I have a confession to make: I read seven of those twenty-one books for school assignments. One was in sixth grade, a couple were summer reading, and the rest, I think, were for my 11th-grade Humanities class.. That's not to say I didn't enjoy most of them. Also, I only read part of The French Lieutenant's Woman.

I haven't read Ulysses and can't say whether it deserves a place on the list or not. But a truly comprehensive list of English-language books would probably include the following:

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen

Great Expectations, and possibly some other things, by Charles Dickens

The Moonstone and maybe The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. At least The Moonstone should be in there. Although it was serialized first and later collected into a novel.

Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle

I am probably missing a few, but I think those would be on a list without the cutoff date.