What is the greatest work written in English?

Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land.

One can learn a lot from it about understanding and tolerance.

Everything I’ve ever read in entirety has been in English.

That makes this a terribly hard question.

I’ll go with a children’s novel:

Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth.

Read correctly, it contains many valuable life lessons.

The english translation of the original Klingon version of Hamlet.

I have encountered three books in my life which had a profound effect on my life, and on the lives of every person of whom I am aware who also read them.

1. Walden, by Henry David Thoreau
2. Illusions, by Richard Bach
3. Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams

Moby Dick.

Macbeth by William Shakespeare

The Magna Carta

Pick up any book by P.G. Wodehouse.

You’ll smile. You may laugh out loud.

You will find at least one perfectly crafted sentence in every book.

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Raymond Chandler is another writer who could craft perfect sentences.

Fathers’ day and Mothers’ day cards…I think about how much it meant to me to write those cards to my dad/mom every year….now that they are both gone…I can better appreciate the

Vegetarian Times Magazine

It changed my life.

@NerdyKeith has a good choice. I am going to throw the entire works by Shakespeare. It is kind of amazing when you realize that in his (or not his) works, some of the characters have the same traits as people you know. Iago- the villan! Has some personality characteristics that fit someone who wants to get ahead, ruin others, will do anything to foil those who love and trust them. Sorry, I must be on an Othello kick- the hero who succumbs to the evil whispered in his ear, even though he knows better. Desdemona- her pure love dies, as does she, from her love’s cruelty. King Lear and his children. Romeo and Julliet’s young, first love, which who knows if it had potential in real life, had they lived. So young- but so experienced in familial treachery. Every ego, personality, weakness, strength, humanity. It’s all there. Just tough to decipher sometimes without reading aloud or aid by the Cliff Family to facilitate.
”...To thine own self be true…” I so love to have people take on these works. They are so rich with life.

I’ve been ticking my way through lists such as “1000 Books to Read Before You Die”. Thus far my favourites have been Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. And I love, love LOVE The Tunning of Elynorr Rummyng by John Skelton (1463 – 1529)