List of Top British Works of Literature for AP Makes Me Feel Really Dumb

NOTE: Because I love lists, the following is the list of works of British Literature that the College Board surveryed, similiar to my earlier post about works of American Literature. This list is even more daunting. Of this list, I've only read 7 of the 26 works on this list, and I didn't include any of the works that only got 2 or 1 stars. I hadn't heard of most of them. Tristram Shandy by Sterne? Wide Sargasso Sea by Rhys? What?

Top British Novels
Jane Eyre – 12 stars
Wuthering Heights 13 stars
Great Expectations – 11 stars
King Lear – William Shakespeare - 9 stars
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce - 8 stars
Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad – 8 stars

6 Stars
Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
Hamlet – William Shakespeare

5 Stars
Passage to India – EM Forster
Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
Equus – Peter Shaffer
Othello – William Shakespeare - 5 stars
Lord Jim – Joseph Conrad – 5 stars

4 Stars
Moll Flanders – Daniel Defoe
Persuasion – Jane Austen
Murder in the Cathedral – T.S. Eliot
The Mayor of Casterbridge – Thomas Hardy
Merchant of Venice – William Shakespeare


3 Stars
Waiting for Godot – Samuel Beckett
Dr. Faustus – Philip Marlowe
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead – Thomas Stoppard
To the Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
Romeo and Juliet – Shakespeare
Macbeth – William Shakespeare
Mrs. Warren’s Profession – George Bernard Shaw