Recommend classics / traditional books please

Oh, I tried to use LydiaGwilt as my username on here and was most annoyed someone else had it! She's my favourite Wilkie Collins character.

Jane Eyre! She's a badass. Great book. But avoid Villette, the main character (female) is annoyingly wet imo.

Wilkie Collins is one of my favourite authors (as you might guess from my username) and Count Fosco is a wonderful villain!

Far From the Madding Crowd is the least sad of the books by Thomas Hardy and Bathsheba Everdene is a good, strong character.

As to good audible readings; dovetailing with the above,

Rebecca read by Anna Massey

The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters read by Juliet Stevenson

I love Elizabeth Taylor’s ghost story “Poor Girl” but have never read any of her novels. I tried Barbara Pym’s Excellent Women but couldn’t quite get on with it.

I always recommend Mrs Miniver and anything by Elizabeth Taylor, Barbara Pym or Rosamund Lehrmann.

The trouble with 'The Canon' is that's very white and male. A good list to partially counter that is the list of 70 books from the Commonwealth generated for the Queen's jubilee: The Big Jubilee Read. Covers 1952 onwards and has many modern classics.

In rough chronological order, these are some classics I've loved:

Henry Fielding: Tom Jones
Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice (it has never been bettered, though many have tried – Lizzie Bennett is so alive and real it's almost spooky)
Jane Austen: Emma
George Eliot: Adam Bede
Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights
Dickens: David Copperfield (I prefer it to Great Expectations)
Oscar Wilde: Dorian Grey
D H Lawrence: Sons and Lovers
Aldous Huxley: Chrome Yellow and Point Counter Point
Anthony Burgess: Enderby
Evelyn Waugh: Decline and Fall and The Sword of Honour
Virginia Woolf: Orlando
Edward St Aubyn: Melrose novels

If you want a reliable guide to the canon, read some stuff by the critic Harold Bloom. He will point you in the right direction.

I've just binge read the complete works of Elizabeth Gaskell, I love her writing about the social conditions of, and women's role in, Victorian society. And then - a real treat!- the complete works of Jane Austen. I love her wit and powers of observation (she would have got on tremendously with Victoria Wood!), and they are something I didn't read after A level English sucked all the joy out of them! Edith Wharton and Wilkie Collins are great reads too.

Dh, ds and I love classics, these are some of our favourite books with lesser known classical female authors:
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - Mary Ann Schaffer (not a classic but written like one)
Woman on the Edge of Time - Marge Piercy
Plum Bun - Jessie Redmon Faucet
The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson
The Colour Purple - Alice Walker

I would second Frankenstein.

Has Jane Eyre been mentioned yet?

If you liked Anna Karenina, try War and Peace. It's wonderful.

Actually, The Copenhagen is 'autofiction' so a memoir really.

Another vote for Wilkie Collins, he writes fabulous female characters and they are great adventure stories with wicked villains. Great fun.

Of the great 19th century women Austen is very witty and the books are short love stories, George Elliot is the most realistic and psychologically complex, the Brontes are various degrees of romanticism. Anne the most realistic, Charlotte the most enjoyable and Emily the most bonkers. Oh, and I love Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South is probably her best, then Wives and Daughters.

For 20th century classics written by women then try the following:
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Color Purple
The Handmaids Tale
Nights at the Circus
South Riding
Orlando
Excellent Women
The Pursuit of Love
Half of a Yellow Sun
Nervous Conditions

In translation:
Kristen Lavransdatter
Alberta and Jacob
The Copenhagen Trilogy (3 novellas so short)
The Cost of Sugar
The House of the Spirits
Our Lady of the Nile

Couple of Memoirs:
Testament of Youth
Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea

Anything by Diana Norman. Her female characters are full of agency and extremely modern and relatable without being anachronistic. She also wrote a medieval murder mystery series as Ariana Franklin about a young female doctor at the court of Henry II.

And Rebecca! In fact, any du Maurier. I love My Cousin Rachel.

Echoing South Riding. A wonderful book.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall would meet your criteria, and is a terrific book.

My favourite classic novel is Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. I'm sure all the Jane Austen novels are free on Audible. My favourite listens on Audible have been Endless Night and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie, both read by Hugh Fraser.

If you’re doing audiobooks, then the Juliet Stevenson versions of absolutely anything will be brilliant. I’m in a similar spot, working my way through the classics. All JS’s readings of Austen are brilliant. I’m half way through her version of Middlemarch at the moment and am completely blown away.

Rebecca, My Cousin Rachel, and the Kings General by Daphne Du Maurier are all recent reads which I thoroughly enjoyed.

I’ve also recommended the Jenny Agutter reading of I Capture The Castle by Dodie Smith to a couple of people who have all come back to rave about how much they enjoyed it.

Middle March and Vanity Fair are two of my favourites. However I didn’t get into the books until Id seen the BBC tv series.

Oh, and remember there are a million books- if you don't like something, stop! You can always try again later- but reading's supposed to be an enjoyable thing to do. Don't slog on with something that's not for you. (Looking at you, Dickens!)

Vanity Fair, Villette, the Woman in White…and George Orwell’s 1984. Thomas Hardy can be good.

One I loved was Anna Karenina. Not really uplifting though, sorry.