Education secretary Nicky Morgan wants schools to be able to access novels by the likes of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and Emily Brontë.
Ms Morgan revealed that “a number of publishers” were already exploring how this might be achieved.
It is part of a wider campaign by the Department for Education (DfE) which has also created resources to help parents and early years providers get more younger children reading.
The campaign, which is being spearheaded by children’s author and comedian David Walliams, has already unveiled plans to enrol all eight-year-olds at their local library and to create 200 primary school-based book clubs.
However, this is the first aspect of the campaign that stretches to secondary schools.
Ms Morgan said: “We want all children to get to know the classics of English literature, especially if these books are not on their bookshelves at home. Our ambition is that every secondary school should have sets of a wide range of classics so that whole classes can enjoy them together – books I loved as a teenager by authors like Jane Austen, Charles Dickens or Emily Brontë.
“I am delighted that a number of publishers are currently exploring how to make collections of our greatest novels available to schools at minimal cost – and I encourage more to get involved.”
The annual What Kids Are Reading report earlier this year found that the number of words children read every year begins to fall when they reach year 7 and continues to decline throughout secondary schools.
The report revealed that the average number of words read peaks in year 6 at 263,212 per pupil. This then drops in year 7 to 246,865 and by year 10 drops again to 143,178 – comparable to a year 4 pupil.
Other research has shown that one in seven children aged 8 to 16 rarely or never read outside of school – something the DfE wants to tackle with its campaign.