Jane Austen's "Emma" - what I think is the greatest work by arguably the greatest novelist in the English language. More modern favourites: Orwell's "1984" and Golding's "Lord of the Flies".

Do you include poetry? Poe's and Hopkins' head my (all-too-short) list.

As far as older and non-English stuff goes, I'm a great fan of (in no particular order) the Grimm tales (NB: they're NOT for children!), the complete "1001 Nights" (all four volumes!), the five-volume Arthurian cycle formerly attributed to Walter Map (c1140-c1209) and other medieval romances (Arthurian and otherwise) before Malory; Tolstoy's "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina" (the Tristan and Isolde of the literary world), Zola's "Terese Raquin" (a sort of French equivalent), Flaubert's "Madame Bovary" and Lautreamont's Maldoror (the first surrealist novel).

Anselm

I, too, loved "Wuthering Heights". I think my all-time favorite classic would be "The Return Of The Native" by Thomas Hardy. It was prose that read like poetry. Not a casual project to get through as I recall, but well worth the effort. The most enjoyably breeziest classic I ever loved was "Great Expectations" by Dickens. I couldn't put it down!

Through the Looking Glass and Alice in Wonderland. Swiss Family Robinson. I also like Dante, but it's hard to find a good translation. The one by Dorothy Sayers is out of print. The Bible is good if read like literature. Some really great poetry in Song of Songs.

I agree with "Pride and Prejudice". I also really liked "1984", "Fahrenheit 451", "To Kill a Mockingbird", "The Fountainhead", "Brave New World" and "All the Kings Men".

Daphne DuMaurier's 'Rebecca'. I love that book, it's in my top three favourites.