Recommend me a classic novel please?

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I fancy reading a classic novel but stuck for ideas. I've read and enjoyed all the Hardys, Austens, Gaskell and Brontë. I also really enjoyed A Tree Grows in Brooklyn which is a slightly later classic. I've read some Dickens but not sure if his style is what I'm after, and I like reading about women's stories which I'm not sure he specialises in, correct me if I'm wrong.

I really want a book I can get immersed in and feel sad when it ends, if you know what I mean!

Any suggestions?

Alexandre Dumas - The Three Musketeers, The Man in the Iron Mask and The Count of Monte Christo

Lots of excellent suggestions here. Agree very much with George Elliot, and with Wilkie Collins. Lydia Gwilt from Armadale is one of my favourite anti-heroines.

It's not a novel but Memories by Teffi is fabulous, it's the story of her escape from Bolshevik Moscow to free Odesa. She was a famous humourist and the book mixes humour and horror.

A Norwegian classic is Kirstin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset. Make sure you read the modern translation by Tiina Nunnally. It's about a noble woman in medieval Norway. Sigrid Undset won the Nobel Prize for Literature because of it.

Have you tried The Shuttle by Frances Hodgson Burnett?

What about The Brontes? The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte is a really good read, strong female characters too. I took it as my holiday read last year and absolutely loved it

Umpteenthing Vanity Fair, Dracula. The Pallisers

Willow Colin's The Haunted Hotel, The Moonstone or The Woman in White

Wylder's Hand by Sheridan Le Fanu
(Definitely this one)

Daphne du maurier My Cousin Rachel, Jamaica Inn, Rebecca

Bram Stoker Dracula

So many good books on this thread. I'm constantly saying ooh!

Frenchman's Creek by Daphne du Maurier. Slight but charming romance novel with wonderful descriptions of the Helford River, estuary and tributaries.
A perfect summer holiday read, especially if you love south Cornwall.
I also enjoyed Longbourne, a modern novel but a sidebar to Pride and Prejudice written from the POV of the Bennett household servants.

Oh yes!! This is brilliant.

Also second (or is it fourth) Daphne du Maurier. I'd favour My Cousin Rachel over Rebecca, but certainly wouldn't not suggest Rebecca.

Cold comfort farm - I love it!

We have always lived in the castle. It's sublime

I ,Claudius by Robert Graves, sounds dry but it's an absolutely ripping yarn.

All Passion Spent - Vita Sackville West
I second South Riding.
Not a classic, but Natalie Haynes has done a retelling of the Trojan war from the female perpective called A Thousand Ships.

YY to A Suitable Boy, also Testament of Youth.

Most anything by Anya Seton - historical fiction, plenty of strong women characters.

Memoirs of a Geisha.

Agree! I really enjoyed it. Much better than Robinson Crusoe.

I also really enjoyed D.H. Lawrence' Sons and Lovers, and The Color Purple by Alice Walker is fantastic, but you have probably already read that.

Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - not a female protagonist but worth reading and much more subtle than the cliché of the monster

The Women's Room by Marilyn French is a feminist modern classic, brilliant read.

The Margaret Atwood(s) mentioned before but also Cat's Eye and Alias Grace.

I loved The Witchfinder's Sister which is from the last couple of years, but am a sucker for anything witch trial-related.

Another vote for The Mill on the Floss. I sobbed when I finished it; it had a huge emotional impact on me.

I also love Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlett Letter.

Rainingyetagain -I loved a thousand ships, I bought 5 copies as Christmas presents!

I'd also suggest I capture the castle by Dodie Smith

Seconded!

Anna Karenina

I second (third) many of these, especially the Wilkie Collins and George Eliot novels.

I love the Barsetshire and Palliser novels by Trollope. Standalone novels of his that I have enjoyed, and that have interesting female stories include The Vicar of Bulhampton, The Claverings and He Knew He Was Right.

As for Dickens, Bleak House, Little Dorrit, and Dombey and Son all have central female characters and Martin Chuzzlewit is also interesting in terms of the female characters. I know not everyone enjoys his style though.

Moving into the the 20th century, the Frost in May series by Antonia White is interesting, as is The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West.

More recently, I think Captain Corelli's mandolin is wonderful.

Age of Innocence for sure -

Evelyn Waugh — Scoop, decline and fall, vile bodies, brideshead revisited

Tale of 2 Cities was my thought soon as I saw thread title.

Some American literature?

Scarlet Letter
Grapes of Wrath
For Whom the Bells Toll

The mill on the floss broke my heart, George Eliott is a really good suggestion. If you want to try Dickens again, Little Dorrit isn't an easy read but so worthwhile.