Classic Love Stories & Romance Novels (Free)
Austen, the Brontës, Gaskell and the great 19th-century romances that every modern romance novel still borrows from — free to read on Project Gutenberg and to hear on LibriVox.
This list collects 1,845 books tagged Classic Love Stories by 916 authors, published between 1420 and 2020. 1,340 are free to read and 687 have a free audiobook. Books are ranked by how many readers have shelved, rated or downloaded them.
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Common tropes in Classic Love Stories
From Wikipedia
A romance, or romantic novel, is a genre of fiction in which the main narrative focuses on the development of a romantic relationship between two or more characters within a story, often concluding in an emotionally satisfying ending.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen
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Wuthering Heights
Emily Brontë
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The Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde
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The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
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Sense and Sensibility
Jane Austen
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Jane Eyre
Charlotte Brontë
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Great Expectations
Charles Dickens
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A Midsummer Night's Dream
William Shakespeare
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Persuasion
Jane Austen
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The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Washington Irving
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Northanger Abbey
Jane Austen
Les trois Mousquetaires
Alexandre Dumas
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Mansfield Park
Jane Austen
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The Turn of the Screw
Henry James
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The Woman in White
Wilkie Collins
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Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Thomas Hardy
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A Farewell to Arms
Ernest Hemingway
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Middlemarch
George Eliot
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The Blue Castle: a novel
L. M. Montgomery
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Lorna Doone
R. D. Blackmore
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Ivanhoe
Sir Walter Scott
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She
H. Rider Haggard
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Anthem
Ayn Rand
Le fantôme de l'opéra
Gaston Leroux
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The Enchanted April
Elizabeth Von Arnim
Le Morte d'Arthur
Thomas Malory
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Jude the Obscure
Thomas Hardy
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Far from the Madding Crowd
Thomas Hardy
I Promessi Sposi
Alessandro Manzoni
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The Pathfinder
James Fenimore Cooper
Princesse de Clèves
Madame de La Fayette, Everett Carll Ladd
The Classic Tale of the Velveteen Rabbit
Margery Williams Bianco
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The Pirate
Sir Walter Scott
![Cover of Works [37 Plays, 6 Poems, Sonnets]](https://covers.openlibrary.org/b/id/8779054-M.jpg?default=false)
Works [37 Plays, 6 Poems, Sonnets]
William Shakespeare
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The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Jane Austen
Jane Austen
Plays (36)
William Shakespeare
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Cynthia's Chauffeur
Louis Tracy
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Space Station 1
Frank Belknap Long
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Dainty's Cruel Rivals; Or, The Fatal Birthday
Miller, Alex. McVeigh, Mrs.
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What Will People Say? A Novel
Rupert Hughes
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The Boy with Wings
Berta Ruck
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The Black Moth
Georgette Heyer
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The Return of the Native
Thomas Hardy
Dance Upon the Air
Nora Roberts
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Emma
Jane Austen
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The black pearl
Marie Lion
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Joan and Co
Frederick Orin Bartlett
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The Green Dolphin
Sara Ware Bassett
Top Classic Love Stories authors
- Anthony Trollope37 books
- Henry James29 books
- Grace Livingston Hill19 books
- Mary Elizabeth Braddon20 books
- Robert W. Chambers24 books
- Mary Jane Holmes18 books
- Thomas Hardy16 books
- William Shakespeare35 books
- Edith Wharton20 books
- C. N. Williamson11 books
- Lucy Maud Montgomery12 books
- Wilkie Collins20 books
- Miller, Alex. McVeigh, Mrs.11 books
- Mary Roberts Rinehart16 books
- Jane Austen11 books
- H. Rider Haggard54 books
Related genres
Frequently asked questions
What are the most popular Classic Love Stories books?
By reader shelving on Open Library and downloads, the most popular include Pride and Prejudice (1813), Wuthering Heights (1846), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), The Great Gatsby (1920) and Sense and Sensibility (1811).