Can you recommend a lovely classic novel?

[PoloM1nt]

I've just been through a phase of reading a lot of contemporary fiction and lots of it was great but I really fancy reading a good classic novel now.

I would like a book that ultimately makes me feel good once I've finished it. A nice 'curl up by the fire' type novel, along the lines of Austen, Hardy, Elliott, the Brontes etc, but I've read those.

Suggestions welcome!

Far From the Madding Crowd

A Room with a View

Villette, Bronte

The only feel good comfort novels I want when I'm in a "curl up by the fire with a cup of hot chocolate" mood are Georgette Heyer's Regency novels.

Intelligently written and packed full of historical detail but absolutely guaranteed feel food happy ending.

Feel good!

You can feel your food if you want of course but it'd be weird.

Georgette Heyer novels are quite nice in a Rosamund Pilcher kind of way but I wouldn't call them classics.

I did FFTMC for O Level. The sheep scene at the beginning upset me..

No, but how nicely you patronise them, Jamhandprints. I'm sure you're quite nice too.

Note I didn't call them classics either, but on a thread which includes the Cazalet chronicles, Dorothy L Sayers, Agatha Christie and I Capture the Castle, I think they'll be permitted to lurk on the periphery, slightly embarrassed that someone has permitted them to mingle with the Darceys and the Bingleys but nevertheless comforting themselves with the way Pride and Prejudice turned out.

Ooh, Gone with the Wind! I was lying in bed last night thinking it's time for another re-read.

How about a few foreign classics?
I loved Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary.
For English language classics: Middlemarch (took me ages to get into it but worth it), Villette. How about some sci-fi?

Jane Eyre. Pride and Prejudice.

North and South - deals with industrialisation and urban poverty, but the central romance is very cosy.

Persuasion - so romantic

I Capture the Castle

Little Women - can be a little twee and there a fairly harrowing death but otherwise it is lovely

Jamaica Inn is great for wet and windy days. It has the feeling of Poldark as it's set in Cornwall too, although a little later.
Off to jot down some of the other ideas on my reading list 📚

Yes Trollope and Mrs Gaskell

And I Capture the Castle, obviously!

Those of you that enjoyed Fried Green Tomatoes, I urge you to look for Fannie Flaggs other books. They are so wonderful.

I’m not sure I’d necessarily call them classics, but they are so wonderfully heartwarming.

How We Live Now (Trollope) on audiobook read by Timothy West is a perfect and very long-lasting thing.

Try Behind the Scenes At The Museum by Kate Atkinson for a brilliant, life-affirming modern novel on classic lines

The French Lieutenant's woman? Bit of a twist on a Victorian novel.
Love Wilkie Collins. No Name is my favourite if you like strong heroines.

Another vote for Madame Bovary
Also the American classics by Edith Wharton, Theodore Dreiser, Henry James and Mark Twain. Not to forget Herman Melville.

Bleak House is a good read if you're new to Dickens.

Howards End is my favourite E. M. Forster.

Another vote for Woman in White.

The woman in white
Rebecca/my cousin rachel/the parasites
The end of the affair/travels with my aunt
The paying guests/affinity/fingersmith/tipping the velvet (newish but period setting so “counts” if you don’t think about it too hard)

I don't have anything to add because my re-(re-re)-reads are already on here, but place-marking for later.

Eliza, was just about to comment to say the same about Fannie Flagg. I actually prefer some of her other books- 'Welcome to the World Baby Girl', 'A Redbird Christmas ' etc, so cosy and comforting. Made me have a real love for the American South.

P.S. touché TheOnlyLivingBoy

Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf.

The Card by Arnold Bennett.