Kate Middleton's Favorite Books Are Royally Good Reads

For readers drawn to historical fiction, certain strains of romance, and much of fantasy, there's no shortage of novels that romanticize life behind palace walls. The notion of aristocracy — though long past its political prime — remains a magnetic fixture in fiction. These stories of princesses and palaces allow us to escape into an opulence totally untethered from the everyday. But what if that was your reality? What tales do you turn to when you're the one living in the palace?

For Kate Middleton, the answer lies in some of the most beloved novels ever written. In March 2020, the world got an unexpected peek at the Princess of Wales' literary taste, thanks to a photo shared on the royal Instagram account. Amidst her elegant desk sat a neatly arranged curated row of Penguin clothbound classics: a series of hardback editions designed by Carolie Bickford-Smith, known for their richly patterned covered and tactile appeal.

It was a strikingly British lineup, heavy on 19th-century emotional complexity and moral reckoning. Among them was "Mansfield Park," perhaps Jane Austen's most subdued and social fraught novel, and "Wuthering Heights," with its wilderness barely contained by social convention. "Tess of the D'urbervilles" also made an appearance, Thomas Hardy's slow march towards ruin and injustice, along with George Eliot's "Middlemarch" a sweeping, meticulous study of ideals bumping up against reality. These books would make compelling cases as classic novels to pick for your next book club.

Kate Middleton may wear a tiara with practiced ease — and her left hand still boasts a starring role on the list of the royals' gorgeous engagement rings list — but her bookshelf is where you'll find the real crown jewels. Among her carefully styled Penguin clothbound editions photographed in her Kensington Palace study is the thousand-page labyrinth that is "Bleak House," adding a Dickensian layer of legal absurdity. 

Of course, no true British reading list would be complete without a nod to the Bard. Middleton's pick, "The Sonnets and A Lover's Complaint" delivers the goods (and also classes as a convenient gateway to get into your Tortured Poets era, given Taylor Swift's well-documented allusions to Shakespearean drama). Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray appears too, its satin decadence barely masking moral rot, whilst Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Hound of the Baskervilles" brings us the sumptuous logic and flair of Sherlock Holmes. Homer's "Odyssey" is the lone Greek outlier in this primarily British canon, though it stays thematically right at home with its long journey and hunger for home.

But Middleton also showed a softer side of her reading life when she shared the stories she now reads to George, Charlotte, and Louis. For Camilla's Reading Room book club, she shared a trio of children's classics now in heavy rotation "Stig of the Dump," "Charlotte's Web," and "The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark." Reflecting on the last title, she told her step-mother-in-law, "I loved this book as a little girl and listening to my own children reading it has brought back so many wonderful memories."