Some of the English authors I have read and enjoyed. Many are in the public domain, so they’re free – the best things in life, and so forth. It’s not ‘literature’, mostly ‘popular’ fiction, but: rasavant (with ‘rasa’), so it’s time well spent.

P G Wodehouse (the greatest)

Charles Dickens

Thomas Hardy

Fanny Burney (Evelina is her best novel)

Rafael Sabatini

Stanley J Weyman (a lot like Raphael Sabatini –historical adventure page turners with the archetypical male hero)

P C Wren

J Meade Falkner (Moonfleet)

Erskine Childers

John Buchan

Frederick Marryat

A E W Mason (The Four Feathers, The Broken Road, Clementina and the Inspector Hanaud books)

Terry Pratchett

Jerome K Jerome

Stephen Leacock

G K Chesterton

Saki (H H Munro)

Rudyard Kipling

The Bronte sisters (Charlotte, Emily and Anne)

R L Stevenson

Douglas Adams (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Dirk Gentley)

Daphne Du Maurier (especially Rebecca and The Scapegoat)

C S Forester (Hornblower series)

Patrick O’Brian (Aubrey-Maturin series)

Bernard Cornwell (Sharpe series)

H R F Keating (Inspector Ghote)

Jane Austen

Lewis Carroll

James Herriott

Bill Bryson

Joseph Conrad

Daniel Defoe

Johann David Wyss (Swiss Family Robinson)

Conan Doyle

Henry Fielding

E Nesbit

Enid Blyton (even if you’re a senior citizen; maybe especially then)

Nevil Shute

Walter Scott

R K Narayan

Emile Zola

Jules Verne

O Henry 

Victor Hugo

Graham Greene

Neil Gaiman (maybe)

Susanna Clarke

John Galsworthy

Anthony Trollope

William Faulkner

Louis L’amour

J T Edson

Max Brand

Oliver Strange and Frederick H Christian (The Sudden series – known as Picadilly westerns, which were Wild West books written by English authors, the print equivalent of Spaghetti westerns)

Sheridan Le Fanu

Wilkie Collins

Edgar Allan Poe

Oscar Wilde

Agatha Christie

Willa Cather (My Antonia, in particular)

C S Lewis

Georgette Heyer

Charles Reade

Somerset Maugham

J G Farrell (The Siege Of Krishnapur)

J G Ballard

Jonathan Swift (A Modest Proposal, Gulliver’s Travels, A Tale of A Tub)

Roald Dahl

Frances Hodgson Burnett (The Secret Garden)

Stephen Fry (the Hippopotamus, The Ode Less Travelled (non-fiction, a beautiful introduction and workbook to prosody), The Liar)

Tom Sharpe (Porterhouse Blues, The Throwback, Wilt series etc.)

Tom Holt (Doughnut, Snow White and the Seven Samurai etc.)

A A Gill (Sap Rising)

John Steinbeck (Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden)

Tom Wolfe (Bonfire of The Vanities)

Margaret Mitchell (Gone With The Wind)

John Irving (The World According to Garp, The Ciderhouse Rules)