The Classics

[Athena]

This a topic for ye olde books. For the purposes of this thread, we'll say books before WWII, but we can be easy going about what you define as a classic. This can be a starting point for various books and classic works. As for spoilers, use your own judgement but most of these works are in the public domain any way.

 

Some of my favourite dead authors: Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, Alexandre Dumas, Thomas Hardy, Leo Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Homer, W. Somerset Maugham, and many more.

 

Currently, I am trying to read Rudyard Kipling's Kim. I've been on the same chapter since March due various reasons and it's a bit slow.

[Helena Dax]

I love Jane Austen, Wilde, Twain and a Spanish writer called Benito Pérez Galdós. Galdós' books are amazing; sometimes I think I didn't really understand my own country until I started to read his work. 

 

Is P.G. Wodehouse a classic? Because I love him too. 

 

Maurice, from E.M Forster, is an awesome, brave story. I wouldn't say he's one of my favourite actors but this book has been with me for more than 25 years. 

Edited June 25, 2014 by Helena Dax

[Athena]

Maurice is the only Forster I haven't read. I love him! I guess I forgot since I read most of his oeuvre as a teen.

 

I also enjoy Wilde. The plays are fun.

 

I'd consider Wodehouse classic. We can be laid back about defining what is a classic.

[Dandesun]

Anybody read Gargantua and Pantagruel? I quite enjoyed it when I read it in college and have decided to give it another turn.

[BlackberryJam]

Add me to team Wodehouse and team Wilde.

 

I am a huge F. Scott Fitzgerald fan.  His writing is so evocative, even if I don't like the particular story or plot.

[Danny Franks]

I love The Great Gatsby. One of the few books I had to read in college that really resonated with me. I still remember the look of delight on my professor's face when me and a girl in my class got into a heated argument about who deserved more sympathy, out of Daisy and Gatsby. Naturally, I sided with Gatsby, and not "careless" Daisy.

 

Two others would be The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The first an epic tale of a boy's journey to discover himself, the second a much more light-hearted exploration of the simple joys of childhood. Mark Twain's writing is so full of wit and life, that I always get sucked in.

 

Then there are the manly men, Steinbeck and Hemingway. Hemingway's stuff is a bit more boys own adventure, and has a more modern feel. His sensibilities perhaps were not so enlightened, though. I really like Steinbeck's Dustbowl Trilogy, set during and after the Great Depression. Such a rich setting, and so fucking bleak. And I've always admired Steinbeck's committed empathy for the plight of the working class.

Edited June 28, 2014 by Danny Franks

[Athena]

I've read most of John Steinbeck, and I loved East of Eden.

 

I did read all the Jeeves and Wooster stories by Wodehouse. They were pretty fun, but I found them a bit repetitive after awhile. It was funny he kept writing them into the 60's but still setting in the 20's.

[scarynikki12]

Frankenstein is what every book should aspire to be. I love it more than I can ever express and I come away with new interpretations and reactions every time I read it.

[Eegah]

I share a birthday with Alexander Dumas, so reading the Musketeers books and The Count of Monte Cristo was a really odd but good experience. Plus, his stuff is just FUN; pretty much the only 19th century author I've read whose work never seems old in the slightest. My favorite has to be Count, for expertly pulling off what I've found is the quite difficult balancing act of not glorifying revenge and showing its darker side, while at the same time never making us feel like we should be ashamed for hating the targets of that revenge. They're all horrible people who deserve every bit of what they get, but at the same time I was able to feel sad for Edmond Dantes losing his humanity to his hatred of them, and root for him to recover any sense of happiness.

 

I still name Dracula as the scariest book I've ever read. The plot is a bit wonky at times and the old time portrayal of women is really cringeworthy now, but where Stoker really shone was his descriptions of Dracula, creating a terrifying uncanny valley abomination who nonetheless is able to slip on a human mask to avoid suspicion. Even Bela Lugosi's legendary performance doesn't come close to the shivers the original book gave me.

[psychoticstate]

I really love Jane Austen and Pride and Prejudice is my absolute favorite of hers. I never read it in school but picked it up after getting hot and bothered over Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy.  I've read it many handfuls of times since and JA could read people (and write them) so well.  Her wit was really spectacular and if you can get past some of the dated language, it's an excellent read.

 

I also adore Daphne DuMaurier's Rebecca, which is gothic fiction at its best.  She knew how to write with some serious atmosphere.

 

And I do enjoy Agatha Christie's mysteries.

[angelwoody]

I'm a huge Jane Austen fan as well.  I have loved Pride and Prejudice since the first time I read it at 19 and have read it (and watched various versions of it) countless times.  Now that I'm older (early 40's), I find that Persuasion is nearly tied with P&P for my favorite JA story.  It might not be regarded as one of her best by the critics, but her story of the sadness and regret of a lost chance at love really resonates with me as I've gotten older.  

 

Strangely, Emma Woodhouse is my least favorite JA leading lady - even though some of the other leading ladies were in admittedly weaker books.  I find her to be a vapid, self-important, meddling know-it-all and I can't tell if my intense dislike for her is informed mostly by the way she is written or by Gwyneth Paltrow's (IMO) irritating portrayal of her.  

[halgia]

Strangely, Emma Woodhouse is my least favorite JA leading lady - even though some of the other leading ladies were in admittedly weaker books.  I find her to be a vapid, self-important, meddling know-it-all

Isn't that the point? I've only read P&P in high school and Emma earlier this year, but I thought the entire story of Emma was how she's all meddling and terrible at it and arrogant, but sort of learns her lesson in the end.

[angelwoody]

Isn't that the point? I've only read P&P in high school and Emma earlier this year, but I thought the entire story of Emma was how she's all meddling and terrible at it and arrogant, but sort of learns her lesson in the end.

I'm sure it is the point, it just makes it difficult to root for her when I want to slap her throughout the entire book. And, I can't figure out what Mr. Knightly sees in her because it seems like he could do a lot better.

[Athena]

Yes. Jane Austen even wrote a letter to a family member more or less saying, "I'm writing a protagonist only I will like," She wanted Emma to be annoying so that she could learn lessons by the end of it. I was so annoyed with Emma through the book and it made me question if she deserved Mr Knightley. You know who deserves him? Me. Alright, I'm mostly kidding.

 

A better adaptation of Emma is the 2009 BBC series starring Romola Garai and Jonny Lee Miller. It captures the book almost perfectly. it doesn't mean you'll like Emma anymore, but Garai is a stronger actor than Paltrow IMHO.

 

I think most Austenites would contend Fanny Price as the most annoying of her protagonists. I think Jane was a bit confused why even people at her time didn't like Fanny.

[psychoticstate]

Yes. Jane Austen even wrote a letter to a family member more or less saying, "I'm writing a protagonist only I will like," She wanted Emma to be annoying so that she could learn lessons by the end of it. I was so annoyed with Emma through the book and it made me question if she deserved Mr Knightley. You know who deserves him? Me. Alright, I'm mostly kidding.

 

A better adaptation of Emma is the 2009 BBC series starring Romola Garai and Jonny Lee Miller. It captures the book almost perfectly. it doesn't mean you'll like Emma anymore, but Garai is a stronger actor than Paltrow IMHO.

 

I think most Austenites would contend Fanny Price as the most annoying of her protagonists. I think Jane was a bit confused why even people at her time didn't like Fanny.

 

I will agree that I've never cared for Fanny Price and Mansfield Park is probably my least favorite JA work.  Although I do think the BBC did a good job with the 2009 version. 

 

I thought the 2009 BBC version of Emma was flawless.  RG and JLM were perfect casting (although I did love Jeremy Northam as Mr. Knightley in the Goop version).

 

@angelwoody, I think I've appreciated Persuasion more as I've gotten older as well.  And the movie version with Amanda Root and Cieran Hinds is so good. 

[ExplainItAgain]

I couldn't even begin to count the number of times I've read Pride & Prejudice. Absolutely my favorite book ever. I could quote whole passages.

 

As for other classics, in my top 5 I count A Tale of Two Cities and Gone With the Wind.

[Haleth]

P&P is probably my all time favorite but I do reread all of her books periodically.  Emma is annoying but the story is cute.  I'd rather slap Fanny Price and tell her to quit being such a boring stick in the mud.  Persuasion is a good read and sad, but everything works out in the end.  (Is that a spoiler?  LOL)

 

A Tale of Two Cities is a favorite too.  (I mean, a man who sacrifices himself for the woman he loved from afar for years?  THAT is romantic  Not that 50 Shades of Crap crap.)  Dickens is sometimes a chore but worth the effort.  The first time I read David Copperfield I was surprised how funny it is, with a scattering of absurd characters and comical situations.  The donkeys on the lawn was one of the funniest things I've ever read.

[Sharpie66]

When I read Tess of the D'Ubervilles for my college Victorian lit class, I spent the entire book wanting to smack Tess and tell her to snap out of it!! Ugh, I hated her so much...

 

My favorite "Classic", well, Modern Classic, is Watership Down, which I first read for 8th grade language arts back in 1980, but then re-read in 2006 when I picked it up at the library. Such a fantastic story, so wonderfully told, and the culture is so utterly foreign yet familiar at the same time!  I really love it.

Edited August 6, 2014 by Sharpie66

[Sharpie66]

There is a blog, Kahn's Corner http://www.kahnscorner.com/ , which is featuring the bestselling book of every year of the past century (complete list here: http://www.kahnscorner.com/2013/02/100-years-94-books.html ). There are a lot of early books I have never heard of, and others thst I had no idea were the #1 book of the year. One phenomenon that becomes obvious starting in the 1970s is how the consolidation of publishing houses is reflected in the reduction of different names on the list.

Edited August 7, 2014 by Sharpie66

[wingster55]

Just finished Fahrenheit 451..does that count?

[Rinaldo]

Strangely, Emma Woodhouse is my least favorite JA leading lady - even though some of the other leading ladies were in admittedly weaker books.  I find her to be a vapid, self-important, meddling know-it-all   

I'll chime in that I think that's intentional on Austen's part -- not just that she learns better (and that she's been wrong about nearly everything) in the end, but that she's in a way the typical Austen heroine -- privileged background, lovely, well-liked, non-stop witty -- but seen from the dark side, so to speak. It's as if the author is saying "Sure, we enjoy seeing these young ladies fire off barbs at others, but let's look at how she may seem to others: one sarcastic sentence may wound someone else in a way you can't undo, and well-meant interference with someone who trusts you may mess up their life." I think it's kind of awesome that Austen thought to do that.

 

For me too, Mansfield Park is the one that's hard to take. Most of her books seem to transcend their era and speak directly to us; that one doesn't.

 

This summer I finally indulged myself and made the purchase I've been wanting for years: the Oxford U Press complete Jane Austen. 6 hardbound volumes in a row on my shelf, each with the exhaustive Chapman notes, explication of the manners and usages of the times, lists of characters and places, and nice little extras (like the complete text of the play they perform in MP).

 

A year ago I read Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier for the first time and went out of my mind over it. It's an early and brilliant example of the unreliable narrator -- and I'm not giving away a secret, right in the first chapter the narrator starts backtracking and admitting what he'd left out. If anyone's been put off by the title -- thinking it'll be a war story (it isn't at all) -- have no fear, and dive in.

[Brn2bwild]

 

When I read Tess of the D'Ubervilles for my college Victorian lit class, I spent the entire book wanting to smack Tess and tell her to snap out of it!! Ugh, I hated her so much...

 

Not clear what you mean by that.  She 

gets raped, loses the baby to illness, learns to find happiness again at the dairy and falls in love with Angel, decides to be truthful to Angel, and as a result Angel freaks out and leaves.

 Most of what happens in the book is not her fault, yet she suffers the worst punishment.  No wonder it gets to her toward the end.

Edited August 17, 2014 by Brn2bwild

[Athena]

I really like Thomas Hardy, but all his characters suffer so much especially Tess. Poor Tess. It made me deeply uncomfortable reading some aspects of the book. Hardy does write pastoral and rural scenes very well. Tess is momentarily happy at the diary and it's wonderfully captured. 

[PrincessLuceval]

Thomas Hardy does write scenes very well. Except the first chapter of The Return Of The Native. I think one would have to have been raised on the heath and also love it to read through that chapter. So, so detailed, and so, so uninteresting. Years later I came into a recorded version of the book, read by Alan Rickman, whose voice I love. Even he couldn't make the heath on the moors interesting. The rest of the book is wonderful, such complex characters.

[Haleth]

Strangely, Emma Woodhouse is my least favorite JA leading lady - even though some of the other leading ladies were in admittedly weaker books.  I find her to be a vapid, self-important, meddling know-it-all

 

If I recall she's supposed to be 16?  So yeah.  Vapid, self important, know it all.  Check, check, and check.

[Etta Place]

@Rinaldo Yes, The Good Soldier! I finished it and wondered what exactly I'd read at first. I see a lot of people dismissing it as a rather boring story of marriages, but it does benefit from a closer reading and more thought than that!

[Sharpie66]

The Good Soldier is really an amazing book. I read it for my modern lit class in college, and it was my favorite book I read for that class, and was probably in my top three of books I read for my entire English LIt degree.

 

One day, my teacher was delighted when a classmate (male) and I (female) got into a huge argument in class about the motivations of Leonora and whether her actions were appropriate (I'm being vague here for spoiler-y reasons). He let us go at it for a good 10 minutes. (I still think she was right, or at least justified...)

[stillshimpy]

When I read Tess of the D'Ubervilles for my college Victorian lit class, I spent the entire book wanting to smack Tess and tell her to snap out of it!! Ugh, I hated her so much.

Sharpie, is there any chance you're actually talking about Jude the Obscure and Sue Bridehead? Tess is such a tragic figure and she tries so hard, only to be (likely many a Hardy character) slapped around by cruel fate and a judgmental world. It's just Sue is a prize-winning hand-wringer and fate bemoan-er whereas Tess really wasn't. Mind you, both Jude and Sue could have used a hot cup of "Snap out of it already! Also, move and stop orbiting Christchurch like morose spook. Just a suggestion."

If I recall she's supposed to be 16? So yeah. Vapid, self important, know it all. Check, check, and check.

Emma Woodhouse was 20-21 in Emma :-) Her whole character trajectory seems to be about learning her lesson and finishing the process of growing up.

[Sharpie66]

No, it was definitely Tess. But, I am totally mis-remembering the book, because I could have sworn she got pregnant through an affair, not a rape. All I remember is my irritation with the entire book, which became an irrational hatred for Tess herself. Maybe I just was having issues having to read it for Victorian Lit class. I really should go back and re-read it if I have forgotten such key details, and see if I can re-evaluate it. It has been nearly 30 years since I read it.

Edited August 19, 2014 by Sharpie66

[stillshimpy]

I'm not sure you'd like it any better, Sharpie, but yes, the entire mess was pretty far from being Tess's actual fault and Hardy might as well have named her "Victim of the Patriarchal System". She spends the entire book either being shamed, punished, abandoned, assaulted and is only briefly happy and at peace. She's also supposed to be incredibly beautiful. I'll spoiler the specifics in case anyone doesn't want the book spoiled beyond that vague description.

Tess was raped and her child was a product of that rape. She does eventually have to become the mistress of the man who raped her, after Angel abandons her. Then Angel (who is really kind of a pain-in-the-nether-region as far characters go) returns and finds that Tess has become Alec's mistress.

Then poor freaking Tess kills Alec, who is the man who raped her, and the book ends with Tess's being executed for the murder of Alec. I'm actually leaving out the part about how she was only ever exposed to Alec because she had to replace some livestock for her family -- seriously.

Oh Hardy...you're such fun.

I think I know what you thought it was an affair though, beyond everything else, Alec (the guy who raped her) was referred to as The Seducer a lot, so the book is a tad unclear at certain points as to what happened to poor Tess.

Weirdly, I met my husband while I was reading Jude the Obscure (for fun, because I'm daft apparently) and he tried to flirt with me by talking about Tess of the D'ubervilles, not because he'd read it, he basically hadn't. He read part of it and tried, briefly, to bluff his way through, but quickly realized by the look on my face (which was "Huh?" in the extreme) that he'd better 'fess up.

Then asked what Jude was about and when I told him it was a scathing condemnation of marriage, he started laughing so hard I thought he was going to fall over. It was, without a doubt, the least successful flirtation attempt ever. Cockroaches were mentioned. I still tease him that I married him to save the rest of the world from us. Or something ;-)

Edited August 19, 2014 by stillshimpy

[Rinaldo]

It is, I would say, not diminishing the severity or horror of the rape to say that the passage describing it is so poetic and indirect that the action is easy to miss on a first careless reading. (And indeed, it's a notorious passage for the reading of Great Books in school, students dutifully reading it yet completely unaware that any specific action was being described.) Here are the last 4 paragraphs of the first "phase" (after Tess and Alec have been walking through his woods together):

 

There was no answer. The obscurity was now so great that he could see absolutely nothing but a pale nebulousness at his feet, which represented the white muslin figure he had left upon the dead leaves. Everything else was blackness alike. D'Urberville stooped; and heard a gentle regular breathing. He knelt and bent lower, till her breath warmed his face, and in a moment his cheek was in contact with hers. She was sleeping soundly, and upon her eyelashes there lingered tears.

Darkness and silence ruled everywhere around. Above them rose the primeval yews and oaks of The Chase, in which there poised gentle roosting birds in their last nap; and about them stole the hopping rabbits and hares. But, might some say, where was Tess's guardian angel? where was the providence of her simple faith? Perhaps, like that other god of whom the ironical Tishbite spoke, he was talking, or he was pursuing, or he was in a journey, or he was sleeping and not to be awaked.

Why it was that upon this beautiful feminine tissue, sensitive as gossamer, and practically blank as snow as yet, there should have been traced such a coarse pattern as it was doomed to receive; why so often the coarse appropriates the finer thus, the wrong man the woman, the wrong woman the man, many thousand years of analytical philosophy have failed to explain to our sense of order. One may, indeed, admit the possibility of a retribution lurking in the present catastrophe. Doubtless some of Tess d'Urberville's mailed ancestors rollicking home from a fray had dealt the same measure even more ruthlessly towards peasant girls of their time. But though to visit the sins of the fathers upon the children may be a morality good enough for divinities, it is scorned by average human nature; and it therefore does not mend the matter.

As Tess's own people down in those retreats are never tired of saying among each other in their fatalistic way: "It was to be." There lay the pity of it. An immeasurable social chasm was to divide our heroine's personality thereafter from that previous self of hers who stepped from her mother's door to try her fortune at Trantridge poultry-farm.

Edited August 21, 2014 by Rinaldo

[Athena]

I read Tess only a couple years ago, and the passage creeped me out so much. It still does. Hardy is an excellent writer and it's such an odd juxtaposition for him to write such a horrible scene of rape while doing it beautifully. He does this for censorship reasons too of course, but he's very skilled. There is a very dark theme of ancestral sins in the book as well. Tess is taken advantage of because she is a woman, but also because she is born to the wrong, is poor and lacks resources and education. It's excruciating and sad to read. 

[Sharpie66]

For me, personally, I think my main problem with Hardy is the same issue I had with most of the British Victorian writers I read for that class--I just don't like their writing style!!  We read a lot of essays which, normally, I would have enjoyed, since I prefer non-fiction over fiction, but I just couldn't take Ruskin and all of the rest of them. The only book I truly enjoyed in that entire semester was Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

 

I've read many more American authors from the same century which I enjoyed a lot more than the Brits, which again, was the opposite of my usual pattern of loving British lit over American.

Edited August 22, 2014 by Sharpie66

[stillshimpy]

I agree, there's a more than vaguely oppressive feel to several British authors of that period.  I tend to like Hardy's command of language, but his stories are greatly influenced by the social disparity that was very real, had an incredibly long history and was truly insurmountable for most people of the time in England.  Hardy liked to explore that -- I mentioned Jude up -thread and that's a case-in-point -- and he can be a bit easier to take because he does write about those themes in a truly lyrical fashion.  

 

He certainly doesn't spare the horror of it though.  Little Father Time (Jude's son)

freaking murders Sue and Jude's children and then hangs himself also, at something like the age of ten, because he believes there are too many mouths to be fed.  It's one of the more horrible things I've encountered outside of an actual horror story.

Hardy could go dark like nobody's business, but the man wanted to be remembered as a poet, as opposed to a novelist and although that didn't work out for him despite a grand gesture upon his death *  it's almost impossible to discuss Hardy without discussing his ability to write poetically...while telling some truly horrifying stories.  

 

It's often only in the aftermath that it becomes clearer.  In the scene with Tess and Alec, it's deeply unsettling, even if it isn't crystal clear until Tess has a baby, at which it point it's more a confirmation of "Oh shit" because she names the poor kid Sorrow.  <---subtle Hardy, very subtle.  

 

I think American authors of the same period don't have that underlying "It's all bloody well hopeless, gah!" underpinning.  We were a younger nation and then one of the things I read in the last few years was Becoming Victoria which details some of the things people of the Victorian era just took as the way things were, including starving children, raped women, desperation as a way of life and the added horror of being taught that some omnipotent power had ordained it that way purposefully.  In the U.S. we were far less likely to believe that other people were truly "our betters" and the literature of the time seemed to reflect that.  

 

* The man had his heart removed from his dead body and buried with his first wife and his ashes sprinkled in Poet's Corner (I think that's the way that went, although I'm trying to remember if it was the other way around and I'm pretty sure it was "heart in grave of first wife, ashes Poet's Corner" ) ....which a more naked attempted to be poetic would be hard to find....even though Hardy wasn't particularly happy in his first marriage.  

Edited August 24, 2014 by stillshimpy

[Athena]

I agree, there's a more than vaguely oppressive feel to several British authors of that period.  I tend to like Hardy's command of language, but his stories are greatly influenced by the social disparity that was very real, had an incredibly long history and was truly insurmountable for most people of the time in England.  Hardy liked to explore that -- I mentioned Jude up -thread and that's a case-in-point -- and he can be a bit easier to take because he does write about those themes in a truly lyrical fashion.    

 

Victorian literature is polarizing for a reason. There is definitely an oppressive feel to it. George Eliot has a similar feel, and of course, Dickens. I haven't ventured into Trollope, but it was a fascinating time in English literature. 

 

I think Hardy has a great command of knowledge, and his characters are sympathetic because of how much they suffer. I never want to be friends with his characters, but he imbues them with pathos. He does address social issues as well.

 

I think what makes Tess a memorable work is that her troubles are classic for women from poor backgrounds. She is used, marginalized, and ultimately left powerless because of the situation she was born into. Aside from the ending, her story is not uncommon of women from poorer societies and developing countries. Even in the first world, there are girls like Tess.  

[Haleth]

I think what makes Tess a memorable work is that her troubles are classic for women from poor backgrounds. She is used, marginalized, and ultimately left powerless because of the situation she was born into. Aside from the ending, her story is not uncommon of women from poorer societies and developing countries. Even in the first world, there are girls like Tess.

 

Sister Carrie  Now there's another uplifting story about a woman who is ground into the earth until there is nothing left.  She also makes some very bad choices but has little opportunity to pull herself out of the situation.

Edited August 25, 2014 by Haleth

[AuntiePam]

Some of my favourite dead authors: Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, Alexandre Dumas, Thomas Hardy, Leo Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Homer, W. Somerset Maugham, and many more.

 

Love Gaskell and Maugham.  Really need to read some Austen and Dumas.  Tolstoy's not for me -- War and Peace wasn't, anyway -- but I do like Dostoyevsky and Chekhov and Turgenev.

 

Also Sinclair Lewis, Booth Tarkington, John O'Hara, Ben Ames Williams, Frank Yerby, Thomas Costain, Irwin Shaw, Willa Cather, Evelyn Waugh, Edith Wharton, and I just recently read Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn for the first time. 

[Mrsjumbo]

The only Hardy I read was The Mayor of Casterbridge & I could barely get through it, I kept falling asleep!

I love Austen (P & P is my favorite) & Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities is my favorite). Which seems like obvious choices but I love their other works too.

Love Tolkein.

And I didn't see mentioned here, Nancy Mitford. Love in a Cold Climate & The Pursuit of Love are LOL funny!

[sunshinelover]

I just read Robert Louis Stevenson's The Curious Case of Dr Jekyll and Hyde for the first time; I enjoyed it.  Inspired to read it after watching a British modern-day adaptation of the tale.  What surprised me was the length!  Barely 100 pages, and has become such a classic with so many retellings of the story.

[Eegah]

And of course, their being the same person is the big twist ending. That was quite a shock.

[Brn2bwild]

For anyone who likes reading about the period but is put off by the dated terminology, I recommend What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist-the Facts of Daily Life in Nineteenth-Century England.

 

I used to own that book.  It's good for a casual introduction to the 19th century, but I disliked how it blurred the lines between Austen's era and Dickens's.  So much changed during those 30-50 years.  Towns and cities (including London) exploded in population and became more industrial, and more polluted.  Rail became a popular form of travel.  Wage, hour, and education laws paved the way for major changes to the class system.  While some people carried on with the Pride and Prejudice way of life all the way into the Downton Abbey period (and beyond), more experienced a much grittier, urban environment where there was a greater range of opportunities.   

[SosaLola]

Pride and Prejudice, hands down, is my all time favorite classic. I also enjoy reading Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream used to be my all time fave, but after watching Joss Whedon's version of Much Ado About Nothing and rereading that play, my mind has changed. 

 

Lately I've been reading lots of novels that are considered for children and young adults in order to pick the best for my students ( 6th Grade), last year we read Little Women. Last semester we read Daddy-Long-Legs, and this semester we will be reading Anne of Green Gables. And I must say, I loved all three books. 

[Sharpie66]

I love Daddy-Long-Legs. After discussing it on another thread here, I downloaded it from Gutenberg and re-read it for the first time in about 25 years, and it is still as good as I remembered.

 

I was watching the Ken Burns documentary miniseries on baseball, and in the first ep, they mention that women's colleges had baseball teams in the 1850s, but that they didn't last long. People thought all that exercise was bad for the fragile female frames (ugh!). In Daddy-Long-Legs, she joins a basketball team and delights in all the physical activity she has as well as her skill in playing the game, and it is so refreshing to read that.

[Eegah]

I mentioned on the non-fiction thread that I've been loving Brian Jay Jones' biography of Washington Irving, and now I've been reading through his first book A History of New York, which is everything I wanted from the way Jones described it.

 

Even besides the contents themselves, the book is particularly notable for how Irving pretty much invented viral marketing around it, all the way back in 1809. He bought ads in a bunch of newspapers purportedly from a New York hotel looking for one of its tenants, a strange old man named Diedrich Knickerbocker. He supposedly tended to go on long walks muttering to himself, and the ads stated that if he didn't return soon, they would publish a manuscript for a history textbook they found in his room to get the money for his stay. When the deadline passed and the book was published, people were lined up all over the place to see just what this weird story was all about, and discovered a deeply funny satire of stuffy old history textbooks that had become popular at the time, plus tons of jabs at politicians Irving had developed problems with during his time with his brother's political magazine. It was also very popular among his writing peers, garnering praise from the likes of Charles Dickens, Lord Byron, and Irving's own personal hero, Walter Scott. And it's still tremendously funny and readable today, even if the stuff about specific politicians needs footnotes now.

[TrininisaScorp]

I love Austen!  Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility & Persuasion rank among my favs.  Colin Firth = yes, please.  P&P always feels so fun and relevant when I see it adapted.  

 

Jane Eyre continues to be on my reread, comfort list.  Jane and Rochester and the Gothic goodness never fails to get me enthralled.  I received Jane Eyre's Husband for Christmas.  It is a retelling of the tale from Edward's POV from his childhood thru the tale we know and beyond.  I particularly liked that it takes you through the Eyre-Rochester marriage until both their deaths, so you can see how to all ends up.  The author plays up the sensual nature you glean a bit from the original source material (in Bronte's fashion), which is an interesting choice.  

 

Dumas' Count of Monte Cristo was a serious page-turner for me.  Like, the best soap opera EVER.  

 

I was introduced to these 3 authors in high school and I'm grateful. Love going back to that well.

 

One of my favorite random undergrad courses was Shakespearean Literature.  My professor taught us how to read the prose and spent a great deal of time grounding us in the context of the time, so we could understand and appreciate the humor, politics, social commentary in the works.  To this day, I enjoy Shakespeare and share the love my professor imparted to us.  Highly recommend The Hollow Crown (2012's adaptation of the Henriad - Richard II, Henry IV Part 1 and 2 and Henry V);Ben Whishaw is amazing as Richard II and I adored Tom Hiddleston as Hal/Henry V and Simon Russell Beale as Falstaff.  

[whatsatool]

Loved Emma,Far From the Madding Crowd, Middlemarch and Elizabeth Gaskell's novels.

[Sir RaiderDuck OMS]

Not sure if Mario Puzo's The Godfather is widely considered one of the "classics," but I love it nonetheless. It's both a classic American innocence-to-corruption story and has been enormously influential on one segment of society (as a lot of mafia organizations sort of used it as a guide as to how they should behave).

[Spartan Girl]

I think somebody on Tumblr described Tess of the D'Urbervilles best: Tess' life was just one middle finger after another.

It's disturbing how some aspects of the double standard have never changed. Years later, with every adaptation of the book, there is still a heated debate whether Alec raped or seduced Tess. I think it's pretty obvious it was the latter, but even if it was seduction, I still don't understand how anyone could find Alec appealing -- probably the same people who are fans of Christian Grey and Edward Cullen. He uses her, stalks her, torments her, and eventually extorts her into being his sex slave! I didn't blame her for finally snapping and killing him, I really didn't.

I didn't care that much for Angel either. The only exception was when Eddie Redmayne played him in the Masterpiece Theater miniseries, because he seemed more torn up about Tess' fate (and his own role in driving her off the deep end) than in other versions. The part where he breaks down right before Tess leaves with the police was heartbreaking...it helped that they cut that stupid line from the book where Tess says she's glad she won't "live long enough for him to despise her". Bleh.

[NutMeg]

I would like to add The Great Gatsby

 

and The Picture of Dorian Grey.

 

and anything by Somerset Maughan

 

or Edith Wharton

[BatmanBeatles]

 

I really like Steinbeck's Dustbowl Trilogy, set during and after the Great Depression. Such a rich setting, and so fucking bleak. And I've always admired Steinbeck's committed empathy for the plight of the working class.

So do I. However, my husband dipped his toe in the Steinbeck novels with Of Mice And Men and he hated it. He knew things don't work out for George and Lenny, but

he had no idea George would shoot Lenny

.