“I’ve got a Cambridge English degree,” one of my friends ruminates, “and I’ve only read four Shakespeare plays”. “Same,” I chime in, “and I’ve read all of them”. Our eyes lock and I wonder if one of us has made a frankly embarrassing mistake.

Then again, it’s a familiar scene. A voice from the back of the lecture will carry, proclaiming to have read Kafka’s The Trial, and not only that, actually enjoyed it. Those who marched through Middlemarch wear it like a badge of honour (as they should). Three years of Cambridge, and I have never once met anyone who made it through Ulysses, and fewer still who see the point of trying. There’s no rhyme or reason, or iambic pentameter, to what an Engling reads. Which rather begs the question: is there really such a thing as a ‘must-read’? If someone can muddle through with minimal Marlowe and an absence of Austen, what classics are worth at least a lengthy skim? Fear not: this Engling is here to tell you what’s rightfully canonical and what simply deserves to be fired out a cannon.

“There’s no rhyme or reason, or iambic pentameter, to what an Engling reads”

Geoffrey Chaucer

Works: The Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Criseyde, A Treatise on the Astrolabe

First up: it’s the text that drove my dad up the wall during his A Levels in the 70s, and nearly drove me off the Mathematical Bridge in my first term of Cambridge. Chaucer does have, what can only be described as, ‘absolute bangers’, like the gleeful haphazardry of the ‘Prologue’ to his Canterbury Tales or the whip-smart feminist monologue of ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’. But sometimes, boy, it’s a drag. Tragedy plus time might equal comedy, but comedy plus time equals… less funny comedy?

Verdict: Soules goon a-blakeberyed

The Gawain Poet

Works: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Patience

It’s a trickier dialect than Chaucer, but my advice? Say a line out loud. It’s like the Poet says: “In stori stif & stronge / With lel letteres loken” (“embedded in record, firm and solid, enclosed in trustworthy words”, for all of those lucky enough not to have sat Part IB Paper 4). It’s an odd, prickly tale, but worth it for the way it feels on your tongue and how it will turn itself over and over in your head for hours. Not to mention the story of Gawain – foolhardy Gawain’s brush with death will have you wincing (and reaching for the A24 adaptation starring Dev Patel). If the Middle English is too troublesome, Simon Armitage’s recent translation is a fantastic (and less laborious) read.

Verdict: Gawain’s not getting the chop

Jane Austen

Works: Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Persuasion

When people say they don’t like Austen, I wonder if they’ve found the right one yet. If you want melodrama, look no further than Love and Friendship. If your tastes run to the Gothic, head for Northanger Abbey. If you’re a human being with a pulse, let Persuasion break you in two. Centuries later, Austen is still laugh-out-loud funny, chock-full of mysteries (my MPhil is arguing she’s an early detective novelist), and so sharp that you need to watch you don’t cut yourself turning the page.

Verdict: Better than marrying a man with ten thousand a year

“So sharp that you need to watch you don’t cut yourself turning the page”

George Eliot

Works: Middlemarch, Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss

“In the days when the spinning-wheels hummed busily in the farmhouses” – brrr. One clause into Silas Marner and I’ve already got goosebumps. Eliot can put you in your place in a few words: specifically, she can put you in an idyllic English village. That doesn’t give her enough credit; she’ll also deconstruct, even demolish, the scene around you until idyllic becomes nightmarish and right becomes wrong, and even Dorothea seems reasonable. And if you find her novels aren’t for you, they also function as hefty weapons.

Verdict: This many literary scholars can’t be Daniel De-wrong-da

Bram Stoker

Works: Dracula

I’ve nearly ended friendships over Dracula. Some people (who have NO TASTE OR SENSE OF FUN) say it’s dull, ridiculous, and that vampires are only compelling when they’re played by Robert Pattinson. I pity such people. Imagine not going crazy over a novel in which a cowboy, a psychiatrist, and a severely traumatised man who loves his wife chase a bunch of coffins all over Europe. It’s a love letter to shorthand and Kodak. It’s queer. It’s postcolonial. It’s also really not. It revolutionised vampire fiction (again). It’s the reason we have Lestat, Buffy, and yes, fine, Edward Cullen. It’s bloody good fun.

Verdict: Sink your teeth into it

Virginia Woolf (and the modernists)

Works: Orlando, To the Lighthouse, Mrs Dalloway

A friend once told me I text like Virginia Woolf writes. I don’t think she meant it as a compliment. I believe the implication was that I throw clauses around with merciless abandon; I dance on the grave of brevity; I never, to put it simply, shut up. Now, I like to think one of the greatest canonical writers has more literary ability than me careering into someone’s DMs. However, I see the resemblance. Woolf is a kaleidoscope of ideas, but I’ve known many who’ve fallen by the wayside. I had to keep pinching myself during The Waves because Woolf left me at sea. In short, she’s worth it… but it’s a long fight.

Verdict: Bring a friend. And some full stops.

Zadie Smith

Works: White Teeth, On Beauty

Smith isn’t fond of her debut novel, White Teeth. I am. It’s ambitious, sprawling, funny in the way of an old relative telling a joke you’re not sure you’re meant to laugh at, and it made me cry by the second page. If you can forgive Smith for going to King’s, give this author for our times a go. Just don’t read White Teeth in a day like I did and end up with a very awkward optician’s appointment.

Verdict: Puts the classic in modern classic