The Ultimate Book Club: 180 Books You Should Read (Vol.2) : Life is a Dream, The Awakening, Babbitt, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Sense and Sensibility

The Ultimate Book Club: 180 Books You Should Read (Vol. 2) presents a meticulously curated collection that spans genres, eras, and continents, offering a panoramic view of literary evolution and innovation chronologically and thematically. Bridging the expanse between classical and modern narratives, this anthology embraces a diversity of styles—from the refined prose of Austen to the passionate epics of Homer, and from the gothic tales of Stoker to the existential ponderings of Kafka. The collection is noteworthy for including seminal works that have each, in their unique way, contributed to shaping the course of literary history, providing readers with a robust cross-section of influential global literature. The anthology is not just textual but a historical journey inviting in-depth exploration of varied human conditions and moral landscapes delineated by these timeless works. The editors, renowned for their scholarly acumen, bring together a lexicon of authors whose backgrounds are as diverse as their writing styles. The collective contributions resonate with major cultural and literary movements—from Romanticism to Realism, from Existentialism to Modernism, elucidating a textured narrative of human experience and intellectual pursuit across centuries. Noteworthy are the threads that relate classics like Dante's allegorical precision with the modernist introspections of Woolf or Joyce, underscoring a shared inquiry into the existential facets of life. This compendium not only highlights individual genius but also accentuates how these literary voices echo, complement, and sometimes contest each other, offering a comprehensive scholarly discourse. 'The Ultimate Book Club: 180 Books You Should Read (Vol. 2)' is an essential volume for anyone interested in the breadth and depth of literary culture. It serves as a gateway to the intellectual heritage of the world, charting a course through the imaginations and insights that have captured human thought across ages. This anthology is not just an academic resource but a companion for lifelong learners and literary enthusiasts eager to delve into the narrative intricacies offered by these canonical texts. Each page promises to broaden one's horizons and deepen the understanding of the art of literature, making this collection a quintessential addition to any bookshelf.

More by Robert Louis Stevenson

Skip the list

1429 books
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson was born on 13 November 1850, changing his second name to ‘Louis’ at the age of eighteen. He has always been loved and admired by countless readers and critics for ‘the excitement, the fierce joy, the delight in strangeness, the pleasure in deep and dark adventures’ found in his classic stories and, without doubt, he created some of the most horribly unforgettable characters in literature and, above all, Mr. Edward Hyde.
Read more
2610 books
Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens was born in 1812 and grew up in poverty. This experience influenced ‘Oliver Twist’, the second of his fourteen major novels, which first appeared in 1837. When he died in 1870, he was buried in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey as an indication of his huge popularity as a novelist, which endures to this day.
Read more
902 books
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy grew up in Russia, raised by a elderly aunt and educated by French tutors while studying at Kazen University before giving up on his education and volunteering for military duty. When writing his greatest works, War and Peace and Anna Karenina, Tolstoy drew upon his diaries for material. At eighty-two, while away from home, he suffered from declining health and died in Astapovo, Riazan in 1910.
Read more
1330 books
Jane Austen
Jane Austen (1775-1817) was an English novelist known primarily for her six major novels—Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion—which observe and critique the British gentry of the late eighteenth century. Her mastery of wit, irony, and social commentary made her a beloved and acclaimed author in her lifetime, a distinction she still enjoys today around the world.
Read more
162 books
Kenneth Grahame
Kenneth Grahame (1859–1932) was a Scottish writer, most famous for one of the all-time classics of children’s literature, The Wind in the Willows, as well as for The Reluctant Dragon.
Read more
702 books
F. Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1896. He attended Princeton University, joined the United States Army during World War I, and published his first novel, This Side of Paradise, in 1920. That same year he married Zelda Sayre and for the next decade the couple lived in New York, Paris, and on the Riviera. Fitzgerald’s masterpieces include The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby, and Tender Is the Night. He died at the age of forty-four while working on The Last Tycoon. Fitzgerald’s fiction has secured his reputation as one of the most important American writers of the twentieth century.
Read more
656 books
Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe was born at the beginning of a period of history known as the English Restoration, so-named because it was when King Charles II restored the monarchy to England following the English Civil War and the brief dictatorship of Oliver Cromwell. Defoe’s contemporaries included Isaac Newton and Samuel Pepys.
Read more
1931 books
Jules Verne
Jules Verne (1828–1905) was a prolific French author whose writing about various innovations and technological advancements laid much of the foundation of modern science fiction. Verne’s love of travel and adventure, including his time spent sailing the seas, inspired several of his short stories and novels.
Read more
360 books
Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift was born of English descent in Dublin, Ireland in 1667. He went to school at Trinity College in Ireland, before moving to England at the age of 22. After a short stint in the Anglican Church, he began his career as a writer, satirizing religious, political, and educational institutions. He wrote in defense of the Irish people, especially in his A Modest Proposal, which made him a champion of his people. His most famous work is Gulliver’s Travels which was published anonymously in 1726.
Read more
626 books
James Fenimore Cooper
James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) was a prolific and popular nineteenth century American writer who wrote historical fiction of frontier and Native American life. He is best remembered for the Leatherstocking Tales, one of which was The Last of the Mohicans.
Read more
295 books
J. M. Barrie
J.M. Barrie, the son of a weaver, was born near Dundee, Scotland, in 1860. He was a journalist and novelist and began writing for the stage in 1892. Peter Pan, first produced in London on December 27, 1904, was an immediate success. The story of Peter Pan first appeared in book form (titled Peter and Wendy, and later Peter Pan and Wendy) in 1911. Barrie died in 1937, bequeathing the copyright of Peter Pan to the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, a hospital for children.
Read more
1611 books
Alexandre Dumas
Alexander Dumas (1802–1870), author of more than ninety plays and many novels, was well known in Parisian society and was a contemporary of Victor Hugo. After the success of The Count of Monte Cristo, Dumas dumped his entire fortune into his own Chateau de Monte Cristo-and was then forced to flee to Belgium to escape his creditors. He died penniless but optimistic.
Read more
544 books
Gustave Flaubert
Gustave Flaubert was a French novelist who is counted among the greatest Western novelists, known especially for his first published novel Madame Bovary, and for his scrupulous devotion to his art and style, best exemplified by his endless search for le mot juste ("the precise word"). He was born in Rouen, Seine-Maritime, in the Haute-Normandie Region of France.
Read more
780 books
Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo, a major leader of the French Romantic Movement, was one of the most influential figures in nineteenth-century literature. By the age of thirty, he had established himself as a master in every domain of literature--drama, fiction, and lyric poetry. Hugo's private life was as unconventional and exuberant as his literary creations. At twenty, he married after a long, idealistic courtship; but later in life was infamous for his scandalous escapades. In 1851, he was exiled for his passionate opposition to Napoleon III. Hugo's rich, emotional novels, Notre Dame de Paris and Les Miserables, have made him one of the most widely read authors of all time.
Read more
130 books
Sir Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott was born in Scotland in 1771 and achieved international fame with his work. In 1813 he was offered the position of Poet Laureate, but turned it down. Scott mainly wrote poetry before trying his hand at novels. His first novel, Waverley, was published anonymously, as were many novels that he wrote later, despite the fact that his identity became widely known.
Read more
417 books
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) was an American abolitionist and author of more than 20 books, including novels, three travel memoirs, and collections of articles and letters. Her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) was a realistic account of life for African-Americans under slavery; it reached millions and became influential in the United States and United Kingdom.
Read more
859 books
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and biographer. His work centres on his New England home and often features moral allegories with Puritan inspiration, with themes revolving around inherent good and evil. His fiction works are considered part of the Romantic movement and, more specifically, Dark romanticism.
Read more
625 books
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 in Dorchester, Dorset. He enrolled as a student in King’s College, London, but never felt at ease there, seeing himself as socially inferior. This preoccupation with society, particularly the declining rural society, featured heavily in Hardy’s novels, with many of his stories set in the fictional county of Wessex. Since his death in 1928, Hardy has been recognised as a significant poet, influencing The Movement poets in the 1950s and 1960s.
Read more
270 books
Willa Cather
Willa Sibert Cather was an American writer who achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains, including O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, and My Ántonia. In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours, a novel set during World War I. Cather grew up in Virginia and Nebraska, and graduated from the University of Nebraska Lincoln. She lived and worked in Pittsburgh for ten years, supporting herself as a magazine editor and high school English teacher. At the age of 33 she moved to New York City, though she also traveled widely and spent considerable time at her summer residence in Grand Manan, New Brunswick.
Read more
414 books
Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton (1862–1937) was an American novelist—the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Age of Innocence in 1921—as well as a short story writer, playwright, designer, reporter, and poet. Her other works include Ethan Frome, The House of Mirth, and Roman Fever and Other Stories. Born into one of New York’s elite families, she drew upon her knowledge of upper-class aristocracy to realistically portray the lives and morals of the Gilded Age.
Read more
948 books
Henry James
Henry James (1843–1916) was an American writer, highly regarded as one of the key proponents of literary realism, as well as for his contributions to literary criticism. His writing centres on the clash and overlap between Europe and America, and is regarded as his most notable work.
Read more
292 books
Ivan Turgenev
Ivan Turgenev was a Russian writer whose work is exemplary of Russian Realism. A student of Hegel, Turgenev’s political views and writing were heavily influenced by the Age of Enlightenment. Among his most recognized works are the classic Fathers and Sons, A Sportsman’s Sketches, and A Month in the Country. Turgenev is today recognized for his artistic purity, which influenced writers such as Henry James and Joseph Conrad. Turgenev died in 1883, and is credited with returning Leo Tolstoy to writing as the result of his death-bed plea.
Read more
752 books
Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf was an English novelist, essayist, short story writer, publisher, critic and member of the Bloomsbury group, as well as being regarded as both a hugely significant modernist and feminist figure. Her most famous works include Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and A Room of One’s Own.
Read more
217 books
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin was a founding father of the United States of America. He was a printer, publisher, author, inventor, scientist, and diplomat. Franklin is known for signing and drafting the Declaration of Independence, representing America during the American Revolution, and making significant contributions to science.
Read more
2190 books
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was an American writer, poet, and critic. Best known for his macabre prose work, including the short story “The Tell-Tale Heart,” his writing has influenced literature in the United States and around the world.
Read more
654 books
Wilkie Collins
Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) began his literary career writing articles and short stories for Dickens' periodicals. He published a biography of his father and a number of plays, but his reputation rests on his novels. Collins is well known for his mystery, suspense, and crime writings. He is best known for his novels in the emerging genres of Sensation and Detective fiction.
Read more
667 books
Bram Stoker
Bram Stoker was born November 8, 1847, in Dublin, Ireland. Stoker was a sickly child who was frequently bedridden; his mother entertained him by telling frightening stories and fables during his bouts of illness. Stoker studied math at Trinity College Dublin, graduating in 1867. He worked as a civil servant, freelance journalist, drama critic, editor and, most notably, as manager of the Lyceum Theatre. Although best known for Dracula, Stoker wrote eighteen other books, including Under the Sunset, The Snake’s Pass, The Jewel of Seven Stars, The Lady of the Shroud, and The Lair of the White Worm. He died in 1912 at the age of sixty-four.
Read more
462 books
Gaston Leroux
Gaston Leroux was a French journalist and playwright. Born in Paris in 1868, he abandoned a law career to become a court reporter and theater critic; as an international correspondent, he witnessed and covered the 1905 Russian Revolution. Two years later, Leroux left journalism to focus on writing fiction. He authored dozens of novels and short stories, and is considered one of the preeminent French writers of detective fiction. His most famous work, The Phantom of the Opera, was originally serialized in 1909 and 1910. He died in 1927.
Read more
1751 books
H.G. Wells
H.G. Wells is considered by many to be the father of science fiction. He was the author of numerous classics such as The Invisible Man, The Time Machine, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The War of the Worlds, and many more.
Read more
961 books
Joseph Conrad
Polish-born Joseph Conrad is regarded as a highly influential author, and his works are seen as a precursor to modernist literature. His often tragic insight into the human condition in novels such as Heart of Darkness and The Secret Agent is unrivalled by his contemporaries.
Read more
543 books
Washington Irving
Washington Irving was an American author, essayist, biographer, historian, and diplomat of the early 19th century.
Read more
321 books
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) was born in Moscow, as the second son of a former army doctor. In 1846 he joined a group of utopian socialists. He was arrested in 1849 during a reading of a radical letter, and sentenced to death. He spent four years in a convict prison in Siberia, after which he was obliged to enlist in the army. Dostoyevsky’s own harrowing experiences were the inspiration for the novel Crime and Punishment.
Read more
210 books
John Milton
John Milton is a famous English poet and intellectual known for his epic, Paradise Lost.
Read more
302 books
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Celebrated feminist writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) was born in Hartford, Connecticut. She is perhaps best remembered as the author of the short story ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, which details a woman’s descent into madness after she is cooped up in a misguided attempt to restore her to health. The story was a clear indicator of Gilman’s views on the restraints of women and related to her own treatment for postpartum depression.
Read more
494 books
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert (D. H.) Lawrence was a prolific English novelist, essayist, poet, playwright, literary critic and painter. His most notable works include Lady Chatterley’s Lover, The Rainbow, Sons and Lovers and Women in Love.
Read more
30 books
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut was a master of contemporary American Literature. His black humor, satiric voice, and incomparable imagination first captured America's attention in The Siren's of Titan in 1959 and established him as ""a true artist"" with Cat's Cradle in 1963. He was, as Graham Greene has declared, ""one of the best living American writers.""
Read more

The Ultimate Book Club: 180 Books You Should Read (Vol.2) : Life is a Dream, The Awakening, Babbitt, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Sense and Sensibility

Authors:

Format:

Duration:

Language:

Categories:

75+ Horror Anthologies

Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Robert Louis Stevenson, Howard Phillips Lovecraft, Algernon Blackwood, Francis Marion Crawford, Robert W. Chambers

50+ Masterpieces you have to read before you die. Christmas Stories and Poems : A Christmas Carol, A Merry Christmas, A Letter from Santa Claus, Christmas Bells, The Gift of the Magi and others

Die beliebtesten Kinderbücher der Welt in einem Band (Illustrierte Ausgabe) : Die Abenteuer Tom Sawyers, Heidi, Nesthäkchen, Peterchens Mondfahrt, Alice im Wunderland…

Tales of the Dark Romantics : Stories of Mystery and Terror by Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson, W.W. Jacobs, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Algernon Blackwood, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herman Melville and Emily Dickinson

Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson, Algernon Blackwood, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Nathanel Hawthorne, WW Jacobs

Der Flaschenteufel

Robert Louis Stevenson

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Audiobook

Robert Louis Stevenson, Classic Audiobooks

100 Meisterwerke der englischen Literatur - Klassiker, die man kennen muss

Der Schwarze Pfeil : Ein packendes Abenteuer um Ritter, Gerechtigkeit und Intrigen im England der Rosenkriege

Robert Louis Stevenson

Schauer, Spannung und Schwarze Romantik: 10 Novellen und Kurzgeschichten : Klassiker der Weltliteratur

E. T. A Hoffmann, H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, John Polidori, Jeremias Gotthelf, Washington Irving, Robert Louis Stevenson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, W. Jacobs

Erlesene Erzählungen 1 : Das Flaschenteufelchen, Markheim, Der Leichenräuber.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Der seltsame Fall des Dr. Jekyll und Mr. Hyde - Hörbuch Klassiker

Robert Louis Stevenson, Hörbuch Klassiker

Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde : Robert Louis Stevenson's Timeless Gothic Horror Classic

Robert Louis Stevenson, Zenith Golden Quill

Robert Louis Stevenson

Charles Dickens

Leo Tolstoy

Jane Austen

Kenneth Grahame

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Daniel Defoe

Jules Verne

Jonathan Swift

James Fenimore Cooper

J. M. Barrie

Alexandre Dumas

Gustave Flaubert

Victor Hugo

Sir Walter Scott

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Thomas Hardy

Willa Cather

Edith Wharton

Henry James

Ivan Turgenev

Virginia Woolf

Benjamin Franklin

Edgar Allan Poe

Wilkie Collins

Bram Stoker

Gaston Leroux

H.G. Wells

Joseph Conrad

Washington Irving

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

John Milton

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

D. H. Lawrence

Kurt Vonnegut