My Classics Club Book List

A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.” — Italo Calvino

For my book list for The Classics Club, I’m broadly defining “classic” as a book that has historic and/or literary significance or is a lesser-known book by an author whose other works are widely regarded as Classics. Most of the titles on my list pre-date the 20th century, but not all. My review of and reaction to each book will be linked here as I finish reading them.

Start date: August 18, 2014

Completion date: August 18, 2019

1. Adams, Richard: Watership Down*
2. Atwood, Margaret: The Handmaid’s Tale
3. Austen, Jane: Lady Susan
4. Beagle, Peter S: The Last Unicorn
5. Blackmore, R.D.: Lorna Doone*
6. Bradbury, Ray: The Martian Chronicles
7. Bronte, Anne: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
8. Bronte, Charlotte: Villette
9. Burnett, Frances Hodgson: A Little Princess*
10. Burnett, Frances Hodgson: The Secret Garden*
11. Burney, Frances: Evelina*
12. Burney, Frances: The Wanderer
13. Burroughs, Edgar Rice: Tarzan of the Apes*
14. Chopin, Kate: The Awakening
15. Collins, Wilkie: The Woman in White
16. Cooper, James Fenimore: The Red Rover*
17. Cooper, James Fenimore: The Pilot
18. Dickens, Charles: Oliver Twist
19. Dickens, Charles: A Tale of Two Cities
20. Dostoevsky, Fyodor: The Brothers Karamazov
21. Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan: A Study in Scarlet
22. Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan: The Sign of Four
23. Du Maurier, Daphne: My Cousin Rachel
24. Eliot, George: Middlemarch
25. Fitzgerald, F. Scott: This Side of Paradise
26. Gaskell, Elizabeth: North and South*
27. Gaskell, Elizabeth: Cranford
28. Hardy, Thomas: Far From the Madding Crowd
29. Hawthorne, Nathaniel: The House of the Seven Gables
30. Hawthorne, Nathaniel: The Scarlet Letter
31. Homer: The Iliad
32. Homer: The Odyssey
33. Keats, John: Poems
34. Leroux, Gaston: The Phantom of Opera
35. Malory, Sir Thomas: Le Morte d’Arthur
36. Montgomery, L.M.: Emily of New Moon
37. Radcliffe, Ann: The Mysteries of Udolpho
38. Sabatini, Raphael: Captain Blood
39. Shakespeare, William: Henry IV, part 1
40. Shakespeare, William: Henry IV, part 2
41. Shakespeare, William: Measure for Measure
42. Shakespeare, William: Othello
43. Shelley, Mary: Frankenstein
44. Stevenson, Robert Louis: The Black Arrow*
45. Swift, Jonathon: Gulliver’s Travels
46. Tolstoy, Leo: Anna Karenina
47. Twain, Mark: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer*
48. Twain, Mark: The Innocents Abroad
49. Wells, H.G.: The Invisible Man
50. Wyss, Johann: The Swiss Family Robinson*

*indicates a re-read

Changes to original list:

Replaced:

• Anonymous: The Arabian Nights
• Burke, Edmund: Reflections on the Revolution in France
• Cooper, James Fenimore: The Water-Witch
• Dickens, Charles: Bleak House
• Dickens, Charles: The Mystery of Edwin Drood
• Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan: The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
• Dumas, Alexandre: The Count of Monte Cristo
• Eliot, George: Adam Bede
• Gaskell, Elizabeth: Wives and Daughters
• Poe, Edgar Allen: Collected Stories and Poems
• Rousseau, Jean-Jaques: Emile
• Scott, Sir Walter: Waverly

With:

• Atwood, Margaret: The Handmaid’s Tale
• Chopin, Kate: The Awakening
• Collins, Wilkie: The Woman in White
• Cooper, James Fenimore: The Pilot
• Dickens, Charles: A Tale of Two Cities
• Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan: A Study in Scarlet
• Du Maurier, Daphne: My Cousin Rachel
• Fitzgerald, F. Scott: This Side of Paradise
• Gaskell, Elizabeth: Cranford
• Sabatini, Raphael: Captain Blood
• Twain, Mark: The Innocents Abroad
• Wyss, Johann: The Swiss Family Robinson

Learn more about The Classics Club here

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