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Original poster

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

85 replies

SweetSakura · 02/04/2023 21:30

I seem to have swung from reading almost nothing but classics as a teen (because my parents house was stuffed full of them) to now reading nothing but contemporary literature.

I'd like to mix it up a bit but can't decide where to start!

I've read pretty much all Jane Austen/Brontes/Dickens/George Eliot/Thomas Hardy I think, although I guess it was a long time ago and I could re read them!

OP posts:
LillianGish · 03/04/2023 15:28

Piggywaspushed · 03/04/2023 07:09

I read a lot of US literature back in the day - my heritage is American and I did lots at uni. I loved Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser- and Willa Cather, especially A Lost Lady, which has Go Between vibes.

I was coming on to recommend Willa Cather's My Antonia.

JaneyGee · 03/04/2023 15:17

junebirthdaygirl · 03/04/2023 06:42

My two choices were going to be
Anna Karen Karenia
The Sound and the Fury
But also
Portrait of a Lady
Any Steinbeck novel

I have got Portrait of a Lady sitting on my desk as I type. It's one of three books I'm considering reading next. (The other two are Forster's Howard's End and Lawrence's Women in Love.) I've never read a word of Henry James. Is he worth trying?

DoraChance · 03/04/2023 15:14

If you like Wilkie Collins then definitely try Lady Audley's Secret, which is fab. Also East Lynne is another fun Victorian sensation novel.

ShillingSixpence · 03/04/2023 12:59

The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Armin

Stella Gibbons' The Swiss Summer

DeanVolecapeAKAelderberry · 03/04/2023 12:50

Evalina by Fanny Burney, written about a generation before any of Jane Austen's books, very entertaining.

paintingmakesamess · 03/04/2023 12:39

Anthony Trollope. Humorous, moving, great stories, all human life is there. Bonus points for the Timothy West audiobook versions, it's like a play in your head. Brilliant

Tradeup · 03/04/2023 10:52

Hamilton also wrote the play Gas Light in 1938 that became the famous film.

Tradeup · 03/04/2023 10:42

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

20,000 Streets Under the Sky by Patrick Hamilton, powerful trilogy set in working class London in the inter-war period.

Findyourneutralspace · 03/04/2023 10:32

Oh I loved Wilkie Collins! More along those lines would be great

How about The Turn of the Screw?

SqueakyDinosaur · 03/04/2023 10:31

More of a commentary on a classic, but I really loved Longbourn, which is a servant's-eye view of Pride & Prejudice.

Listening to Natalie Haynes has sent me off down some classical rabbit holes, like Ted Hughes version of Ovid's Metamorphoses, Seamus Heaney's of the Iliad, etc.

Tradeup · 03/04/2023 10:23

Just noticed there is a typo and it should be Zora Neale Hurston.

Tradeup · 03/04/2023 10:18

@JaninaDuszejko I also loved Kristin Lavrandatter, that new translation sounds very tempting…

Piggywaspushed · 03/04/2023 07:09

I read a lot of US literature back in the day - my heritage is American and I did lots at uni. I loved Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser- and Willa Cather, especially A Lost Lady, which has Go Between vibes.

Piggywaspushed · 03/04/2023 07:06

I do the Victorian readalongs on MN- Woman In White has probably been the favourite. Other than that they have mostly been Dickens which you say you have read but, for the record, I think we all liked Bleak House and David Copperfield the most.

I'd second some Gaskells. I'd never read any until recently and have enjoyed them, especially North and South. Much better than I thought they would be.

junebirthdaygirl · 03/04/2023 06:43

Excuse error there.

junebirthdaygirl · 03/04/2023 06:42

My two choices were going to be
Anna Karen Karenia
The Sound and the Fury
But also
Portrait of a Lady
Any Steinbeck novel

JaninaDuszejko · 03/04/2023 06:20

I love Kristin Lavrandatter by Sigrid Undset. Read the recent Tiina Nunnally translation, not the 1920s translation which has fake archaisms.

Otherwise, another vote for Trollope.

AndSeventeenJellybeans · 03/04/2023 05:32

The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton, if you fancy going across the pond for some high society.

highlandcoo · 02/04/2023 23:49

Yes, absolutely Trollope - he’s great. I read The Barchester Chronicles during lockdown and really recommend them. I’m looking forward to reading the Palliser series next.

yy to Vanity Fair and Mrs Gaskell too.

and what about Arnold Bennett? He so deserves to be more widely read. The Old Wives’ Tale is very good; also Clayhanger.

Re Zola, I set out to read all of the Rougon Macqart series however found some much better than others. Germinal and The Ladies’ Paradise were excellent .. and very different!

I love à good big traditional novel; can’t be doing with over-complicated narrative tricksiness.

Original poster
SweetSakura · 02/04/2023 23:45

I have lots more books on my list to read now, thank you!

OP posts:
MsGrumpytrousers · 02/04/2023 22:45

Another vote for Vanity Fair - Thackeray is wonderful. Try going earlier: Sterne, Fielding, Defoe.

Wilkie Collins is wonderful and his not-so-famous novels are really interesting too. Zola is really good.

I love Robertson Davies, who's a sort of twentieth-century Canadian Dickens.

Other twentieth-century classics? Orwell, Waugh, Wells, Murdoch...

surreygirl1987 · 02/04/2023 22:42

Wilkie Collins - The Woman in White. One of my favourites ever!

May09Bump · 02/04/2023 22:38

Also The Swiss Family Robinson and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

elgreco · 02/04/2023 22:32

F Scott Fitzgerald
Louisa May Alcott
Mark Twain

workbasedquestion · 02/04/2023 22:25

Follloeing, thank you.