Joanna Trollope's novels include A Village Affair, Next of Kin and Other People's Children. Marrying the Mistress is published by Bloomsbury.

"The nineteenth century was, in my view, the golden age of fiction and the one I most admire."

1. Middlemarch by George Eliot

Perhaps the greatest novel of them all - an enormous canvas and a vast and poignant range of character. A marvellous portrait of nineteenth-century provincial life.

2. The Last Chronicle of Barset by Anthony Trollope

This novel contains that near impossibility - the sympathetic portrait of an incredibly unsympathetic hero. A masterpiece.

3. Persuasion by Jane Austen

A subtle and elegiac novel - more heartfelt than some of her earlier romances and with a truly appealing heroine.

4. Vanity Fair by WM Thackeray

The best thing he ever wrote - sharp, brilliant, touching, clever and cruel, with an unforgettable heroine.

5. The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy

A tale of true tragedy - a man of potential brought down by his own fatal flaw - but a wonderfully vivid and strong picture of early nineteenth-century rural life.

6. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

A great, bold, theatrical mystery story which never falters, written with huge confidence and style.

7. Bleak House by Charles Dickens

This has everything - joy, grief, success, failure, wealth, poverty, comedy, tragedy - and above all, atmosphere by the bucketload.

8. North and South by Mrs Gaskell

A really remarkable picture of the reality, as well as the prosperity, of northern industrial life, and an interesting examination of changing social conscience.

9. Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

A very different voice, this, subtle and sophisticated and concerned with psychological nuance and social acceptability.

10. Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott

Scott is very out of fashion just now, but this is a true adventure story in the traditional mould of the "good-hearted" hero.