To ask what your favourite classic novel is?

[SpectacleLectacle]

I have a plan to read some classics this summer I’ve never got round to... what’s your absolute favourite classic novel? And why?

I guess I’m thinking mainly of those that would be in the ‘Classics’ (in terms of fiction rather than the subject!) section of a bookshop but feel free to diverge from that

Modern classics

• the secret diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 & 3/4 - Sue Townsend
• blott on the landscape - Tom Sharpe

Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda. Incredible examples of still-relevant, female-written women's perspectives at a time they really weren't on offer. And so, SO incredibly written.

Also second the PP above who mentioned The Secret Garden. It's a light and easy read. The same author wrote a lot of other books, some better than others but my favourites are The Head of The House of Coombe. It's got affairs, kept women, abandoned children, and best of all... A happy ending! It has a sequel too, Robin, which I love.

Jane Eyre

I have lots, I love a classic novel.
Little Women (loved the whole set really), Anna Karenina, Brideshead Revisited, The Great Gatsby...
Ballet Shoes and Heidi were 2 of my favourites growing up, I love description of times now gone and a more formal writing style and that just continued in my reading choices.

Little Women, Rebecca, The Wind in the Willows.

I loved Ballet Shoes and Heidi when I was young too - and wouldn't mind reading them again.

Jane Eyre and Rebecca

Middlemarch. Although angsty, 20-something me was a bit obsessed with The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky for a while.

Persuasion and for the giggles, Northanger Abbey. I think it's important to remember that Austen deliberately writes heroines you can't stand a lot of the time, and then makes you care anyway. She's a genius.

Great Expectations. It's funny and the humour is dry. And the characters are fab. Charles Dickens really shone a light on social inequality and the poor treatment of children during that period.
There are few classics I enjoy tbh and can never get passed chapter 3 of Wuthering Heights.
Fully agree with PP that Life After Life should become a modern classic. It's brilliant.

Rebecca
Wuthering Heights
Frankenstein
The Great Gatsby
Fahrenheit 451
The Handsmaid Tale
Dracula

Wuthering Heights with Mill on the Floss a close second.

The diary of a nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith. It's very funny!

I loved My Cousin Rachel, Daphne Du Maurier

Another for wuthering heights here
Also tenant of wildfell Hall though that might be because my life circumstances at the time of reading were similar to that of the protagonist so it had real resonance. A great book though.

Wuthering Heights
Jane Eyre
Rebecca
My Cousin Rachel
Jamaica Inn (I like DDuM)

I'm a lazy reader. I'm ashamed to say I've never been able to read Dickens or Tolstoy, I lose the will to live about 100 pages in.

I bloody love Thomas Hardy though, and would start with Return of the Native or The Woodlanders, and work my way through the major novels approximately in order of seriousness, before ending up at Jude The Obscure, which is one of the saddest books I've ever read.

Jane Austen is just wonderful, and surprisingly funny. Daphne du Maurier is great. Somerset Maugham seems to be really unfashionable but I love The Moon and Sixpence and Of Human Bondage. Evelyn Waugh is another favourite, especially Scoop!, Decline And Fall and the magnificent Brideshead Revisited. And I'm delighted to see fellow Wilkie Collins fans on here.

I'd also recommend Mary Webb (esp Precious Bane and Gone To Earth). Her writing gives a sense of place in the same way as Thomas Hardy imo.

For modern classics, you could do a lot worse than read your way through all the Booker Prize winners. But anything by Ian McEwan and Hilary Mantel is a good read and thought provoking.

50/50 between Little Women and Pride and Prejudice

If you fancy something 'high brow' then either
'The Unbearable Lightness of Being' or 'Siddhartha'

Loads. Jude the Obscure, Ethan Frome, Crime and Punishment for starters.

Vanity Fair. Pure genius. Captain Dobbin was my teenage template for a loyal, devoted man.
Man of Property, and others in the Forsyte Saga.
P & P / Mansfield Park.
Though no longer so popular, I too adore Somerset Maugham. Favourites are The Painted Veil and The Razor's Edge.
So grateful to my legend of an English teacher for introducing me with such passion to the greatest authors.

Silas Marner by George Elliot
Ivanhoe by Walter Scott
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

I generally prefer 20th century writing, but Daniel Deronda blew me away. I genuinely could not put it down.

Highly recommend The Cancer Ward (Solzhenitsyn) and Das Boot/The Boat (Buchheim).

I love To kill a mocking bird. This year I just didnt have the time to reread it so listened to an audio book version when I was driving . And it brought out a couple of points that I had missed when reading myself.
Ive just embarked on 1984 which is going well and will probably work my way through some of the other classics as recommended here.
I dont think Ive ever read any Jane Austen so will likely try her next time.

Rebecca
1984

Rebecca, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, and anything by Jane Austen by Persuasion is my absolute favourite