The Ultimate Winter Reading List

What Makes Literature 'Wintery' - and the Classics that Make the Cut

Ah, winter, the season of great paradox: the season of cold and the season of warmth, the season of calamity and the season of peace, the season of sorrow and the season of joy. If winter is all these things and more, how shall we define ‘winter literature?’ What makes a book ‘wintery?’ 

First there are the slow tales, bringing home the comfort of rest. They seduce us into hibernation, they sing us to sleep, and they draw us into the cosy closeness of family and friendship. Away in a manger, we tremble. The beginning of the bright, quiet tale of birth, life, death, and resurrection is whispered and then shouted throughout the land. Joy to the world! The Lord has come! And with him has come meaning for all the seasons of life. Winter is about the homecoming of God and man, on earth, in each other, and beyond. 

Then there are the tales of waiting, of cruel death, of the end of things, of tyranny and desolation. There are the winters ushered in by cruel autumns, and the stories in which time passes into its end, where flowers die, where closed hands wither, where the grave is sealed. Winter literature shelters the darkest and deepest human emotions, but also unseen hope for a better season. In winter we watch the passing of dark nights into bright mornings and we await the change that is promised us. We watch eagerly for the coming green, sleeping gently beneath the bed of snow. And as we wait, it arrives. Magic and wonder return, and the piper comes calling down the fresh, green hill. 

Until then, we sit and think. We rest and wait. We inspect ourselves, and we read literature that reveals us as we are in winter, but also how we will be in spring.

A List of Books for Winter

British Novels & Stories

• Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie

• A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

• The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

• Hard Times by Charles Dickens

• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

• Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

• Bleak House by Charles Dickens

• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

• The Nine Tailors by Dorothy Sayers

• Letters to Father Christmas by J.R.R. Tolkien

• The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien

• The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

• Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers

• The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis

• The Place of the Lion by Charles Williams

• The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald

• The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton

• The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry

• The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse by Beatrix Potter

• The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan

Russian Literature

• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

• White Nights by Leo Tolstoy

• Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevky

• Memoirs from the House of the Dead by Fyodor Dostoevky

• Demons by Fyodor Dostoevky

• The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevky

• The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevky

• Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevky

• The Double by Fyodor Dostoevky

• Childhood, Boyhood, Youth by Leo Tolstoy

• The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy

• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

• The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

• A Nervous Breakdown by Anton Chekhov

Contemporary Fiction

• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

• The Giver by Lois Lowry

• The Secret History by Donna Tartt

• Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

• Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf

• The Nutcracker and the Mouse King by E.T.A. Hoffmann

• Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman

Continental European Literature

• Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

• The Plague by Albert Camus

• The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Anderson

• The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

American and Canadian Literature

• Rainbow Valley by L.M. Montgomery

• Rilla of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery

• A Christmas Dream and Other Stories by Louisa May Alcott

• Christmas in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder

• In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje

• The View from Castle Rock by Alice Munro

• The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder

• The Call of the Wild by Jack London

• The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenmore Cooper

• A Portrait of the Malefactress as a Young Woman by Karilyn Van Brugge

Classic Plays

• Oedipus Rex by Sophocles

• The Bacchae by Euripides

• Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare

• A Winter's Tale by Shakespeare

• Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus

• Medea by Euripides

• Thyestes by Seneca

• King Lear by Shakespeare

• Twelfth Night by Shakespeare

• Faust (Parts I & II) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Non-fiction

• The Gospel of Matthew

• The Gospel of Mark

• The Gospel of Luke

• The Gospel of John

• Phaedo by Plato

• The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

• Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life by Zena Hitz

• The Spirit of Christmas by G.K. Chesterton

• The Book of Job

• The Vinland Saga

• Tremendous Trifles by G.K. Chesterton

• Memoirs by Elie Wiesel

• The Fall of the Roman Republic by Plutarch

• The Last Days of Socrates by Plato

• Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell

• Surprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis

• Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis

Classic Poetry

• Beowulf

• The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot

• The Aeneid by Virgil

• The Divine Comedy by Dante

• The Journey of the Magi by T.S. Eliot

• Works and Days by Hesiod

• ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas by Clement Clarke Moore

• Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost

• There’s a Certain Slant of Light by Emily Dickinson

• Sonnet 73 – That time of year thou mayst in me behold by Shakespeare

• Sonnet 97 – How like a winter hath my absence been by Shakespeare

• Sonnet 104 – To me, fair friend, you never can be old by Shakespeare

• The Ballad of the White Horse by G.K. Chesterton

• A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas