* Stendhal (1970)
* George Eliot (1975)
* André Gide (1978)
* Marcel Proust (1979)
* The Hidden Landscape (1980)
* Balzac's Muse (1982)
* French Writers and their Society (1982)
* The Last Night (1985)
* The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English (1983; editor with George Watson)
* Natural Enemies: Friendships and Feuds in Literary London, 1880–1939 (1987)
* Passion and Precision: Nine French Lives (1990)
* The History of the Library in Western Civilization (1991)
* The Art World (1993)
* New Links with the Past (1995)
* Trespasses (1997)
* Madame de Staël (1998)
* Literature in the World (2000)
* Views from the North (2001)
* The Secret History of Bloomsbury (2005)
* Letters of Ann Painter (2006; editor Lisa Jardine)
* Writing at the End: Selections from the Work of Ann Painter (2011; edited by Robert McCrum with an Introduction by Clive James)
* The Genius (2012; completed and introduced by Robert McCrum)