The Best Classic Books for Language Learners, by Level

Classic novels are free of copyright, translated into almost every language and full of stories you half-know already. That makes them ideal for learners — if you pick the right one for your level. Here are the 28 classics in the PageWalker library, grouped from easiest to most challenging in their original English or English translation.

The levels below are rough suggestions using the CEFR scale (A2 = elementary, B1 = intermediate, B2 = upper intermediate, C1 = advanced). Read our guide to reading levels if you are not sure where you are.

Easier classics (A2–B1)

• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz — simple sentences, lots of repetition and a story many people know from the film.
• The Story of Doctor Dolittle — short, concrete and, fittingly, about learning to speak a new language.
• Five Children and It — one wish per chapter, told by a warm and funny narrator.
• Sinbad the Sailor — seven voyages with the same pattern, so you can focus on the new details.

Intermediate classics (B1–B2)

• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland — lots of dialogue; the puns are the only hard part.
• Treasure Island — the classic pirate story, full of sea vocabulary.
• The Call of the Wild and White Fang — clear, action-driven prose; read both to recycle vocabulary.
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer — funny episodes, with some American dialect to get used to.
• The Time Machine — short, precise and modern-sounding science fiction.
• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes — twelve short stories, perfect for one sitting each.
• A Martian Odyssey — the shortest book in the library, about two beings learning to communicate.

Upper intermediate (B2)

• Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar — nine self-contained stories with constant twists.
• The Lost World — dinosaurs and some of the best arguments in English fiction.
• Journey to the Center of the Earth, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Mysterious Island — Jules Verne's science-packed adventures, wonderful for vocabulary.
• King Solomon's Mines — a fast quest told in a dry first-person voice.
• The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood — a playful introduction to older English forms.
• The Three Musketeers — lively dialogue and four very different voices.
• The Travels of Marco Polo — one short chapter per place; dip in anywhere.

Advanced (B2–C1 and above)

• The Count of Monte Cristo — long but gripping; the prison chapters work as a story on their own.
• The Moonstone — many narrators, many styles of English.
• The First Men in the Moon — adventure with long reflective passages.
• Robinson Crusoe — 18th-century English with very concrete vocabulary.
• The Great Gatsby — short but stylistically rich; a lesson in tone.
• The Moon Pool and She — lush, atmospheric Victorian and pulp adventure for confident readers.

How to use this list

Start one level below where you think you are. Finishing an easier book builds speed and confidence, and the vocabulary carries over. If a book feels too hard after twenty pages, switch without guilt — there are 27 others.

A bilingual reader with tap-to-translate lets you go one level higher than you could with a paper book, because you never get completely stuck. That is how the PageWalker app works on iPhone, and you can try the interactive adventure version of every book in your browser.