Reading the Classics: My Hope-to-Read List from Classical Literature

The good folk over at The Classics Club are doing a great job of encouraging readers to seek out those books we might call ‘classical literature’ and give them a go. There are plenty of Books to Read Before You Die compilations out there but with all that wonderful new stuff being published all the time, it’s easy to forget about the ones we collect at church fairs with good intentions of crossing them off the list.

The good ones never really go away and publishers such as Penguin with their orange series, Virago’s Modern Classics (Hachette) and Persephone Books bring out lovely new editions that can be addictively collectible – to say nothing of public libraries. The Classics Club offers a chance to keep them on your radar with online discussion and sharing part of the deal. But first you have to make a list.

I confess my list is roughly thrown together and in no particular order. I have included a mix of books that are obvious classics and quite a few from early to mid 20th century women authors – a particular interest of mine. There are some I’ve read before and want to read again to see if I still like them. Tweaking and adding to the list is also a possibility. This is what I’ve come up with so far:

1. Sanditon by Jane Austen 
2. Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte 
3. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell 
4. Elizabeth and Her German Garden by Elizabeth Von Arnim 
5. Kim by Rudyard Kipling 
6. The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West 
7. My Antonia by Willa Cather 
8. The Happy Foreigner by Enid Bagnold 
9. Open the Door by Catherine Carswell 
10. Pomfrett Towers by Angela Thirkell 
11. Diary of a Provincial Lady by E M Delafield 
12. Frost in May by Antonia White 
13. Company Parade by Storm Jameson
14. Full House by M J Farrell (Molly Keane)
15. The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann
16. Silas Marner by George Eliot
17. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
18. The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
19. Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee
20. The Group by Mary McCarthy 
21. A Question of Upbringing by Anthony Powell
22. Friends and Relations by Elizabeth Bowen
23. The Sweet Dove Died by Barbara Pym
24. Victoria Cottage by D E Stevenson
25. The Corner that Held Them by Sylvia Townsend Warner
26. The Wings of a Dove by Henry James
27. Of Human Bondage by W Somerset Maugham
28. The Beat of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen
29. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
30. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winnifred Watson
31. Justine by Alexander Durrell
32. Chéri by Colette
33. Harriet Hume by Rebecca West
34. The Bell by Iris Murdoch
35. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome
36. Round the Bend by Neville Shute
37. The Women’s Room by Marilyn French
38. The Grass Is Singing by Doris Lessing
39. The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham
40. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
41. We Have Always Lived in a Castle by Shirley Jackson
42. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
43. Sons and Lovers by D H Lawrence
44. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
45. True Grit by Charles Portis
46. Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott
47. Lorna Done by R D Blackmore
48. Watership Down by Richard Adams
49. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
50. Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man by Sigfried Sassoon
51. Tender Is the Night by F Scott Fitzgerald
52. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
53. The House on the Strand by Daphne du Maurier
54. Harriet Said by Beryl Bainbridge
55. Nightingale Wood by Stella Gibbons
56. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
57. King Solomon’s Mines by H Rider Haggard
58. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
59. A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
60. Green Dolphin Country by Elizabeth Goudge
61. Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
62. Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
63. The Foundling by Charlotte Brontë
64. The Warden by Anthony Trollope
65. Squadron Airborne by Elliston Trevor
66. A Game of Hide and Seek by Elizabeth Taylor
67. The Land of Spices by Kate O’Brien
68. Green Hands by Barbara Whitton
69. Lotte in Weimar by Thomas Mann
70. Stoner by John Williams
71. Under the Net by Iris Murdoch
72. ‘The Forsythe Saga by John Galsworthy
73. A Buyer’s Market by Anthony Powell
74. The Acceptance World by Anthony Powell
75. At Lady Molly’s by Anthony Powell
76. Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant by Anthony Powell
77. The Kindly Ones by Anthony Powell
78. The Valley of Bones by Anthony Powell
79. The Soldier’s Art by Anthony Powell
80. The Military Philosophers by Anthony Powell
81. Books Do Furnish a Room by Anthony Powell
82. Temporary Kings by Anthony Powell
83. Hearing Sweet Harmonies by Anthony Powell
84. The Doves of Venus by Olivia Manning
85. South Riding by Winifred Hotly
86. One Pair of Hands by Monica Dickens
87. Perfume by Patrick Suskind
88. A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle
89. Out of Africa by Karen Blixen
90. How I live Now by Meg Rosoff
91. Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
92. Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves
93. Music in the Hills by D E Stevenson
94. Susan Settles Down by Molly Clavering
95. Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym
96. All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville West
97. O Pioneer! By Willa Cather
98. The Rainy Moon and Other Stories by Colette
99. Mandoa, Mandoa! by Winifred Hotly
100. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
101. The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens
102. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
103. A Passage to India by E M Forster
104. Howard’s End by E M Forster
105. A Room with a View by E M Forster
106. Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier
107. The Harp in the South by Ruth Park
108. Station Life in New Zealand by Lady Barker
109. Persuasion by Jane Austen
110. Emma by Jane Austen
111. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
112. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
113. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
114. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
115. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
116. Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
117. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
118. Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne
119. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
120. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë
121. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
122. The Waves by Virginia Woolf
123. The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
124. Miss Buncle’s Book by D E Stevenson
125. The Makings of a Marchioness by Frances Hodgson Burnett
126. Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple
127. Cheerful Weather for a Wedding by Julia Strachey
128. Saplings by Noel Streatfield
129. At Mrs Lippincote’s by Elizabeth Taylor
130. The River by Rumer Goden
131. Kingfisher’s Catch Fire by Rumer Goden
132. George Beneath a Paper Moon by Nina Bawden
133. Crewe Train by Rose Macaulay
134. A Woman of My Age by Nina Bawden
135. Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky
136. Thank You, Jeeves by P G Wodehouse
137. Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan
138. The Nine Taylors by Dorothy L Sayers
139. Everything that Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor
140. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
141. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
142. The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark
143. The Garden Party and other stories  by Katherine Mansfield
144. Nor the Years Condemn by Robin Hyde
145. The Godwits Fly by Robin Hyde
146. Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stephenson
147. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
148. The Shrimp and the Anemone by L P Hartley
149. The Sixth Heaven by L P Hartley
150. Eustace and Hilda by L P Hartley