Establishing which fictional greats are considered the most influential novels in history is a nearly impossible task. Depending on personal preference, your selection of literary fiction masterpieces will differ from one individual to the next.
The works we’ve mentioned further down aren’t principally the most officially adequate samples of literary work; they have, however, inspired future fiction. These novels have impacted literature and the future of writing in more ways than one.
Presented to you in no specific order, is our selection of the ten most significant works of fiction of all time.
#1 The Great Gatsby
Nick Carraway leads you through this literary masterpiece in the first person. He’s recently relocated to New York City. His eccentric nouveau riche neighbor with mysterious origins, Jay Gatsby, becomes friendly with him. The Great Gatsby is often used to introduce students to critically read literature.
F. Scott Fitzgerald created The Great Gatsby with an inside view of the United States history into the swinging 1920s of the Jazz Age. Fitzgerald successfully depicts the realities of the era, juxtaposing and critiquing the notion of the American Dream. The underbelly ascends and is exacerbated by the prohibition.
Conceivably, the greatest attribute of the novel is its cover art. An ominous night sky, filled with a penetrating face, projected into the clouds over the bright city lights, symbolically alluding to the outcomes within the manuscript.
#2 The First Folio
The 1623 collection of Shakespeare’s plays was published as Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. Shakespeare’s colleagues and friends, John Heminges and Henry Condell, gathered 36 multicultural plays for The First Folio, displaying Shakespeare’s diversity.
Shakespeare’s contribution to the literary world is unfathomable. We are forever indebted to this revolutionary; he has inspired countless spin-offs and deviations of his masterworks.
#3 A Passage to India
After E.M. Forster traveled through India on several occasions, he was inspired to write the novel A Passage to India. Published in 1924, following Aziz, a Muslim Indian doctor, and his bonds with Cyril Fielding, an English professor, and Adela Quested, a visiting English educator.
Tensions between the Indian community and the colonial British community rise when Adela claims she was assaulted by Aziz while on a journey to the Marabar caves near the imagined city of Chandrapore.
#4 To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee tackled one of the most taboo topics in 1960 in her only published novel until the notorious sequel was published in 2015, just before her death. Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, considered one of the most influential classics of our time, became an immediate success. The novel observes racism through the pure eyes of an intelligent young girl named Jean Louise (“Scout”) Finch in the American South.
#5 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Initially, under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll, Oxford mathematics don Charles Dodgson created this fantasy novel as a children’s fairytale in 1865. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has become a literary classic enjoyed by adults and children. This unbelievably inventive story follows a girl who descends through a rabbit hole into a dream realm inhabited by a range of fantastical characters.
#6 The Odyssey by Homer
The poet, Homer, created The Odyssey as the second of two major ancient Greek epic poems, which have become significant works of ancient Greek literature. The Iliad was first set during the ten-year siege of Troy by an alliance of Greek city-states. The Odyssey cruxes on the voyage home of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, after the collapse of Troy.
#7 The Color Purple
Alice Walker became a victor of the style with her 1982 Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning novel, The Color Purple, most popular before the 19th century. The ahead of its time novel explores taboos such as sexism and sexual orientation, racism, gender, and disability through its congregating of destitute and broken individuals who, over time, flourish to sculpt their own lives.
Set in the post-Civil War American South, the epistolary book follows a young African American girl named Celie into adulthood in letters she writes to God and her sister Nettie. Celie is sexually abused by her father and later by her husband; she chronicles her anguish and progression as well as that of her friends and family.
#8 Jane Eyre
Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre was published in 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell to disguise the fact that the writer was a woman. Brontë felt obligated to hide her identity because Jane Eyre provided a story of individualism for women, which historically would’ve caused a social uproar. The protagonist soars from being orphaned and destitute into a thriving and independent woman, unheard of in the 1800s.
Gothic and Victorian literature styles were combined, transforming the art of the novel by centering on the growth in Jane’s awareness of suppressed action and writing. This book is often introduced in school and taught to learners to aid them in learning critical reading.
#9 Paradise Lost
John Milton first published in 1667, Paradise Lost is a blank verse epic poem. It was later split into a second version, consisting of twelve books, in 1674. Based on the biblical tale of Adam and Eve’s temptation. The poem consists of two narratives, one following Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden by the fallen angel, Satan or Lucifer, and their expulsion from the Garden.
#10 The Canterbury Tales
A collection of 24 stories written between 1387–1400, mainly in verse, in English. The tales are offered as contributions to a story-telling competition by a company of pilgrims journeying from London to Canterbury to visit the temple of Saint Thomas Becket.
Initially, Chaucer planned to compose two stories for each of the pilgrims, revealing their tales on the way to Canterbury and the return journey to London. Thirty pilgrims are presented, but all thirty pilgrims do not tell a story. The work remains unfinished as there is only one tale from each character. However, its incompletion didn’t deter from its relevance and popularity as one of the greatest literary works ever written.