You don't need me to tell you to read classics from Henry James, Jane Austen or John Cheever’s diaries. Instead, here are some books that are not exactly obscure—they definitely have their partisans—but that you might not have heard about.
For the English Romantic. A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY. J.R. Carr. This short, lovely novel about a WWI veteran who moves to a small English where he restores a fresco in the local church. Wise, melancholy and wistful.