The Four Great Classical Novels are Water Margin (水浒传),Romance of the Three Kingdoms (三国演义),Journey to the West (西游记) and Dream of the Red Chamber (红楼梦).

The Four Great Classical Novels, or the Four Major Classical Novels (Chinese: 四大名著) of Chinese literature, are the four novels commonly regarded by scholars to be the greatest and most influential of pre-modern Chinese fiction. Dating from the Ming and Qing dynasties, they are well known to most Chinese readers. They are not to be confused with the Four Books of Confucianism.

They are among the world's longest and oldest novels and are considered to be the pinnacle of China's achievement in classical novels, influencing the creation of many stories, plays, movies, games, and other forms of entertainment throughout East Asia, including China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.

Chinese fiction, rooted in narrative classics such as Shishuo Xinyu, Sou Shen Ji, Wenyuan Yinghua, Da Tang Xiyu Ji, Youyang Zazu, Taiping Guangji, and official histories, developed into the novel as early as the Song Dynasty. The novel is an extended prose narrative which realistically creates a believable world of its own evolved in China and in Europe from the14th-18thcenturies, though a little earlier in China. Chinese audiences were more interested in history and were more historical minded. They appreciated relative optimism, moral humanism, and relative emphasis on the welfare of the society.

With the rise of monetary economy and urbanization beginning in the Song era, there was a growing professionalization of entertainment fostered by the spread of printing, the rise of literacy and education. In both China and Western Europe, the novel gradually became more autobiographical and serious in exploration of social, moral, and philosophical problems. Chinese fiction of the late Ming dynasty and early Qing dynasty was varied, self-conscious, and experimental. In China, however, there was no counterpart to the19thcentury European explosion of novels. The novels of the Ming and early Qing dynasties represented a pinnacle of classical Chinese fiction.