Your classics wanted please

[FiveGoMadInDorset]

my Niece has decided she wants to start reading the classics. I have suggested some plus classic books

So far my suggestions.

Jane Austen
I Captured the Castle
To Kill a Mocking Bird
Swallows and Amazons
E M Forster

and then my brain freezed.

So what else would you add. She is 14.

What about.........

Jane Eyre - loved this at 14

Charles Dickens - Great Expectations, David Copperfield (or seasonally A Christmas Carol)

Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Sorry, can't think of any more at the moment

I love Little Women

Cold Comfort Farm.
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.
Agree with Dickens - David Copperfield or Oliver Twist may be good starting place.

How old is she? What about some Daphne Dumaurier such as Rebecca? Wuthering Heights? The Hobbit? Even things like The Witch, the Lion and the Wardrobe are now considered classics or the Golden Compass?

Thank you. good books all of those and will add, if it gets her going then she can expand from there.

My aunt asked me to send my neice classics for Christmas last year, when she was 15. As well as those mentioned, I sent The Great Gatsby, Lorna Doone, 3 Men in a Boat, Pride & Prejudice. If this sounds generous, it's because you can pick up a lot of the classics for about £1 each on Amazon.

I second all that have been mentioned and would add Wilkie Collins - either The Woman in White or The Moonstone. Not proper "classics" but at least written in the nineteenth century and will get her used to the langauge and reading lovely thick books.

I re-read Jane Eyre recently - was completely blown away by it, it was like reading it without knowing anything of the sory beforehand - not sure how I managed that! - seemed so modern and fresh.

How about Fanny Burney's Evelina - less well known but Austenesque. Funny comment on society (the author's own life is totally fascinating too - there's a great bio of her).

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe?

Gone with the Wind
Catcher in the Rye
Diary of Anne Frank
All Quiet on the Western Front

Great Expectations was my favourite Charles Dickens.
Farenheight 451, To Kill a Mockingbird, any Thomas Hardy, The Secret Garden, The Railway Children, any Philippa Pearce, The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings.

Silas Marner.
Lord of the Flies.
More modern - Lucky Jim, An Evelyn Waugh (Decline and Fall maybe),
E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread. Gormengast.
Anne of Green Gables.
Nineteen Eighty Four/ Animal Farm.
Thirty Nine Steps.
Sherlock Holmes.

Will email her tomorrow with those. Great choices.

Gormengast should obviously be on a new line. Last time I looked E.M.Forster didn't write it

Would also suggest My Cousin Rachel by Du Maurier - I think it's almost as good as Rebecca but possibly overlooked..

Also, a classic bit of fun - Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson

And how about some Steinbeck? East of Eden or Grapes of Wrath? Or the fab Winter of our Discontent.

Too many to choose from!