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

Wuthering heights is my all time favourite! Closely followed by Pride and prejudice, Dracula and 1984!

Jane Eyre

Anne of Green Gables series
Little Women series
Emma
The Little Princess

P&P or Persuasion by Austen
Middlemarch is hefty but worth it
Vanity Fair is so funny, Becky Sharp’s such a great antihero
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
The Good Earth by Pearl S Buck

Any of the Jeeves books by Wodehouse are marvellous

It was Jane Eyre for many years but now it’s Vanity Fair.

Rebecca
Little Women
Anything Oscar Wilde

Jane Eyre
Wuthering Heights
Anything by DH Lawrence, especially Sons and Lovers

Rebecca
A Tale of Two Cities
The Great Gatsby
Jamaica Inn
Little Women
The Forsyte Saga

Agree with so many of these but just wanted to add votes to -

Anna Karenina - if you like subtle humour it can be quite funny, obviously not all the way through!

Animal Farm - smacks you in the face. Why it's not on more GCSE English syllabuses (syllabi?) I have no idea!

Dracula - great read, not too heavy.

Catcher in the Rye - sort of heartbreaking but a nice read.

My favourites have been Crime and Punishment and David Copperfield.
And also To Kill a Mockingbird.

Anna Karenina and A Room with a View are probably the worst 2 classics I've read

Ulysses by James Joyce.

Help reading it is available! m.joyceproject.com/

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is brilliant.

Jane Eyre
Wuthering Heights
Rebecca
1984 (happening now)
How Green Was My Valley

Lolita
The Bell Jar
The Count of Monte Cristo
The Great Gatsby

The Enchanted April - Elizabeth von Arnim
The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton
Great Gatsby
Tender is the Night - (both F Scott Fitzgerald)
Any Ian Fleming book - but they are very much of their time and not v complimentary towards women!
The White Hotel - DM Thomas (though it is a weird, weird book)
Brideshead Revisited
Vile Bodies (both Evelyn Waugh)

Mine are:
Villette
Heart of the Matter
Persuasion

All with a similar theme of lost love 💔

Read Little Women so many times as a child/young adult.
Might be a bit young but I loved “ What Katie Did” & “ Anne of Green Gables”.
John Steinbeck novels, including “ The Pearl”.

1984. I don't really see it as a classic, I see it as a prediction of the future as it's now coming true

Rebecca
To kill a mockingbird
Lord of the flies
The old man and the sea
1984
Little women
Mill on the floss

They're all the ones I would read again so I must have loved them as I rarely read a book twice. I Second the poster who said to read the booker prize nominations - I've recently started to try to do this - 10 month old has been thus far prohibitive though!!

Cider with Rosie, Laurie Lee.

Middle March by George Eliot, Dracula is also interesting if you remember it's a product of it's time

Anything by Patrick Hamilton , Barbara Pym and J B Priestley.

Jane Eyre without a doubt.

It was considered 'contemporary' once - Coming Up For Air by George Orwell. A great story about a middle-aged man who wants one more little adventure before settling back in to his ordinary life.

I’m an Orwell fan. 1984 & Animal Farm are as relevant now as the day they were written, and will never be out of date as long as there are people who seek to achieve positions of power by lies and deception.

A Room with a View is very funny. Even my DD enjoyed it - she never reads classics but had to do it at school.