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
- Adams, Richard: Watership Down*
- Atwood, Margaret: The Handmaid’s Tale
- Austen, Jane: Lady Susan
- Beagle, Peter S: The Last Unicorn
- Blackmore, R.D.: Lorna Doone*
- Bradbury, Ray: The Martian Chronicles
- Bronte, Anne: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
- Bronte, Charlotte: Villette
- Burnett, Frances Hodgson: A Little Princess*
- Burnett, Frances Hodgson: The Secret Garden*
- Burney, Frances: Evelina*
- Burney, Frances: The Wanderer
- Burroughs, Edgar Rice: Tarzan of the Apes*
- Chopin, Kate: The Awakening
- Collins, Wilkie: The Woman in White
- Cooper, James Fenimore: The Red Rover*
- Cooper, James Fenimore: The Pilot
- Dickens, Charles: Oliver Twist
- Dickens, Charles: A Tale of Two Cities
- Dostoevsky, Fyodor: The Brothers Karamazov
- Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan: A Study in Scarlet
- Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan: The Sign of Four
- Du Maurier, Daphne: My Cousin Rachel
- Eliot, George: Middlemarch
- Fitzgerald, F. Scott: This Side of Paradise
- Gaskell, Elizabeth: North and South*
- Gaskell, Elizabeth: Cranford
- Hardy, Thomas: Far From the Madding Crowd
- Hawthorne, Nathaniel: The House of the Seven Gables
- Hawthorne, Nathaniel: The Scarlet Letter
- Homer: The Iliad
- Homer: The Odyssey
- Keats, John: Poems
- Leroux, Gaston: The Phantom of Opera
- Malory, Sir Thomas: Le Morte d’Arthur
- Montgomery, L.M.: Emily of New Moon
- Radcliffe, Ann: The Mysteries of Udolpho
- Sabatini, Raphael: Captain Blood
- Shakespeare, William: Henry IV, part 1
- Shakespeare, William: Henry IV, part 2
- Shakespeare, William: Measure for Measure
- Shakespeare, William: Othello
- Shelley, Mary: Frankenstein
- Stevenson, Robert Louis: The Black Arrow*
- Swift, Jonathon: Gulliver’s Travels
- Tolstoy, Leo: Anna Karenina
- Twain, Mark: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer*
- Twain, Mark: The Innocents Abroad
- Wells, H.G.: The Invisible Man
- 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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