Could you recommend some classic literature to help me get back into reading classics?

[SweetSakura]

I seem to have swung from reading almost nothing but classics as a teen (because my parents house was stuffed full of them) to now reading nothing but contemporary literature.

I'd like to mix it up a bit but can't decide where to start!

I've read pretty much all Jane Austen/Brontes/Dickens/George Eliot/Thomas Hardy I think, although I guess it was a long time ago and I could re read them!

More of a commentary on a classic, but I really loved Longbourn, which is a servant's-eye view of Pride & Prejudice.

Listening to Natalie Haynes has sent me off down some classical rabbit holes, like Ted Hughes version of Ovid's Metamorphoses, Seamus Heaney's of the Iliad, etc.

Oh I loved Wilkie Collins! More along those lines would be great

How about The Turn of the Screw?

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

20,000 Streets Under the Sky by Patrick Hamilton, powerful trilogy set in working class London in the inter-war period.

Hamilton also wrote the play Gas Light in 1938 that became the famous film.

Anthony Trollope. Humorous, moving, great stories, all human life is there. Bonus points for the Timothy West audiobook versions, it's like a play in your head. Brilliant

Evalina by Fanny Burney, written about a generation before any of Jane Austen's books, very entertaining.

The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Armin

Stella Gibbons' The Swiss Summer

If you like Wilkie Collins then definitely try Lady Audley's Secret, which is fab. Also East Lynne is another fun Victorian sensation novel.

I have got Portrait of a Lady sitting on my desk as I type. It's one of three books I'm considering reading next. (The other two are Forster's Howard's End and Lawrence's Women in Love.) I've never read a word of Henry James. Is he worth trying?

I was coming on to recommend Willa Cather's My Antonia.

So interesting to read the recommendations. I've never read Wilkie Collins. Also interested to see such enthusiasm for Trollope. I might give him a try. Good to see Vanity Fair is so well liked as well.

Do you listen to audiobooks OP? They are a great way of getting through more of the classics. Certain authors were just made to be read out loud. Evelyn Waugh is great on audiobook, so are P. G. Wodehouse, Dickens, H. G. Wells, Graham Greene, etc.

I'm working my way through Powell's Dance to the Music of Time atm. Clive James thought they were some of the best novels of the 20th-century. I'd also recommend Ford Madox Ford. It's odd how certain good writers become almost forgotten – Ford Madox Ford, Anita Brookner, Max Beerbohm, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Gissing, etc.

Yes definitely read Potrait of a Lady. I love that book.

Henry James. The Portrait of a Lady
Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd
Charles Dickens, Bleak House
Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway

I posted as you did. Henry James Portrait of a Lady is magnificent.

I do love Portrait of a Lady but I would point out that Henry James must write the longest sentences known to man. The Golden Bowl was a bit of a trial to read.
Can I add Of Human Bondage to the list? W Somerset Maugham.
I am very fond of Trollope. The Warden was so sad I couldn’t get through it the first time - the injustice!

Me too! Just a word of warning - I found Victor Hugo really hard in French! Your French might be a lot better than mine, though. Madame Bovary was a delight though.

Another Henry James fan! As well as Portrait of a Lady I love Washington Square, The Turn of the Screw and The Europeans. Like PP have said I'd stay away from 'later' James (a la The Golden Bowl!).

I also love Oscar Wilde's poetry in prose and short stories, as well as reading the plays.

Dickens wise I think Dombey and Son, The Mystery of Edwin Drood and Our Mutual Friend are great, alongside the more famous ones.

How about some Sherlock Holmes?

Au Bonheur des Dames by Zola

I didn’t read it in French, but loved it. It has the first department store as it’s backdrop ( I think the first anyway), and is fascinating just for that; but it is also a gripping romantic novel.

@SweetSakura
Machiavelli
Plato
Socrates
Karl Marx
Etc

More French novels:
Lost Illusions by Balzac
Thérèse Raquin by Zola

Pitching in with another hard recommendation for Trollope. He’s fantastic - dry and funny and knowing, and very modern in unexpected ways. I love Dickens, but Trollope can be so refreshingly un-Dickens-like. And there’s lots of him to discover.

Another vote for Evelina by Fanny Burney , a female perspective on life back then. Also Trollope and George Elliot. I loved the minutiae of life in Middlemarch.

Anything by Jane Austen!

On my don’t bother list I would put Anna Karenina - that’s many hours of my life I won’t get back! Also avoid The Great Gatsby, Fahrenheit 451, Lord of the Rings ( soooooo slow)

Yyy to Evelina. I always bundle it together with Moll Flanders. Similar era and quite bawdy.

I don’t know if you’ve read Sarah Waters but her books always remind me of that era and style.

Started with Sons &Lovers as I had a copy on my bookshelves already and i'm really enjoying it 😊

Surely not as long as Proust? I’m a bit wary of Henry James tbh. I’m not often defeated, but I know when I am, and Proust beat me to my knees, as did Dante. I generally use Harold Bloom as a guide through literature, and one of his heroes is Walter Pater, who I also find unreadable.

Still, I’m curious to see how I get on with Henry James. I love late 19th/early 20th-century upper class literature. Wilde’s Dorian Gray is a favourite, along with Wodehouse, Aldous Huxley and Evelyn Waugh. I always imaged James’ stuff to be a blend of Wilde, Huxley and Virginia Woolf. Is it? (God that makes me sound like an odious little snob! I also hero-worship Dickens and George Orwell btw.)