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Original poster

Recommendations for 15 year old girl who has enjoyed Jane Austen and Jane Eyre

111 replies

OrangeBlossomsinthesun · 22/03/2026 17:23

Can you suggest some books for my 15 yo DD? She has read Little Women, Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights and is now about to start Jane Eyre.

Sense and Sensibility? Other authors?
Is Anne of Green Gables too young for her?

She would be reading them in translation in Spanish so nothing too obscure.

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upinaballoon · 23/03/2026 19:23

PurpleThistle7 · 23/03/2026 07:33

Has she read all of the little women series? My daughter reads through the whole series on repeat.

Yes, 'Little Women' is the first, then comes 'Good Wives', then 'Little Men' and then 'Jo's Boys', following them all through. I loved those when I was young. Still do but it's a while since I looked at one.

MsRosewater · 23/03/2026 19:03

most of my would-be-suggestions have already been mentioned.

But re Anne of GG, LM Montgomery’s Emily of New Moon is delightful!!! I read them at 14/15 and again recently.

Original poster
OrangeBlossomsinthesun · 23/03/2026 18:41

freebiefiend · 23/03/2026 16:54

they will like little women by louisa may alcott! i loved it growing up too

Yes, she's read Little Women.

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Londonmummy66 · 23/03/2026 18:21

Mrs Gaskell and Georgette Heyer and the rest of Jane Austen and Fanny Burney's Evelina would all be good follow ons to Austen. Maybe Vanity Fair by Thackeray?

If she likes the historical settings then she could consider some of Jean Plaidy's novels (she researched them pretty well - I busked a university finals question on the back of them...). Quite a lot are available in Spanish. I'd suggest the Medici trilogy as a good one to start with or The Young Victoria

tsmainsqueeze · 23/03/2026 18:19

clary · 22/03/2026 17:36

Ooh great shout, I read this relatively recently and really liked it.

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I really love this book !
Anne of green gables is perfect for any age.
If she likes J.Austen she may like Georgette Heyer , i actually prefer her to J.A.

Dappy777 · 23/03/2026 18:17

Sounds like you have a very intelligent daughter OP.

No doubt these have already been mentioned, but I'd recommend:

Oscar Wilde: Dorian Gray
Jane Austen: Emma
Douglas Adams: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
George Eliot: Silas Marner
Hardy: Tess
Evelyn Waugh: Brideshead Revisited
Woolf: Mrs Dalloway
Aldous Huxley: Chrome Yellow
D. H. Lawrence: Sons and Lovers
Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby
P. G. Wodehouse: Right Ho Jeeves

LambriniBobInIsleworthISeesYa · 23/03/2026 18:16

I enjoyed The Time Traveller’s Wife at that age when I was a bit Brontë fan. Obviously Wuthering Heights and any other Brontë stuff too. Oh and I loved Crime and Punishment, which isn’t really the same wheelhouse but is a classic.

Dappy777 · 23/03/2026 18:12

bellabelly · 23/03/2026 00:59

Oh gosh, yes! All the PG Wodehouse novels, particularly the Jeeves and Wooster ones - so funny and very well-written.

Definitely👏. I worship at Wodehouse's feet. His language is so extraordinary I think of him more as a prose poet. He is the greatest writer of poetic prose in the English language – maybe in any language.

tnorfotkcab · 23/03/2026 18:09

Lark Rise to Candleford

Wuthering Heights.

Dappy777 · 23/03/2026 18:08

clary · 22/03/2026 17:35

Yeaaaahh I am so not a fan of Dickens but for sure she should give them a go.

I have been told before I have read the wrong ones (!) and should read Bleak House and Martin Chuzzlewit. They are both very long tho. Shorter ones may appeal more in which case perhaps Oliver Twist and David Copperfield.

The problem with Dickens is that people read him as a conventional/realist novelist. He isn't. Martin Amis once said that he wrote dark fairy tales, and that's probably the best way to approach him – as someone who blends fairy tale and realism. No other writer does what he does.

freebiefiend · 23/03/2026 16:54

they will like little women by louisa may alcott! i loved it growing up too

WeAreNumpties · 23/03/2026 11:52

Some great suggestions on this thread. I’ve just remembered Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde. We read this at school when I was 14 and we were all gripped.

BeaAndBen · 23/03/2026 10:28

Good call @CatherineCawoodsbestie - I remember reading lots of Wyndham, Atwood and Agatha Christie in my middle teens. Wodehouse as well.

And Georgette Heyer's Regencies are perfect - Cotillion, Venetia, Frederica or The Grand Sophy would be my suggestions for entry into that world.

CatherineCawoodsbestie · 23/03/2026 09:10

Lots of great suggestions. Slightly different, but after I had read a lot of Brontë and Austen the same age, I started reading more modern classics - Orwell, Wyndham, Margaret Atwood Cat’s Eye and the Handmaids Tale. Fay Weldon - Loves and Lives of the She Devil, Margaret Drabble, Lynne Reid Banks - the L
Shaped Room, Sylvia Plath - the Bell Jar. Not very cheering, but continued to develop my feminist principles! For light reading in between these, I enjoyed the children’s classics - The Railway Children, the What Katy did books, Pollyanna, A Little Princess. For
some reason, I didn’t get into Anne of Green Gables or Little Women. Oh and the children’s modern classics - Joan Aitken, Helen Cresswell, Alan Garner, Nina Bawden, Charlotte Sometimes etc - these were all books i happily reread and still do now.

Lovely that she is enjoying literature so much!

PurpleThistle7 · 23/03/2026 09:04

OrangeBlossomsinthesun · 23/03/2026 08:46

Although maybe I was a bit younger, hence asking what people thought. I did love them though.

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My daughter is 13 and she didn't like the later ones as Anne is older - so depends on the teenager really. I still like them as an adult so worth trying for sure. Can get the whole series on kindle.

Divebar2021 · 23/03/2026 08:54

Many of my suggestions have already been said so the only one I’m going to add is Gone with the Wind. ( it’s a big old chunky thing - my mother recommended it and I was dubious but I loved it ).

MaxJLHardy · 23/03/2026 08:49

Frankenstein

Original poster
OrangeBlossomsinthesun · 23/03/2026 08:48

I have sent her all the suggestions I can find in translation and she's going to make a list. The only one I couldn't find so far as available in Spanish in Spain was A Town Called Alice.

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Original poster
OrangeBlossomsinthesun · 23/03/2026 08:46

OrangeBlossomsinthesun · 23/03/2026 08:46

Yes, read them all at her age and watched the tv series about 20,000 times hahahaha.

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Although maybe I was a bit younger, hence asking what people thought. I did love them though.

OP posts:
Original poster
OrangeBlossomsinthesun · 23/03/2026 08:46

Starbri8 · 22/03/2026 23:47

There are many books in the Anne of Green gables collection , all the way up to Anne having children of her own . I’m sure she’d love them !

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Yes, read them all at her age and watched the tv series about 20,000 times hahahaha.

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Girliefriendlikespuppies · 23/03/2026 07:36

The woman in white is great, I loved that book.

I also remember loving The Great Gatsby as a teenager.

Im reading the Anne of Green Gables series now and im late 40s so she’s definitely not too old 😉😂

PurpleThistle7 · 23/03/2026 07:33

Has she read all of the little women series? My daughter reads through the whole series on repeat.

AnotherEmma · 23/03/2026 07:32

BauhausOfEliott · 23/03/2026 00:17

I enjoyed John Steinbeck - has she read 'For Whom the Bell Tolls'?

For Whom The Bell Tolls is by Hemingway, not Steinbeck.

There’s already lots of good suggestions on this thread - I’m not a big fan of Jane Austen myself, but I would definitely suggest Northanger Abbey, particularly if she’s also reading some more gothic classics like Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, The Woman in White etc because Northanger Abbey has lots of amusing references in it to that kind of fiction.

In addition to all the good suggestions of the other Brontes, Dickens, Mrs Gaskell etc, I would add Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier. It gets overlooked a bit these days in favour or Rebecca (and Rebecca is indeed brilliant) but Jamaica Inn is really good and has a young female protagonist living in the isolated Jamaica Inn on Bodmin Moor with her shady aunt and uncle, realising that some highly illegal things are going on and getting mixed up in murder, smuggling and all sorts. Also it has a very attractive, roguish love interest.

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For Whom The Bell Tolls is by Hemingway, not Steinbeck.

Argh of course Blush Sorry!

ChestnutSquash · 23/03/2026 03:43

The Poldark novels by Winston Graham.

mellongoose · 23/03/2026 03:28

I started on the Agatha Christies at this stage. Short and gripping to break up some of the larger and heavier classics up thread.