Could you recommend some classic literature to help me get back into reading classics?

Great thread, following up some of these.

Anne bronte's books are a good read. Love Tolstoy, the death of Ivan illich is excellent. Count of monte Cristo- brilliant. Cold comfort farm- brilliant. The age of innocence - worth a read. Various toni Morriston books, hard but beautiful.

I love reading

“Gone with the Wind” by Margaret Mitchell

A huge book like a doorstep ( about 900 pages) but I was grateful for this as it was a real page-turner and kept me enthralled for ages.

I think I must be the only person in the world who thought it was desperately boring. I tried three times and eventually made myself plough through it. And I did a degree in English Lit specialising in medieval literature so you'd think I'd be used to boring!

I really enjoyed The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

Have you read any of the older writers Dr Johnson era?
Do you read Diaries and commentary? I intend to find some contemporary accounts of French Revolution. Can you find that kind of thing in French.

I have read Pepys but not John Evelyn.

If you want to read in French Therese Desqueyroux by Mauriac is great. Haven't seen the film and don't particularly want to but I loved the book. Written in 1927 so maybe not old enough for you but worth a go.

Yes. Good recommendations. People tend to overlook 18th-century novels. I have heard it said that the novel peaked in the 19th-century, with Jane Austen, Tolstoy, Flaubert, Hugo, Dostoyevsky, Balzac, Dickens, George Eliot, Hardy, the Brontes, etc. That may be true (though the 20th-century did produce Joseph Conrad, Proust, Joyce, D H Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, etc), but it’s a shame people ignore novelists like Daniel Defoe, Fielding, Swift and Samuel Johnson. Tom Jones and Moll Flanders are still great stories, even today. In fact, it’s amazing how these novels don’t age. Pride and Prejudice is ever bit as fresh and engrossing in 2023 as it must have been in 1823, same with David Copperfield and Silas Marner.

@JaneyGee A previous poster pointed out that late Henry James is where it can get a bit trying apparently. Based on what you’ve said you enjoy reading I would give him a try though.

Surely not as long as Proust? I’m a bit wary of Henry James tbh. I’m not often defeated, but I know when I am, and Proust beat me to my knees, as did Dante. I generally use Harold Bloom as a guide through literature, and one of his heroes is Walter Pater, who I also find unreadable.

Still, I’m curious to see how I get on with Henry James. I love late 19th/early 20th-century upper class literature. Wilde’s Dorian Gray is a favourite, along with Wodehouse, Aldous Huxley and Evelyn Waugh. I always imaged James’ stuff to be a blend of Wilde, Huxley and Virginia Woolf. Is it? (God that makes me sound like an odious little snob! I also hero-worship Dickens and George Orwell btw.)

Yyy to Evelina. I always bundle it together with Moll Flanders. Similar era and quite bawdy.

I don’t know if you’ve read Sarah Waters but her books always remind me of that era and style.

Another vote for Evelina by Fanny Burney , a female perspective on life back then. Also Trollope and George Elliot. I loved the minutiae of life in Middlemarch.

Anything by Jane Austen!

On my don’t bother list I would put Anna Karenina - that’s many hours of my life I won’t get back! Also avoid The Great Gatsby, Fahrenheit 451, Lord of the Rings ( soooooo slow)

Pitching in with another hard recommendation for Trollope. He’s fantastic - dry and funny and knowing, and very modern in unexpected ways. I love Dickens, but Trollope can be so refreshingly un-Dickens-like. And there’s lots of him to discover.

More French novels:
Lost Illusions by Balzac
Thérèse Raquin by Zola

@SweetSakura
Machiavelli
Plato
Socrates
Karl Marx
Etc

Au Bonheur des Dames by Zola

I didn’t read it in French, but loved it. It has the first department store as it’s backdrop ( I think the first anyway), and is fascinating just for that; but it is also a gripping romantic novel.

Another Henry James fan! As well as Portrait of a Lady I love Washington Square, The Turn of the Screw and The Europeans. Like PP have said I'd stay away from 'later' James (a la The Golden Bowl!).

I also love Oscar Wilde's poetry in prose and short stories, as well as reading the plays.

Dickens wise I think Dombey and Son, The Mystery of Edwin Drood and Our Mutual Friend are great, alongside the more famous ones.

How about some Sherlock Holmes?

Me too! Just a word of warning - I found Victor Hugo really hard in French! Your French might be a lot better than mine, though. Madame Bovary was a delight though.

I do love Portrait of a Lady but I would point out that Henry James must write the longest sentences known to man. The Golden Bowl was a bit of a trial to read.
Can I add Of Human Bondage to the list? W Somerset Maugham.
I am very fond of Trollope. The Warden was so sad I couldn’t get through it the first time - the injustice!

I posted as you did. Henry James Portrait of a Lady is magnificent.

Henry James. The Portrait of a Lady
Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd
Charles Dickens, Bleak House
Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway

Yes definitely read Potrait of a Lady. I love that book.

So interesting to read the recommendations. I've never read Wilkie Collins. Also interested to see such enthusiasm for Trollope. I might give him a try. Good to see Vanity Fair is so well liked as well.

Do you listen to audiobooks OP? They are a great way of getting through more of the classics. Certain authors were just made to be read out loud. Evelyn Waugh is great on audiobook, so are P. G. Wodehouse, Dickens, H. G. Wells, Graham Greene, etc.

I'm working my way through Powell's Dance to the Music of Time atm. Clive James thought they were some of the best novels of the 20th-century. I'd also recommend Ford Madox Ford. It's odd how certain good writers become almost forgotten – Ford Madox Ford, Anita Brookner, Max Beerbohm, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Gissing, etc.