What are your favourite classic?

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Can we make a list please?

I'll start with Rebecca, would love to know yours now it's almost winter.

Cheryl or Tunt I like that - That Zola one is on my list. I always read A Christmas Carol at erm, Christmas and a Jane Austen to start the new year. I might go for Nana or Far From the Madding Crowd for my Autumn read.

War and Peace. Read it first as a teenager and fell in love with Peter Basoukov.
Gone With The Wind
Wuthering Heights
Little Women and Good Wives.
Great Expectations

Not yet a classic as it was published just this year, but I'm sure destined to be one - A Spool of Blue Thread, Anne Tyler's latest. I'm half way through; can't put it down.

Pondering the definition of 'classic', it seems the author doesn't have to be long dead. Perhaps the work has to be from another era, though? I'd put Stella Gibbons' Cold Comfort Farm in that category of classic.

Dune
The Handmaid's Tale
His Dark Materials trilogy

Jane Austen absolutely not chick lit. Her characters are too complex and her plots too clever, to say nothing of the dialogue. It's like comparing Prosecco to Lambrini.

Frankenstein (Mary Shelley)

Haha, Remus, I looks that comparison.

Although I must admit, I'm quite partial to a glass of Lambrini. Not to chick lit though!

We'd be fine then as I can't abide Lambrini but could deal with a but of chick-lit.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

A Midsummer Night's Dream

I read both at least once year..

Vanity Fair

Rebecca.
Nineteen Eighty Four.

Other than the ones already mentioned
The Visit by Friedrich Durrenmatt
The Idiot, Crime and Punishment, Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevskiy
The Red and the Black by Stendhal
Faust by Goethe
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Another Hardy fan here, although I'm not particularly well-versed.

Far From the Madding Crowd, and The Mayor of Casterbridge.

A Room with a View

Middlemarch

Emma - or indeed any Jane Austen

18th century: another vote for Tristram Shandy, also love Tom Jones
19th century: love Wilkie Collins, Vanity Fair, the Brontes, Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell
20th century: Love in a Cold Climate, Cold Comfort Farm, Jeeves and Wooster, On the Road, Goodbye to All That, To Kill a Mocking Bird

Jellybean I just read Vanity Fair for the first time (I'm over 50), and wonder what I've been doing with my life. I'm being a bit of a public nuisance now, pouncing on people and insisting they read it if they haven't done so before.

You lot! Put the tablet down and go and read Vanity Fair. Such fun!

Jane Eyre
Far from the Madding Crowd
North and South
Pride and Prejudice
Rebecca

All of Thomas Hardy
Wuthering Heights
North and South
Moll Flanders

I'd definitely call '100 Years of Solitude' a classic! Or are we only talking dead English writers of the 17th-19th centuries?

I also love American classics. Love Faulkner. Love Harlem renaissance writers - my favourite is 'Their Eyes Were Watching God' by Zora Neale Hurston.

Glad someone mentioned Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. Just finished rereading it for the first time in about 15 years and wish I had understood it better the first time around. Would have saved me a lot of bother and heartache!

My absolute favourite is Frankenstein, glad to see it mentioned above! Closely followed by The Woodlanders, my favourite Hardy by a mile.
I have started reading some American classics recently (Henry James in particular), and am really enjoying them.

Jane Austen, starting with Pride and Prejudice.

ThomasSofty I think The Woodlanders might be my favourite Hardy, too. I like waiting for a day in the autumn or winter when I can curl up in a chair and read it all in one day. I've done that a couple of times, it's lovely.

Has anyone mentioned Love in the Time of Cholera yet? I think I prefer it to 100 Years of Solitude.

Also VS Naipaul, especially Miguel Street and A House for Mr Biswas.

The Secret Agent: Joseph Conrad
Portrait of a Lady: Henry James