[fantasyfan]

I'll nominate Persuasion by Jane Austen.

This was the final complete novel written by Austen and has an autumnal quality. The characters are more sensitively developed than those in her earlier novels and she presents a realistic construct of one of her favourite themes: the strange dichotomy and parallelism that exists between Social Manners and Moral Behaviour. But she doesn't get bogged down in a theme--she creates a brilliant and vivid portrait of her world and the kinds of individuals--good, bad, and indifferent--who populate it.

BTW I nominated this for the Literary Book club June of last year, though it didn't win. So I'm not sure if it's eligible to be nominated again.

It is easily available as a free download from Project Gutenberg in many formats.