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

@LittleMissRedHat surely the whole point of to kill a mockingbird is the historic racism and the fact you're supposed to be offended by it. It's essentially a book about racism 🤷🏻‍♀️

@SpectacleLectacle

If you want to try Jane Austen go for Persuasion first - great story, not too long and not too dense a plot.

After that I’d try Sense and Sensibility which is beautiful.

Nearly all of mine are here.
Great Expectations.
Northanger Abbey (it’s a toss up between this and Pride and Prejudice but this one just wins)
Jane Eyre
Rebecca
To kill a mockingbird
The moonstone

And then the one that hasn’t come up:
No name, also by Wilkie Collins. The effect that being illegitimate has on two sisters. Collins is a great writer.

I liked Rebecca and Wuthering heights, but Dickens is my favourite author, from the classics. I enjoy Shakespeare, but it isn't for everyone. It's worth learning the language and then reading his Books.

Black Beauty

Wuthering Heights
David Copper field
Huckleberry Finn
Tender is the night
USA .John dos Passos

This thread also reminds me - Somerset Maugham 👍🏻, and A Man For All Seasons.

Wuthering Heights, To Kill a Mockingbird
Wide Sargasso Sea if you’ve read Jane Eyre
The Master and Margarita, the Michael Glenny translation (it’s originally in Russian). Not sure if it counts as a classic, but it’s incredibly funny and moving at the same time.
Of more “contemporary classics”, Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex; Jonathan Franzen, the Corrections; Donna Tartt, The Secret History; Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda; Salman Rushdie, Midnights Children

I love all Austen except Mansfield Park.
Also Tess of the d’Urbevilles, Jane Eyre, Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Wuthering Heights, The House of Mirth and The Portrait of a Lady

Very similar to everyone else:

Rebecca (also really liked Jamaica Inn, but did not like Frenchman's Creek)
Pride and Prejudice
Persuasion
Dracula

HATED Wuthering Heights. It is just awful.

I know it doesn't really fit the criteria but I absolutely adored Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell - very Austen in style and just fabulous.

Pre 20th century I love Vanity Fair, Dracula (not Eng Lit but a great read), Middlemarch, Les Liasons Dangereuses, Far From The Madding Crowd, Tristram Shandy and Don Juan (not quite a novel). I haven’t physically read much Trollope but I’ve loved the adaptations on Radio 4.

But for all round enjoyability and perfection I always go back to Austen. I love Pride and Prejudice but if you’d like one where you can’t recite the plot OP then I’d recommend Sense and Sensibility or Emma.

Having done Wuthering Heights for both O Level and A Level I’m genuinely baffled by the number of posters who chose that.

I did Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights at school, and lovely both of them - still have my school copies here on the bookshelf despite moving house and country several times since school.
Also loved Jane Eyre, Oliver Twist and Great Expectations.

I did not like Robinson Crusoe, he was a monumental idiot who treated Friday like shit. And I tried at least three times with Catch-22 but could get past the first 50 pages.

Don't think he'd be considered 'classic' in any sense, but I'd loved anything I've read by John Irving, particularly A prayer for Owen Meany and The cider house rules.

Jane Eyre, Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice, War and Peace, Madame Bovary, The Woman in White, Middlemarch, Frankenstein, Heart of Darkness, Great Expectations

I love the classics

To kill a mockingbird - I did this at school and always remembered it.
An inspector calls.
Little women has to be my favourite - my youngest read it when she was 9 and loves it too. We then watched the film and she spent the whole time telling me that didn't happen in the book!

Anything by Thomas Hardy or Somerset Maugham. The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck.

• Tess of the d’Urbevilles
• Dracula
• pride and prejudice
• Wuthering heights

Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Middlemarch

Bleak House is another contender for the earliest detective novel, predating The Moonstone by about 15 years, it's a cracking read! Another tension filled read is The Woman in White (Wilkie Collins).

Ivanhoe is a wonderful story, danger, humour, unrequited love, all packed into a complex twisting plot.

YY to The Count of Monte Cristo!

The Great Gatsby is my fave. Also Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Agnes Grey is good if you’re trying the Brontes.

Oh loved Ivanhoe and The Count of Monte Cristo. Also, The Three Musketeers and Madame Bovary.

Middlemarch here too - it's long but it's just perfect. I'm a bit meh about Austen and can't stand Dickens but George Eliot is just fantastic. I also love Edith Wharton too as some PP have mentioned. Ethan Frome is unlike some of her more famous books (and very short!) but is just an amazing piece of writing.

Anything by George Eliot but particularly The Mill on the Floss.

Harry Potter series if you haven't already done it with DC. I discovered it properly as an adult and was absolutely blown away by it! (OK much more modern though.)

Franz Kafka - Metamorphosis
Homer - The Odyssey
Pierre Choderlos de Laclos - Les Liaisons dangereuses
Daniel Defoe - Moll Flanders

A Room With A View. Such a wonderful book.

The Woman in White.

Persuasion.