100 Years of Books is an ongoing project where I aim to read a book published in each year from 1850 to 1949. In the process I hope to increase my knowledge of classics and writers that I might not otherwise encounter.

There’s no schedule, no deadline and I reserve the right to change the list at any time. Life has enough rules already!

There are a couple of authors listed twice, but generally I’ll try to read as many different writers as I can. If you have any recommendations for the unallocated years, or even other ideas for the already allocated years, I’d love to hear them.

Currently read: 46/100

1850 – The Black Tulip, Alexandre Dumas / The Moorland Cottage, Elizabeth Gaskell

1851 – Cranford, Elizabeth Gaskell

1852 – Life and Adventures of Jack Engle, Walt Whitman

1853 – Ruth, Elizabeth Gaskell / Bleak House, Charles Dickens

1854 – Walden, Henry David Thoreau

1855 – The Warden (Chronicles of Barsetshire #1), Anthony Trollope

1856 – Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert

1857 – The Professor, Charlotte Bronte / Tom Brown’s School Days, Thomas Hughes

1858 – The Little Duke, Charlotte Mary Yonge

1859 – Dora Deane, Mary J Holmes

1860 – The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins

1861 – Silas Marner, George Eliot

1862 – Les Miserables, Victor Hugo

1863 – Eleanor’s Victory, Mary Elizabeth Braddon / The Rector (The Chronicles of Carlingford #1), Mrs Oliphant

1864 – The Light Princess, George McDonald

1865 – War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy

1866 – Jessica’s First Prayer, Hesba Stretton

1867 – Cometh up as a Flower, Rhoda Broughton

1868 – Little Women, Louisa May Alcott

1869 – Leaves from Australian Forests (collection of poems), Henry Kendall

1870 – The Thorny Path, Hesba Stretton

1871 – Middlemarch, George Eliot / The Ladies’ Paradise, Emile Zola

1872 – In a Glass Darkly, Sheridan Le Fanu / What Katy Did, Susan Coolidge

1873 – Transcendental Wild Oats, Louisa May Alcott / Around the World in 80 Days, Jules Verne

1874 – Far from the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy

1875 – The Way We Live Now, Anthony Trollope

1876 – The Manchester Man, Isabella Varley Banks / Peer Gynt, Henrik Ibsen

1877 – Black Beauty, Anna Sewell / A Peep Behind the Scenes, Mrs O F Walton

1878 – The Europeans, Henry James

1879 – A Dolls House, Henrik Isben

1880 – Heidi, Johanna Spyri

1881 – Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, Margaret Sidney

1882 – Treasure Island, RL Stevenson

1883 – Aldersyde, Annie S. Swan

1884 – Ramona, Helen Hunt Jackson

1885 –

1886 – The Death of Ivan Ilych, Leo Tolstoy

1887 – A Study in Scarlett (Sherlock Holmes #1), Arthur Conan Doyle

1888 – Laddie, Evelyn Whitaker

1889 – Three Men in a Boat, Jerome K Jerome / The Nether World, George Gissing

1890 – The Mystery of Mrs Blencarrow, Mrs Oliphant (Persephone)

1891 – Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy

1892 – The Yellow Wallpaper (and other stories), Charlotte Perkins Gilman

1893 – The Odd Women, George Gissing

1894 – Seven Little Australians, Ethel Turner / The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling

1895 – The Time Machine, H.G. Wells / The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde

1896 – Effi Briest, Theodor Fontane (Persephone)

1897 – The Wayward Tourist, Mark Twain

1898 – Elizabeth and Her German Garden, Elizabeth von Arnim

1899 – The Awakening, Kate Chopin

1900 – Claudine at School, Colette

1901 – My Brilliant Career, Miles Franklin / The Making of a Marchioness, Frances Hodgson Burnett (Persephone)

1902 – Anna of the Five Towns, Arnold Bennett

1903 – The Call of the Wild, Jack London

1904 – The Tale of Benjamin Bunny, Beatrix Potter / A Dog’s Tale, Mark Twain

1905 – The Scarlet Pimpernel, Emmuska Orczy

1906 – The Railway Children, E. Nesbit

1907 – The Shepherd of the Hills, Harold Bell Wright

1908 – A Room with a View, E.M.Forster

1909 – The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame

1910 – The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett

1911 – Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton

1912 – Daddy-Long-Legs, Jean Webster

1913 – A Lady and Her Husband, Amber Reeves (Persephone)

1914 – The Man Upstairs, P.G. Wodehouse

1915 – The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka

1916 – The Family, Elinor Mordaunt

1917 – Parnassus on Wheels, Christopher Morley

1918 – My Antonia, Willa Cather

1919 – The Moon and Sixpence, W. Somerset Maugham

1920 – The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton

1921 – Alice Adams, Booth Tarkington

1922 – The Velveteen Rabbit, Margery Williams / The Lark, E. Nesbit

1923 – Emily of New Moon, L.M. Montgomery

1924 – The Home-Maker, Dorothy Canfield Fisher

1925 – The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald / Greenery Street, Denis Mackail

1926 – The Proper Place, O Douglas (Anna Buchan)

1927 – To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf / The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder

1928 – The Masqueraders, Georgette Heyer

1929 – All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque

1930 –Diary of a Provincial Lady, EM Delafield / The Yearling, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

1931 – All Passion Spent, Vita Sackville-West / The Country Child, Alison Uttley / The Fortnight in September, R.C. Sherriff

1932 – Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons

1933 – Frost in May, Antonia White / High Rising, Angela Thirkell

1934 – A Pin to see the Peep Show, F. Tennyson Jesse / Rumour of Heaven, Beatrix Lehmann / Trooper to the Southern Cross, Angela Thirkell

1935 – Mr Norris Changes Trains, Christopher Isherwood

1936 – Ballet Shoes, Noel Streatfeild / South Riding, Winifred Holtby

1937 – Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck / The Nutmeg Tree, Margery Sharp

1938 – Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, Winifred Watson

1939 – And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie / Mrs Miniver, Jan Struther

1940 – Mariana, Monica Dickens / Bewildering Cares, Winifred Peck

1941 – The Snow Goose, Paul Gallico / Good Evening Mrs Craven….., Mollie Panter-Downs

1942 – The Little Grey Men, B.B.

1943 – Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis

1944 – Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh

1945 – The Pursuit of Love, Nancy Mitford

1946 – Britannia Mews, Margery Sharp / The Hollow, Agatha Christie

1947 – Moondrop to Gascony, Anne Marie Walters / Joy in the Morning, PG Wodehouse

1948 – I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith

1949 – Little Boy Lost, Marghanita Laski