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Which classic British novel should every person read at least once in their lifetime?
From the fog-drenched streets of Victorian London to the bleak moors of Yorkshire, British literature has given the world some of its most enduring stories. But if you could only press one novel into someone's hands, which would it be?
Put the items in your preferred order.
1
Middlemarch – George Eliot
Often described as the greatest novel in the English language, Middlemarch weaves together politics, marriage, ambition and moral courage in a provincial town. Virginia Woolf called it 'one of the few English novels written for grown-up people'.
2
1984 – George Orwell
Orwell's chilling vision of a totalitarian state gave us words like 'doublethink' and 'Big Brother' that have become part of everyday language. Written in a farmhouse on Jura in 1948, it remains an urgent warning about power and truth.
3
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
Published in 1847, Jane Eyre was scandalous for putting a plain, poor woman's inner life and moral independence at the centre of everything. It still feels bracingly modern in the conversations it starts about autonomy and self-respect.
4
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
Where Orwell frightened us with boots and torture, Huxley unsettled us with pleasure, conformity and the quiet erosion of meaning. Written by a man from Godalming, Surrey, it asks whether we might sleepwalk into our own cage.
5
Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
Pip's journey from the Kent marshes to the drawing rooms of London is Dickens at his most sharply observed, exposing how class, money and self-deception corrupt ordinary decency. Few novels have captured the English obsession with social status quite so precisely.
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