Romance novels are a genre of literature which put its focus on description of the relationship and romantic love between two persons. Romance is always a topic that people are interested in from ancient to modern time, therefore most kinds of novels include romance elements to attract readers’ interest. However, the distinction between romance novels and that of other types is their different focuses. Romance novels must include one or several love stories whether other elements are integrated.
1. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
For daring to peer into the heart of an adulteress and enumerate its contents with profound dispassion, the author of Madame Bovary was tried for "offenses against morality and religion." What shocks us today about Flaubert’s devastatingly ……
2. The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
Written in the eleventh century, this exquisite portrait of courtly life in medieval Japan is widely celebrated as the world’s first novel. Genji, the Shining Prince, is the son of an emperor. He is a passionate character whose tempestuous ……
Emma, by Jane Austen, is a novel about youthful hubris and the perils of misconstrued romance. As in her other novels, Austen explores the concerns and difficulties of genteel women living in Georgian-Regency England; she also creates a liv……
4. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Anna Karenina tells of the doomed love affair between the sensuous and rebellious Anna and the dashing officer, Count Vronsky. Tragedy unfolds as Anna rejects her passionless marriage and must endure the hypocrisies of society. Set against ……
5. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The novel chronicles an era that Fitzgerald himself dubbed the "Jazz Age." Following the shock and chaos of World War I, American society enjoyed unprecedented levels of prosperity during the "roaring" 1920s as the economy soared. At the sa……
6. Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
The story centres on Isabel Archer, an attractive American whom circumstances have brought to Europe. Isabel refuses the offer of marriage to an English peer and to a bulldog-like New Englander, to fall victim to a worthless and spiteful ma……
7. Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
Perhaps no other of the world’s great writers lived and wrote with the passionate intensity of D. H. Lawrence. And perhaps no other of his books so explores the mysteries between men and women–both sensual and intellectual–as Women in Love.……
8. Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Forced by her parents’ ambitions among her wealthy D’Urberville cousins, Tess Durbeyfield attracts the unscrupulous Alec. Seduced and discarded, she finds work as a milkmaid, and her steadfast integrity is finally rewarded by the love of An……
9. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
The narrative is non-linear, involving several flashbacks, and two primary narrators: Mr. Lockwood and Ellen "Nelly" Dean. The novel opens in 1801, with Mr. Lockwood arriving at Thrushcross Grange, a grand house on the Yorkshire moors that ……
10. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The book is narrated in free indirect speech following the main character Elizabeth Bennet as she deals with matters of upbringing, marriage, moral rightness and education in her aristocratic society. Though the book’s setting is uniquely t……
11. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Hester Prynne is a beautiful young woman. She is also an outcast. In the eyes of her neighbors she has committed an unforgivable sin. Everyone knows that her little daughter, Pearl, is the product of an illicit affair but no one knows the i……
12. Clarissa Harlowe by Samuel Richardson
Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady is an epistolary novel by Samuel Richardson. It tells the tragic story of a heroine whose quest for virtue is continually thwarted by her family, and is one of the longest novels in the English lang……
Just as Jane Austen is the favorite author of many discerning readers, Persuasion is the most highly esteemed novel of many Austenites. It has the deep irony, the scathing wit, the droll and finely drawn characters of Austen’s other novels,……
14. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Jane Eyre is a first-person narrative of the title character, a small, plain-faced, intelligent and honest English orphan. The novel goes through five distinct stages: Jane’s childhood at Gateshead, where she is abused by her aunt and cousi……
15. The Princess of Cleves by Madame de La Fayette
La Princesse de Clèves is a French novel, regarded by many as the beginning of the modern tradition of the psychological novel, and as a great classic work. Its author is generally held to be Madame de La Fayette.The action takes place betw……
16. Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence
Sons and Lovers is one of the landmark novels of the twentieth century. It was immediately recognized as the first great modern restatement of the oedipal drama when it appeared in 1913 and is widely considered the major work of D.H. Lawren……
17. The Chartreuse of Parma by Stendhal
Balzac considered it the most important French novel of his time. André Gide later deemed it the greatest of all French novels, and Henry James judged it to be a masterpiece. Now, in a major literary event, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and d……
18. The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Sorrows of Young Werther is an epistolary and loosely autobiographical novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, first published in 1774; a revised edition of the novel was published in 1787. Werther was an important novel of the Sturm und D……
19. Dangerous Liaisons by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
The complex moral ambiguities of seduction and revenge make Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782) one of the most scandalous and controversial novels in European literature. The subject of major film and stage adaptations, the novel’s prime mover……
20. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Gone With the Wind is set in Jonesboro and Atlanta, Georgia during the American Civil War and Reconstruction and follows the life of Scarlett O’Hara, the daughter of an Irish immigrant plantation owner.
21. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Little Women is a novel by American author Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888), which was originally published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869. Alcott wrote the books rapidly over several months at the request of her publisher. The novel follows ……
22. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Sense and Sensibility is a novel by Jane Austen, and was her first published work when it appeared in 1811 under the pseudonym "A Lady". A work of romantic fiction, better known as a comedy of manners, Sense and Sensibility is set in southw……
23. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Taken from the poverty of her parents’ home in Portsmouth, Fanny Price is brought up with her rich cousins at Mansfield Park, acutely aware of her humble rank and with her cousin Edmund as her sole ally. During her uncle’s absence in Antigu……
24. Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo
When the mad archdeacon Claude Frollo plans to abduct the gypsy dancer Esmeralda, he employs Quasimodo, the hunchback bell ringer to Notre Dame Cathedral, to do the job for him. But the plan goes horribly wrong, and Esmeralda finds herself ……
25. The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni
Set in Lombardy during the Spanish occupation of the late 1620s, The Betrothed tells the story of two young lovers, Renzo and Lucia, prevented from marrying by the petty tyrant Don Rodrigo, who desires Lucia for himself. Forced to flee, the……
26. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
The Age of Innocence is Edith Wharton’s most romantic novel, yet our expectations for her lovers, Ellen Olenska and Newland Archer, are disappointed at every turn. Wharton’s genius lies in offering the pleasure of a romance, then engaging t……
27. Dom Casmurro by Machado De Assis
Bentinho Santiago, cosseted only child of a rich widow, lives next door to Capitu, the daughter of a lowly government official. As childhood friendship turns to adolescent love, an obstacle to the union exists in the form of a vow made by B……
28. Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost
So begins the story of Manon Lescaut, a tale of passion and betrayal, of delinquency and misalliance, which moves from early eighteenth-century Paris - with its theatres, assemblies, and gaming-houses - via prison and deportation to a tragi……
29. The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham
The Painted Veil is beautiful story of Kitty Fane who is the main character and through her one can witness a myriad of emotions and sentiments. She, being an extrovert personality likes to mingle with people but circumstances in her life a……
30. The Lady of the Camellias by Alexandre Dumas fils
Set in mid-19th-century France, the novel tells the love story between Marguerite Gautier, a demimondaine or courtesan and Armand Duval, a young bourgeois. Marguerite is nicknamed "lady of the camellias" because she wears a red camellia whe……
31. A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
Set in early 1900s Italy and England, A Room with a View offers a humorous critique of Edwardian-era society. The novel begins in Florence, Italy, where Miss Lucy Honeychurch, who is chaperoned by her spinster cousin Miss Charlotte Bartlett……
32. Howards End by E. M. Forster
Howards End is considered by many to be E. M. Forster’s masterpiece. First published in 1910, this beguiling and completely captivating tale explores social conventions, codes of conduct, and relationships in turn-of-the-century Edwardian E……
33. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
Written by acclaimed author, Henry James in 1902, The Wings of the Dove tells the story of Milly Theale, an American heiress stricken with a serious disease, and her impact on the people around her. Some of these people befriend Milly with ……
34. The Golden Bowl by Henry James
Maggie Verver, a young American heiress, and her widowed father Adam, lead a life of wealth and refinement in London. They are both getting married: Maggie to Prince Amerigo, an impoverished Italian aristocrat, and Adam to the beautiful but……