# Reading > General Literature >  Classic Literature Must Reads Please!

## ALBRIEF

Hello! My name is Ashley and I am brand new to this forum. I am a new Spanish and History teacher and now that I am done with college I actually have time to read for pleasure. I want to start reading the classics. Does anyone have a list...any genre/ountry/authors that I can start with? So far I've read Pride and Prejudice, Brave New World, A Christmas Carol and am starting The Jungle. Thank You!

*country

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## liberal viewer

> Hello! My name is Ashley and I am brand new to this forum. I am a new Spanish and History teacher and now that I am done with college I actually have time to read for pleasure. I want to start reading the classics. Does anyone have a list...any genre/ountry/authors that I can start with? So far I've read Pride and Prejudice, Brave New World, A Christmas Carol and am starting The Jungle. Thank You!


:
:
It is going to sound like a cliché, but you must read: 
Homer: the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Sophocles: Antigone and Oedipus Rex
Virgil: The Aeneid
Ovid: Metamorphoses
Dante: the Comedy
Shakespeare: Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear.

If you like Spanish lit:
Cervantes: El Quijote
Lope de Vega: Fuenteovejuna
Calderón de la Barca: El Alcalde de Zalamea y la Vida es Sueño
The poetry of Quevedo, Góngora and San Juan de la Cruz.
You can't go wrong with these choices!
Cheers

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## Niamh

The History of Tom Jones a Foundling by Henry Feilding
Persuasion and Mansfeild Park by Jane Austin
The Massacre of Paris and Dr Faustus By Christopher Marlowe
Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell

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## Nico87

How about everything from Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Gogol, and Chekhov?

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## Dori

> How about everything from Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Gogol, and Chekhov?


And Turgenev.  :Wink:  

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Hugo
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Fathers and Sons by Turgenev
Candide by Voltaire
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Of Mice and Men by Steinbeck

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## Scheherazade

_Decameron_ by Boccaccio

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## manolia

Every Dickens' book  :Biggrin:

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## Etienne

I believe the 10 books you should start from:

Dante - The Divine Comedy
Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel
Cervantes - Don Quixote
Shakespeare - Plays
Voltaire - Tales
Goethe - Faust
Dostoevsky - Crime and Punishment
Tolstoy - War and Peace
Dickens - David Copperfield
Kafka - The Trial

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## stlukesguild

Etienne... good starting point. I'd throw in _The Odyssey_, The Bible, _Moby Dick_, _Leaves of Grass_, J.L. Borges' _Labyrinths_, Milton's _Paradise Lost_, and the selected poems of Shelley, Keats, Blake, and Wordsworth... and while we're on the poets: Baudelaire's _Fleurs du Mal_

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## andave_ya

The Bible. Lord of the Rings. Definitely Keats, Byron. Faust by Marlowe is very interesting too.

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## LadyWentworth

A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Persuasion - Jane Austen

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## crazefest456

don't forget Prometheus Bound

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## aabbcc

Excluded pieces of national literature whose names would probably not mean much to you, and which are more important in the context of national than in the context of European/world literature, here is the basic list from my lyc&#233;e, which I believe to be very good as a starting point for Literature studies:

_Year 1_
Homer - _The Iliad_
Homer - _The Odyssey_
Bible - excerpts
Sophocles - _Antigone_
Sophocles - _Oedipus Rex_
Aeschyles - _Prometheus Bound_
Euripides - _Electra_
Plautus - _Aulularia_
Vergil - _Aeneis_
Ovid - _Metamorphoses_

_Year 2_
Alighieri, D. - _Inferno_ with excerpts of other two parts of _La Divina Commedia_
Petrarca, F. - _Canzoniere_
Boccaccio, G. - _Decameron_
de Cervantes, M. - _Don Quijote_
Shakespeare, W. - _Hamlet_
Shakespeare, W. - _A Midsummer Night's Dream_
Shakespeare, W. - _Macbeth_
Calderon de la Barca, P. - _La Vida es Sueno_
Corneille, P. - _Cid_
Racine, J. - _Fedra_
Moliere - _L'Avare_
Moliere - _Le Misanthrope_
Goldoni, C. - _La Locandiera_
Voltaire - _Candide_
Schiller, F. - _The Robbers_
Hugo, V. - _The Hunchback of Notre Dame_ or _Les Miserables_

_Year 3_
Goethe, J. W. - _The Sorrows of Young Wether_
Goethe, J. W. - _Faust_
Byron, G. G. - _Childe Harold_
Poe, E. A. - selected poetry and prose
Pushkin, A. S. - _Eugene Onegin_
Lermontov, M. Ju. - _A Hero of Our Time_
Balzac, H. de - _Father Goriot_
Flaubert, G. - _Madame Bovary_
Turgenev, I. S. - _Notes of a Hunter_
Turgenev, I. S. - _Fathers and Sons_
Gogol, N. V. - _The Overcoat_
Dostoevsky, F. M. - _Crime and Punishment_
Tolstoy, L. N. - _Anna Karenina_
Zola, E. - _Germinal_ or _Therese Raquin_
Maupassant, G. de - selected short stories
Ibsen, H. - _Nora_

_Year 4_
Baudelaire, Ch. - _Les Fleurs du Mal_
Proust, M. - _Combray_
Pirandello, L. - _Six Characters in Search of an Author_
Kafka, F. - _The Metamorphosis_ 
Kafka, F. - _The Trial_
Hemingway, E. - _For Whom the Bell Tolls_
Fauklner, W. - _The Sound and the Fury_
Brecht, B. - _Mother Courage and Her Children_
Sartre, J. P. - _Nausea_
Camus, A. - _The Stranger_
Ionesco, E. - _The Chairs_
Ionesco, E. - _The Bald Soprano_
Beckett, S. - _Waiting for Godot_
Mann, Th. - _The Death in Venice_
Hesse, H. - _The Steppenwolf_
Bulgakov, M. - _Master and Margarita_

As any list, it is imperfect (and I probably missed some, could not remember all of them, the lists are huge); but there are some good things about it. It is more-less chronological (year 1 classical antiquity, plus a couple of other works; year 2 up to romanticism, etc.), and if approached chronologically and in addition with the textbooks we used (which had numerous excerpts from other works of same period or movement, theoretical essays on history and theory of literature for each period, etc), it can do wonders and give to a young person a nice overview of, European at least (and national, which is excluded here), literature.
You do not need to approach it chronologically, as you are not in high school any longer and threatened by grades as we were when reading this; you can just pick what you like off the list and enjoy it.
I hope it helped a bit.

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## NickAdams

Anastasija: This is just what I need. I would expand a little (Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Marginl, Journey to the West and Dream of the Red Chamber), but it's a great starting point. Thank you for posting this. Odd that this is only a High School list.

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## J.D.

I was in a similar position regarding the "classics" a while ago. What did it for me was trying to read Joyce's _Ulysses_. Dude's allusions were so difficult that I decided to return to classical sources to figure them out. One thing led to another, and I've been on my own odyssey through classical and classic lit. ever since. 

Here's what I have read so far: 

Homer--Iliad, Odyssey
Hesiod--Works and Days, Theogony
Aeschylus--Oresteia 
Sophocles--Oedipus the King, Antigone
Euripides--Trojan Women, Medea 
Aristophanes--The Clouds, The Frogs
Pindar--The Odes of Pindar
Sappho, Alcaeus, Archilochus, others--Greek Lyric Poetry 
Plato--Republic, Ion, Symposium, Apology, Crito
Aristotle--Nicomachean Ethics, Poetics, Rhetoric
Herodotus--Histories
Thucydides--Peloponnesian War
Aesop--Fables

Plautus--The Captives
Terence--The Brothers
Lucretius--The Nature of Things
Epicurus--Basic Writings
Livy--The Wars with Hannibal
Caesar--The War Commentaries
Horace, Martial, Juvenal, Catullus--The Latin Poets
Ovid-Metamorphoses, The Art of Love
Virgil--Aeneid
Cicero--Second Philippic (Against Marc Antony), On Friendship, On Old Age, Personal Letters 
Lucius Apuleius--The Golden Asse 
Suetonius--The Lives of the Twelve Caesars
Marcus Aurelius -- Meditations
Plutarch--Selected Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans
Pliny the Younger--Letters (especially concerning the eruption of Vesuvius)
Seneca--On Tranquility of Mind, Letters of a Stoic

The Gospels
St. Augustine of Hippo--Confessions
Boethius--The Consolation of Philosophy
St. Benedict--The Rule of St. Benedict
The Quran
Bede--The Ecclesiastical History of the English People
The Arabian Nights
Beowulf
The Song of Roland
The Nibelungenlied
The Mabinogion
Gawain and the Green Night
Thomas Malory--Le Morte D'Arthur
Dante--The Comedy (or Divine Comedy) 

(Please excuse any poor spelling.  :Smile: ) 

I am currently moving around in the middle ages based on what interests me at a given moment, and I plan to keep moving through "the Canon" by time period. 

Here are two other things that have helped me get the most out of my readings: I read history books and contemperary criticisms (which can be found on EBSCO, LION, or other databases at the local library) in order to make sure I've got the context of the books; in addition, I also try to keep a journal or write a pseudo-scholarly piece on each thing I read.

Good luck. If you are self-motivated and have your summers off, you can really educate yourself in the classics.

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## Etienne

Since you seem intent to read the main philosophical works of the periods, I'd like to suggest you to read Maimonides Guide for the Perplexed and Averroes The Incoherence of the Incoherence. Dante's Monarchy is also a great work. Thomas Aquinas (Summa theologia, theological work, but an important one) should also be a must and so is Ockham, he has both philosophical and political works. Besides this, Pseudo-Denys (which should be the first to read if you want to go in chronological order) would also be an important figure. Pierre Abelard's Sentences was the most commented work of the Middle-Ages, so you might want to get into that.

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## tscherff

http://www.amazon.com/Novel-100-Rank...8198363&sr=1-1

amazon site for the novel 100. excellent resource for you. gives a wide range of titles including many foreign writers. also gives a brief sysnopsis of the book and the reasons why it is one of the best. he also has one for the best books if you care to go beyond fiction.

like any list of this type, there are differences of opinion.
here is on e he missed

sometimes a great notion by ken kesey---best book i ever read

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## thescholar

Bram Stoker's Dracula?

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## hellsapoppin

There are a great many classics written by non Westerners such as:

Soseki Natsume *I Am A Cat*

Murasaki Shikibu's *The Tale of Genji*

Tosan Shimazaki's *The Broken Commandment*


I sincerely believe you will find these to be quite eye opening.

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## ALBRIEF

Thank you for all of your suggestions!  :Smile:  They really helped a lot!

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## rgdmalaysia

Some books ignored when the term "classics" is used that are must reads....

Independent People by Halldor Laxness
The Cairo Trilogy(Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, Sugar Street) by Naguib Mahfouz 
The Man who Loved Children by Christina Stead
Wait Until Spring, Bandini by John Fante
The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizaki
and 
anything by Yasunari Kawabata or Knut Hamsun

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## stlukesguild

If you're looking for the philosophical lit of the era don't forget Michel Montaigne's essays.

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## jon1jt

> Hello! My name is Ashley and I am brand new to this forum. I am a new Spanish and History teacher and now that I am done with college I actually have time to read for pleasure.



Or do you mean now that you're done with college you actually have time to read for the sake of knowledge?  :Wink:

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## jlb4tlb

> Hello! My name is Ashley and I am brand new to this forum. I am a new Spanish and History teacher and now that I am done with college I actually have time to read for pleasure. I want to start reading the classics. Does anyone have a list...any genre/ountry/authors that I can start with? So far I've read Pride and Prejudice, Brave New World, A Christmas Carol and am starting The Jungle. Thank You!
> 
> *country


The following list might help, it has its limilations as all of the boooks are written in english and the fact that they were written in the last 100 or so years ago.

Modern library´s 100 best novels of 20 century 



Rank Novel Author 
1 ULYSSES James Joyce 
2 THE GREAT GATSBY F. Scott Fitzgerald 
3 A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN James Joyce 
4 LOLITA Vladimir Nabokov 
5 BRAVE NEW WORLD Aldous Huxley 
6 THE SOUND AND THE FURY William Faulkner 
7 CATCH-22 Joseph Heller 
8 DARKNESS AT NOON Arthur Koestler 
9 SONS AND LOVERS D.H. Lawrence 
10 THE GRAPES OF WRATH John Steinbeck 
11 UNDER THE VOLCANO Malcolm Lowry 
12 THE WAY OF ALL FLESH Samuel Butler 
13 1984 George Orwell 
14 I CLAUDIUS Robert Graves 
15 TO THE LIGHTHOUSE Virginia Woolf 
16 AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY Theodore Dreiser 
17 THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER Carson McCullers 
18 SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE Kurt Vonnegut 
19 INVISIBLE MAN Ralph Ellison 
20 NATIVE SON Richard Wright 
21 HENDERSON THE RAIN KING Saul Bellow 
22 APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA John O'Hara 
23 U.S.A. John Dos Passos 
24 WINESBURG, OHIO Sherwood Anderson 
25 A PASSAGE TO INDIA E.M. Forster 
26 THE WINGS OF THE DOVE Henry James 
27 THE AMBASSADORS Henry James 
28 TENDER IS THE NIGHT F. Scott Fitzgerald 
29 THE STUDS LONIGAN TRILOGY James T. Farrell 
30 THE GOOD SOLDIER Ford Madox Ford 
31 ANIMAL FARM George Orwell 
32 THE GOLDEN BOWL Henry James 
33 SISTER CARRIE Theodore Dreiser 
34 A HANDFUL OF DUST Evelyn Waugh 
35 AS I LAY DYING William Faulkner 
36 ALL THE KING'S MEN Robert Penn Warren 
37 THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY Thornton Wilder 
38 HOWARDS END E.M. Forster 
39 GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN James Baldwin 
40 THE HEART OF THE MATTER Graham Greene 
41 LORD OF THE FLIES William Golding 
42 DELIVERANCE James Dickey 
43 A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME Anthony Powell 
44 POINT COUNTER POINT Aldous Huxley 
45 THE SUN ALSO RISES Ernest Hemingway 
46 THE SECRET AGENT Joseph Conrad 
47 NOSTROMO Joseph Conrad 
48 THE RAINBOW D.H. Lawrence 
49 WOMEN IN LOVE D.H. Lawrence 
50 TROPIC OF CANCER Henry Miller 
51 THE NAKED AND THE DEAD Norman Mailer 
52 PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT Philip Roth 
53 PALE FIRE Vladimir Nabokov 
54 LIGHT IN AUGUST William Faulkner 
55 ON THE ROAD Jack Kerouac 
56 THE MALTESE FALCON Dashiell Hammett 
57 PARADE'S END Ford Madox Ford 
58 THE AGE OF INNOCENCE Edith Wharton 
59 ZULEIKA DOBSON Max Beerbohm 
60 THE MOVIEGOER Walker Percy 
61 DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP Willa Cather 
62 FROM HERE TO ETERNITY James Jones 
63 THE WAPSHOT CHRONICLES John Cheever 
64 THE CATCHER IN THE RYE J.D. Salinger 
65 A CLOCKWORK ORANGE Anthony Burgess 
66 OF HUMAN BONDAGE W. Somerset Maugham 
67 HEART OF DARKNESS Joseph Conrad 
68 MAIN STREET Sinclair Lewis 
69 THE HOUSE OF MIRTH Edith Wharton 
70 THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET Lawrence Durell 
71 A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA Richard Hughes 
72 A HOUSE FOR MR BISWAS V.S. Naipaul 
73 THE DAY OF THE LOCUST Nathanael West 
74 A FAREWELL TO ARMS Ernest Hemingway 
75 SCOOP Evelyn Waugh 
76 THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE Muriel Spark 
77 FINNEGANS WAKE James Joyce 
78 KIM Rudyard Kipling 
79 A ROOM WITH A VIEW E.M. Forster 
80 BRIDESHEAD REVISITED Evelyn Waugh 
81 THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCH Saul Bellow 
82 ANGLE OF REPOSE Wallace Stegner 
83 A BEND IN THE RIVER V.S. Naipaul 
84 THE DEATH OF THE HEART Elizabeth Bowen 
85 LORD JIM Joseph Conrad 
86 RAGTIME E.L. Doctorow 
87 THE OLD WIVES' TALE Arnold Bennett 
88 THE CALL OF THE WILD Jack London 
89 LOVING Henry Green 
90 MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN Salman Rushdie 
91 TOBACCO ROAD Erskine Caldwell 
92 IRONWEED William Kennedy 
93 THE MAGUS John Fowles 
94 WIDE SARGASSO SEA Jean Rhys 
95 UNDER THE NET Iris Murdoch 
96 SOPHIE'S CHOICE William Styron 
97 THE SHELTERING SKY Paul Bowles 
98 THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE James M. Cain 
99 THE GINGER MAN J.P. Donleavy 
100 THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS Booth Tarkington

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## PeterL

The people who have posted made some interesting suggestions, but I would suggest that you ignore all of those, and I will refrain from mentioning any of my favorites. I suggest that you read a little of the history of literature and take your suggestions from that. The other way would be for you to go to a public library, take books from the shelf, flip to an interior page, and read a few paragraphs. If you enjoy reading those paragraphs, read the whole book. For poetry and short fiction, you might want to check out some anthologies _The Oxford of English Verse_, Norton Anthologies, etc..

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## manolia

Allow me to add "The trial" by F Kafka (not sure if it is considered a classic). I just finished this book and i am fascinated.

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## thelastmelon

I'd simply say _Wuthering Heights_ by Emily Brontë and _1984_ by George Orwell.

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## stlukesguild

The problems with the Modern Library's list include the facts that:

1. All the listed books are novels... no poetry, short stories, non-fiction, etc...
2. All the works are 20th century creations... 
there were good books before then as well.
3. All the books were written in English... the French, Italians, Germans, Russians, Japanese, Poles, etc... have managed to write books worthy of reading from time to time as well...

If you want a guide to classic world lit there are several good sources. Harold Bloom's _Western Canon_ and _Genius_ are perhaps the most inclusive... although they focus on Western lit alone. Fadiman and Major's _New Lifetime Reading Plan_ is also worth a look. An excellent sources of lists of "must read" books can be found here:

http://www.interleaves.org/~rteeter/greatbks.html

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## stlukesguild

What is this obsession with Orwell? I mean he wrote a few decent books, but the way his name is bantered about here you'd almost think he was Dante reincarnated.  :Confused:  Or Jack Kerouac :Biggrin:   :FRlol:

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## JBI

Look up Harold Bloom's western canon. That has every book in the Canon pretty much.

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## Oomoo

Anna Karenina, really, is extremely readable and fun but one of the greatest books ever written. This is the place to start with "the classics", no doubt, and I suppose it should keep you occupied for a while

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## Nossa

Anything Jane Austen. Besides that, you might wanna read Animal Farm and 1984 by George Orwell (I'm not sure if they're 'classics' but they're def. a must-read).
I totally second The Iliad, and anything Russian, esp. Chekhov.

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## Sir Bartholomew

how about Wuthering Heights

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## B-Mental

I think any Victor Hugo: any of the Musketeers, especially Les Miserables.
War & Peace, or try the Death of Ivan Illych both by Tolstoy
really there are plenty of great suggestions, but you will have to find your own path through this paper jungle.

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