Novels are an excellent educational tool that allows us private peeks, cloaked as fiction, into the inner workings of a persons mind and thoughts so private they are difficult to own as autobiographical. For instance, Sons And Lovers by DH Lawrence was a work of fiction. In his real life this book destroyed his relationship with his exes, one of whom never spoke with him again (the portrayals were brutal!). I hear people say fiction is a guilty pleasure/waste of time. I disagree. I am not sure the core of any novel is true fiction.
There is so much to be learned about love from fiction....I don't intend that as a joke! If you want to get serious about seducing Mr Right, try reading yourself into the mindset of the lover and their beloved. These books are an amazing place to start, the best novels of all time!
This compilation of books is the definitive list as selected by the Guardian's Review team and a panel of expert judges, this list includes only novels – no memoirs, no short stories, no long poems – from any decade and in any language. This was originally published in categories – love, crime, comedy, family and self, state of the nation, science fiction and fantasy, war and travel. I selected the Love category, for obvious reasons, but if you want to view the entire list go to http://www.guardian.co.uk.
The Guardian's Top 1000 Books
Love Category
- Le Grand Meaulnes by Henri Alain-Fournier
- Dom Casmurro Joaquim by Maria Machado de Assis
- Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
- Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
- Emma by Jane Austen
- Persuasion by Jane Austen
- Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
- Nightwood by Djuna Barnes
- The Garden of the Finzi-Cortinis by Giorgio Bassani
- Love for Lydia by HE Bates
- More Die of Heartbreak by Saul Bellow
- Lorna Doone by RD Blackmore
- The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen
- The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
- Vilette by Charlotte Bronte
- Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
- Look At Me by Anita Brookner
- Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown
- Possession by AS Byatt
- Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
- Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey
- A Month in the Country by JL Carr
- My Antonia by Willa Cather
- A Lost Lady by Willa Cather
- Claudine a l'ecole by Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette
- Cheri by Sidonie-Gabrielle Collette
- Victory: An Island Tale by Joseph Conrad
- The Princess of Cleves by Madame de Lafayette
- The Parasites by Daphne du Maurier
- Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
- The Lover by Marguerite Duras
- Adam Bede by George Eliot
- Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
- The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
- The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
- The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
- Tender is the Night by F Scott Fitzgerald
- The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald
- Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
- The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
- A Room with a View by EM Forster
- The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles
- The Snow Goose by Paul Gallico
- Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell
- Strait is the Gate by Andre Gide
- Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon
- The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang Goethe
- Living by Henry Green
- The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
- The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall
- Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
- Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
- Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
- The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy
- The Go-Between by LP Hartley
- The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
- The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard
- A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
- The Infamous Army by Georgette Heyer
- Regency Buck by Georgette Heyer
- The Swimming-Pool Library by Alan Hollinghurst
- Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest by WH Hudson
- Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
- Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley
- The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
- Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
- The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
- The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek
- Beauty and Saddness by Yasunari Kawabata
- The Far Pavillions by Mary Margaret Kaye
- Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis
- Moon over Africa by Pamela Kent
- The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera
- The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
- Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre-Ambroise-Francois Choderlos de Laclos
- Lady Chatterley's Lover by DH Lawrence
- The Rainbow by DH Lawrence
- Women in Love by DH Lawrence
- The Echoing Grove by Rosamond Lehmann
- The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann
- Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos
- Zami by Audre Lorde
- Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie
- Samarkand by Amin Maalouf
- Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
- The Silent Duchess by Dacia Maraini
- A Heart So White by Javier Marias
- Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham
- So Long, See you Tomorrow by William Maxwell
- The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
- Atonement by Ian McEwan
- The Child in Time by Ian McEwan
- The Egoist by George Meredith
- Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
- Patience and Sarah by Isabel Miller
- Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
- The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
- Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
- Arturo's Island by Elsa Morante
- Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
- Lolita, or the Confessions of a White Widowed Male by Vladimir Nabokov
- The Painter of Signs by RK Narayan
- Delta of Venus by Anais Nin
- All Souls Day by Cees Nooteboom
- The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
- Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
- Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost
- Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
- Maurice Guest by Henry Handel Richardson
- Pamela by Samuel Richardson
- Clarissa by Samuel Richardson
- Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
- Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan
- Ali and Nino by Kurban Said
- Light Years by James Salter
- A Sport and a Passtime by James Salter
- The Reader by Benhardq Schlink
- The Reluctant Orphan by Aara Seale
- Love Story by Eric Segal
- Enemies, a Love Story by Isaac Bashevis Singer
- At Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept by Elizabeth Smart
- I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
- The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif
- Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann
- Waterland by Graham Swift
- Diary of a Mad Old Man by Junichiro Tanizaki
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
- Music and Silence by Rose Tremain
- First Love by Ivan Turgenev
- Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler
- The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler
- The Night Watch by Sarah Waters
- The Graduate by Charles Webb
- The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
- The Passion by Jeanette Winterson
- East Lynne by Ellen Wood
- Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
