and 27 more, ranked by how much of the world has written about each one.
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Most written-about first. Each description summarises the novel's Wikipedia article, which its name links to.
1
1605–1615 novel by Miguel de Cervantes
The novel by Miguel de Cervantes that came out in two parts, in 1605 and 1615, written in the Spanish of the early modern era. Many see it as the first modern novel and as a cornerstone of Western literature.
Wikidata · Photo: Miguel de Cervantes, Public domain
2
1865 children's novel by Lewis Carroll
A children's novel of 1865 by the English writer Lewis Carroll, in which a little girl called Alice tumbles down a rabbit hole into a fantastical world peopled by creatures that act like humans.
Wikidata · Photo: Charles Dodgson (alias Lewis Carroll), published by MacMillan and Co., Public domain
3
1945 political allegorical novella by George Orwell
George Orwell's satirical, allegorical and dystopian novella, told as a beast fable and first published in England on 17 August 1945. The ill-treated animals of Manor Farm, who think and speak like people, rise against their human owner in the hope of building a utopia.
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
4
Vernacular Chinese novel by Cao Xueqin
Also called The Story of the Stone, a Chinese novel of the 18th century by Cao Xueqin, counted among the Four Great Classic Novels of Chinese literature. Its fame rests on its psychological depth and on how closely it observes the society of High Qing China: its relationships, ways of life, aesthetics and view of the world.
5
1937 book by J. R. R. Tolkien
The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, a fantasy novel for children by J. R. R. Tolkien, the English author. Published in 1937, it was warmly received by critics, nominated for the Carnegie Medal and given the New York Herald Tribune's prize for the best fiction for young readers.
Wikidata · Photo: Strebe at English Wikipedia, Public domain
1997 fantasy novel by J. K. Rowling
The debut novel of the British author J. K. Rowling, a fantasy that opens the Harry Potter series.
7
1967 novel by Gabriel García Márquez
A novel of 1967 by the Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, telling the story over many generations of the Buendía family, whose founding father, José Arcadio Buendía, established the invented town of Macondo. It is often named among the supreme achievements of world literature.
Wikidata · Photo: Luis Rivera, Public domain
8
1719 novel by Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe's English adventure novel, which first came out on 25 April 1719. It is often said to mark the start of realistic fiction as a genre, and some have called it the earliest novel of all, or at any rate the earliest in English, though both claims are contested.
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
9
1862 novel by Victor Hugo
An epic historical novel in French by Victor Hugo, first published on 31 March 1862 and counted among the 19th century's greatest novels. Many adaptations, for stage, screen and television, a musical among them, have made it widely known.
Wikidata · Photo: Émile Bayard, Public domain
10
1844 novel by Alexandre Dumas
A French adventure novel set in history, written and published by Alexandre Dumas in 1844, the first of his three d'Artagnan Romances.
Wikidata · Photo: Jules Huyot / After Maurice Leloir, Public domain
11
1851 novel by Herman Melville
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, an epic novel of 1851 by the American writer Herman Melville. The sailor Ishmael tells of the obsessive hunt of Ahab, captain of the whaler Pequod, for revenge on Moby Dick, the huge white sperm whale that took off his leg on the ship's last voyage.
Wikidata · Photo: The original uploader was Chick Bowen at English Wikipedia ., Public domain
12
1726 novel by Jonathan Swift
A novel by Jonathan Swift, first titled “Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts.”
13
1951 American novel by J. D. Salinger
An American coming-of-age novel by J. D. Salinger, published as a novel in 1951 after parts of it had appeared in serial form in 1945–1946.
14
1883 novel by Robert Louis Stevenson
A historical adventure novel by the Scottish novelist Robert Louis Stevenson. Published as a book in 1883 but set in the 18th century, it is a tale of "buccaneers and buried gold".
Wikidata · Photo: N. C. Wyeth, Public domain
15
1890 novel by Oscar Wilde
A novel of 1890 by the Irish writer Oscar Wilde, both a work of philosophical fiction and a Gothic horror story. A shorter version, of novella length, appeared in the July 1890 issue of the American magazine Lippincott's Monthly Magazine; the full novel came out in April 1891.
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
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16
1847 novel by Emily Brontë
Emily Brontë's only novel, first published in 1847 under her pen name, Ellis Bell. It centres on two large estates on the moors of West Yorkshire, the families who own them, the Lintons and the Earnshaws, and their stormy relations with Heathcliff, the Earnshaws' foster son.
Wikidata · Photo: Emily Brontë (under the pseudonym Ellis Bell), Public domain
17
1846 novel by Alexandre Dumas
An adventure novel by the French writer Alexandre Dumas, published in instalments from 1844 to 1846 and as a book in 1846.
Wikidata · Photo: François-Louis Français, Public domain
18
16th-century novel by Wu Cheng'en
A Chinese novel of the Ming dynasty, published in the 16th century and credited to Wu Cheng'en. Ranked among China's great novels, it has been called perhaps the most popular work of literature in East Asia.
19
Novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, written 1928–1940
A novel Mikhail Bulgakov wrote in the Soviet Union between 1928 and 1940. His widow, Elena Bulgakova, published a censored version after his death, with editors cutting several chapters, in a Moscow magazine in 1966–1967.
Wikidata · Photo: Brad Verter, CC BY-SA 4.0
20
1965 science fiction novel by Frank Herbert
An epic science fiction novel of 1965 by the American writer Frank Herbert, first published as two separate serials in Analog magazine. It shared the Hugo Award for Best Novel with Roger Zelazny's This Immortal, and won the first Nebula Award for Best Novel, in 1966.
Wikidata · Photo: John Schoenherr, Public domain
21
1831 novel by Victor Hugo
A French Gothic novel by Victor Hugo, published in 1831, whose title refers to Notre-Dame Cathedral, a constant presence in the story.
Wikidata · Photo: Victor Hugo, Public domain
22
1955 novel by Vladimir Nabokov
A novel of 1955 by Vladimir Nabokov, the Russian and American novelist. Its main character and narrator, a professor of French literature, moves to New England and writes under the pseudonym Humbert Humbert.
Wikidata · Photo: Olympia Press, Public domain
23
1897 novel by Bram Stoker
A Gothic horror novel of 1897 by the Irish writer Bram Stoker, told through newspaper articles, diary entries and letters.
Wikidata · Photo: British Library Board, Public domain
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24
1932 dystopian novel by Aldous Huxley
A dystopian novel by the English writer Aldous Huxley, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Set mostly in a futuristic World State whose citizens are engineered by their environment into a social hierarchy based on intelligence, it foresees huge scientific advances, in classical conditioning, psychological manipulation, sleep-learning and reproductive technology, which together build an apparently utopian society that an outsider, John the Savage, calls into question.
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25
1857 novel by Gustave Flaubert
Madame Bovary: Provincial Manners, usually called just Madame Bovary, the first novel of the French writer Gustave Flaubert, first published in 1856 and 1857. Its title character, Emma Bovary, lives beyond her means to escape the boredom of provincial life.
Wikidata · Photo: Gustave Flaubert, Public domain
26
14th-century Chinese historical novel
A Chinese historical novel of the 14th century credited to Luo Guanzhong. Its story runs from the Yellow Turban Rebellion and the decline of the Han dynasty to China's reunification under the Western Jin in 280.
Wikidata · Photo: 周曰校（Before 1640）, Public domain
27
1925 novel by Franz Kafka
A novel in German by the Czech writer Franz Kafka, written in 1914 and 1915 and published after his death, on 26 April 1925. One of his best-known works, it follows Josef K., a bank official arrested and put on trial by a remote, unreachable authority, while neither he nor the reader ever learns what crime he is charged with.
Wikidata · Photo: © Foto H.-P.Haack, Public domain
28
1852 novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly, a novel against slavery by the American writer Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in two volumes in 1852, it changed deeply how people in the U.S. thought about slavery and African Americans, and is said to have "helped lay the groundwork for the American Civil War".
Wikidata · Photo: Hammatt Billings, Public domain
29
Novel in verse by Alexander Pushkin
Eugene Onegin, A Novel in Verse, by Alexander Pushkin. It is regarded as a classic of Russian literature, and its title hero became the model for several heroes of later Russian books.
Wikidata · Photo: JohnnysNewCar, CC0
30
1847 novel by Charlotte Brontë
Charlotte Brontë's novel, issued in London by Smith, Elder & Co. on 19 October 1847 with "Currer Bell", her pen name, as author.
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
Every Wikidata item that is a novel — counting a series once, by its first book, so that a seven-book series does not take seven places, and that has its own English Wikipedia article, ranked by the number of Wikimedia sites with a page about it — Wikipedia's language editions, mostly, and sister projects such as Wikiquote. That counts how many communities independently thought it worth describing, and nobody can buy a place on it. The top 30 are shown.
Wikidata files these under this list's query, but they are not what the list is about:
Fetched from Wikidata on 2026-09-25. Each description is this site's summary of the entry's Wikipedia article, which its name links to: the wording is ours, the facts are Wikipedia's, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. To correct an entry, correct it there; the next refresh carries the change.
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