Yes, this is yet-another-list but I am reposting it because the topic isn’t just good books to read but moreover it suggests many titles from that undefinable cloud known as classic literature. The list comes from About.com and was posted by Adam Burgess, the About.com Classic Literature Expert. I see some room for improvement in this list but overall it seems useful. I marked those titles I have already read (some sad little gaps): how well-read are you?
So here are 101 Classics To Get You Started:
- The Count of Monte Cristo (1845) Alexandre Dumas
- The Three Musketeers (1844) Alexandre Dumas
- Black Beauty (1877) Anna Sewell
- Agnes Grey (1847) Anne Bronte
- The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) Anne Bronte
- The Prisoner of Zenda (1894) Anthony Hope
- Barchester Towers (1857) Anthony Trollope
- The Complete Sherlock Holmes (1887-1927) Arthur Conan Doyle
- Dracula (1897) Bram Stoker
- The Adventures of Pinocchio (1883) Carlo Collodi
- A Tale of Two Cities (1859) Charles Dickens
- David Copperfield (1850) Charles Dickens
- Great Expectations (1861) Charles Dickens
- Hard Times (1854) Charles Dickens
- Oliver Twist (1837) Charles Dickens
- Westward Ho! (1855) Charles Kingsley
- Jane Eyre (1847) Charlotte Brontë
- Villette (1853) Charlotte Brontë
- Sons and Lovers (1913) D.H. Lawrence
- Robinson Crusoe (1719) Daniel Defoe
- Moll Flanders (1722) Daniel Defoe
- Tales of Mystery & Imagination (1908) Edgar Allan Poe
- The Age of Innocence (1920) Edith Wharton
- Cranford (1853) Elizabeth Gaskell
- Wuthering Heights (1847) Emily Brontë
- The Secret Garden (1911) Frances Hodgson Burnett
- Crime and Punishment (1866) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- The Brothers Karamazov (1880) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) G.K. Chesterton
- The Phantom Of The Opera (1909-10) Gaston Leroux
- Middlemarch (1871-72) George Eliot
- Silas Marner (1861) George Eliot
- The Mill on the Floss (1860) George Eliot
- The Diary of a Nobody (1892) George and Weedon Grossmith
- The Princess and the Goblin (1872) George MacDonald
- The Time Machine (1895) H.G. Wells
- Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) Harriet Beecher Stowe
- Walden (1854) Henry David Thoreau
- The Aspern Papers (1888) Henry James
- The Turn of the Screw (1898) Henry James
- King Solomon’s Mines (1885) Henry Rider Haggard
- Moby Dick (1851) Herman Melville
- The Odyssey (circa 8 BC) Homer
- The Call of the Wild (1903) Jack London
- Last of the Mohicans (1826) James Fenimore Cooper
- Emma (1815) Jane Austen
- Mansfield Park (1814) Jane Austen
- Persuasion (1817) Jane Austen
- Pride and Prejudice (1813) Jane Austen
- Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) John Bunyan
- Gulliver’s Travels (1726) Jonathan Swift
- Heart of Darkness (1899) Joseph Conrad
- Lord Jim (1900) Joseph Conrad
- 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1870) Jules Verne
- Around the World in Eighty Days (1873) Jules Verne
- The Awakening (1899) Kate Chopin
- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) L. Frank Baum
- Tristram Shandy (1759-1767) Laurence Sterne
- Anna Karenina (1877) Leo Tolstoy
- War and Peace (1869) Leo Tolstoy
- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) Lewis Carroll
- Through the Looking-Glass (1871) Lewis Carroll
- Little Women (1868-69) Louisa May Alcott
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) Mark Twain
- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) Mark Twain
- Frankenstein (1818) Mary Shelley
- Don Quixote of La Mancha (1605 & 1615) Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
- Twice-Told Tales (1837) Nathaniel Hawthorne
- The Scarlet Letter (1850) Nathaniel Hawthorne
- The Prince (1532) Niccolai Machiavelli
- The Four Million (1906) O. Henry
- The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) Oscar Wilde
- The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) Oscar Wilde
- The Metamorphoses (circa 8 AD) Ovid
- Lorna Doone (1869) R. D. Blackmore
- Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) Robert Louis Stevenson
- Treasure Island (1883) Robert Louis Stevenson
- Kim (1901) Rudyard Kipling
- The Jungle Book (1894) Rudyard Kipling
- Ivanhoe (1820) Sir Walter Scott
- Rob Roy (1817) Sir Walter Scott
- The Red Badge of Courage (1895) Stephen Crane
- What Katy Did (1872) Susan Coolidge
- Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891-92) Thomas Hardy
- The Mayor Of Casterbridge (1886) Thomas Hardy
- Utopia (1516) Thomas More
- Rights of Man (1791) Thomas Paine
- Les Misèrables (1862) Victor Hugo
- The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (1819-20) Washington Irving
- The Moonstone (1868) Wilkie Collins
- The Woman in White (1859) Wilkie Collins
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1600) William Shakespeare
- As You Like It (1623) William Shakespeare
- Hamlet (1603) William Shakespeare
- Henry V (1600) William Shakespeare
- King Lear (1608) William Shakespeare
- Othello (1622) William Shakespeare
- Richard III (1597) William Shakespeare
- The Merchant of Venice (1600) William Shakespeare
- The Tempest (1623) William Shakespeare
- Vanity Fair (1848) William Thackeray
A Celebration of Reading 
The Prince is a short and surprising book. I recommend it.
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The Prince is one of those books that I probably have read most of through anthologies etc. but haven’t made the unitary effort to read it from cover to cover. For years I contended that I had read Finnegans Wake even though I knew I never read the complete book but only many many excerpts. Now that I have read FW I’m not sure I’m any more familiar with the novel than when I was only reading it in spots and sections.
Utopia is another one like that.
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LOL, Mike. I know just what you mean about digging the hole deeper. I enjoyed Bleak House. It and Great Expectations are about the only Dickens books that I enjoyed, although I’ve read almost all of them. I never made it through War and Peace. Not throwing it in the hole, but writing it off. I did manage to make it through Magic Mountain, but it’s not a favorite at all for me.
Les Miserables is a hefty book. I didn’t find it a chore to read, although it took a while. Enjoyed Barchester Towers a lot. I’d chose it over Les Miz and even over Woman in White. (I’m in The Moonstone camp, lol.)
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I’ve read 16 of the first twenty. Surprised that you’ve never read The Count of Monte Cristo. It’s a great favorite of mine. Probably makes my top ten of all time list.
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There are several large books that I have mostly read but, like Bleak House where I had about 100 pages to go, some life event had me put down the book and as the months and years went by, it became less and less likely that I would be able to start where I left off. Two novels I know I went back to page 1 and read them all the way through—Magic Mountain and War & Peace—but I haven’t gotten back to several others—Joseph and His Brothers, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Recognitions.
I keep them on the list and fully expect to read them to completion one day but there are so many books out there to read and I just keep digging the hole deeper.
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