The Top 100 Books Every Woman Should Read Part I: The Classics

Published in 1899, Chopin’s novel was largely criticized for its frank depiction of female sexual desire. Now, the story, which centers on wife and mother Edna Pontellier at the end of 19th century New Orleans , is lauded for its groundbreaking feminist themes.

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An orphaned young woman takes a job as governess at Thornfield Manor. There, she falls for the master of the house. When she finds out he harbors a devastating secret, she must choose between her morals and her desire for happiness.

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Woolf’s landmark modernist novel follows the Ramsay family on trips to their summer home on the Isle of the Skye in Scotland.

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Famous first line: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

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Rhys’s post-colonial prequel to Jane Eyre breathes life—and humanity—into Rochester’s infamous first wife, the mad woman in the attic.

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Alcott loosely based this coming-of-age novel on her own childhood experiences with her three sisters. Like the author, the March girls grow up at Orchard House in Concord, Massachusetts.

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Set in Alabama during the Great Depression, Lee’s only published novel is narrated by six-year-old Scout Finch, who chronicles life in the fictional town of Maycomb, where her father Atticus, a lawyer, is appointed by the court to defend a black man in a rape trial.

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Famous first line: “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.”

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An African American woman in her forties searches for love, marrying three very different men, in 1930s and 1940s Florida.

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Famous first line: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

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This novel, published in 1948, protests the social structures in South Africa that would later make up apartheid. Here, a black Anglican priest from a rural town, searches for his son Absalom in the city of Johannesburg.

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New York socialite Lily Bart attempts to secure a husband—and a place in rich society.

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Stowe’s sentimental anti-slavery novel made such an impact upon its publication in 1852 that it’s credited, in-part, with sparking the Civil War. The story follows Eliza, a slave in Kentucky, who escapes to the North with her young son Harry.

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Shelley’s tale of a scientist who creates a monster spawned an entire genre of horror stories and films.

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Compiled during the Islamic Golden Age, the best known of these oral folk stories include “Aladdin’s Wonderful Lamp,” “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” and “The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor.”

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Two sisters living in the Midlands of England become involved with two neighbor men, a coal mine heir and a school inspector.

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Anna, a writer, keeps four notebooks. In one, with a black cover, she reviews the African experience of her earlier years. In a red one she records her political life, her disillusionment with communism. In a yellow one she writes a novel. And in a blue one she keeps a personal diary. Finally, in love with an American writer and threatened with insanity, Anna tries to bring the threads of all four books together in a golden notebook.

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Emma Bovary, a bored housewife in provincial France, begins a love affair in search of happiness.

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This novel, “A Study of Provincial Life,” is set in the fictitious Midlands town of Middlemarch, England during the early 1830s.

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The unforgettable love story of Heathcliff and Catherine.

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Julia Alvarez, Jane Ciabattari, Carmela Ciuraru, Judith Coyne, Ellen Heltzel, Meredith Maran, Cathleen Medwick, Pamela Redmond Satran, Amanda Robb, Roxana Robinson, Sheila Weller, Patricia J. Williams

CLICK HERE THE TOP 100 BOOKS EVERY WOMAN SHOULD READ: PART II.