Lately I’ve been getting into reading more classics. I majored in English in college, so I have read a lot of what are considered classics in the past, but life has gotten in the way of my continuing reading education. While I still greatly anticipate the coming new releases and will continue to read those, I will be sprinkling in some older works into the mix. Out of the thousands of “classics” in the world, I have created a list of 225 books that intrigue me, and this will be the guidepost for my future endeavors into the classics. Some of these books are books I’ve already tried and either loved or hated. Some are due for a reread, and some deserve a second chance. I’m interested to see if my feelings have changed.
So, with this list, there are no rules. These are the classics I want to read. It’s merely a list so that I don’t forget any books I have found interesting and would like to read. A reminder that I once thought I would like to read a book, so that when I feel the urge to read something a little less modern, I have a list to turn to. Just because a book made it onto this list does not impose any duty or requirement to that book. There is no time limit. If I go an entire year without reading a single book on this list, that will be okay. There is no order in which these books must be read. In fact, there is no requirement that I have to read any of these books at all. If I change my mind, or if I decide to DNF a book, that’s perfectly fine with me. I’ll be working to keep track of my progress on this page, so check back often!
So, without further ado, the list:
- Alcott, Louisa May: Little Women
- Angelou, Maya: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
- Atwood, Margaret: A Handmaid’s Tale
- Atwood, Margaret: Alias Grace
- Austen, Jane: Emma
- Austen, Jane: Mansfield Park
- Austen, Jane: Persuasion
- Austen, Jane: Pride and Prejudice
- Austen, Jane: Sense and Sensibility
- Austen, Jane: Lady Susan
- Austen, Jane: Northanger Abbey
- Beckett, Samuel: Waiting for Godot
- Bradbury, Ray: Fahrenheit 451
- Bradbury, Ray: The Martian Chronicles
- Braddon, Mary Elizabet: Lady Audley’s Secret
- Bronte, Anne: Agnes Grey
- Bronte, Anne: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
- Bronte, Charlotte: Jane Eyre
- Bronte, Charlotte: Villete
- Bronte, Charlotte: The Professor
- Bronte, Charlotte: Shirley
- Bronte, Emily: Wuthering Heights
- Burnett, Frances Hodgson: A Little Princess
- Burnett, Frances Hodgson: The Making of a Marchioness
- Burnett, Frances Hodgson: The Secret Garden
- Burnett, Frances Hodgson: The Shuttle
- Cather, Willa: My Antonia
- Cather, Willa: O Pioneers!
- Chaucer, Geoffrey: The Canterbury Tales
- Chopin, Kate: The Awakening
- Coates, John: Patience
- Collins, Wilkie: The Moonstone
- Collins, Wilkie: The Woman in White
- Collins, Wilkie: The Haunted Hotel
- Cooper, James Fenimore: The Last of the Mohicans
- Crane, Stephen: Red Badge of Courage
- deCervantes, Miguel: Don Quixote
- Defoe, Daniel: Moll Flanders
- Defoe, Daniel: Robinson Crusoe
- Delafield, E.M.: Diary of a Provincial Lady
- Dickens, Charles: Bleak House
- Dickens, Charles: David Copperfield
- Dickens, Charles: Little Dorrit
- Dickens, Charles: The Old Curiosity Shoppe
- Dickens, Charles: Our Mutual Friend
- Dickens, Charles: Great Expectations
- Dickens, Charles: Hard Times
- Dickens, Charles: Nicholas Nickleby
- Dickens, Charles: Oliver Twist
- Dickens, Charles: Tale of Two Cities
- Dostoevesky, Fyodor: Crime and Punishment
- Dostoevesky, Fyodor: The Brothers Karamazov
- Dostoevesky, Fyodor: The Idiot
- Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan: The Complete Sherlock Holmes
- Du Maurier, Daphne: Rebecca
- Du Maurier, Daphne: My Cousin Rachel
- Dumas, Alexandre: Count of Monte Cristo
- Dumas, Alexandre: The Man in the Iron Mask
- Dumas, Alexandre: The Three Musketeers
- Eliot, T.S.: Murder in the Cathedral
- Eliot, T.S.: The Waste Land
- Eliot, George: Middlemarch
- Eliot, George: Mill on the Floss
- Eliot, George: Silas Marner
- Ellison, Ralph: The Invisible Man
- Faulkner, William: Absalom, Absalom!
- Faulkner, William: As I Lay Dying
- Faulkner, William: The Sound and the Fury
- Fielding, Henry: Tom Jones
- Fitzgerald, F. Scott: Tender is the Night
- Fitzgerald, F. Scott: The Beautiful and Damned
- Fitzgerald, F. Scott: This Side of Paradise
- Fitzgerald, F. Scott: The Great Gatsby
- Flaubert, Gustav: Madame Bovary
- Forster, E.M.: Passage to India
- Forster, E.M.: Room With a View
- Gaskell, Elizabeth: Cranford
- Gaskell, Elizabeth: Mary Barton
- Gaskell, Elizabeth: North and South
- Gaskell, Elizabeth: Wives and Daughters
- Glaspell, Susan: Fidelity
- Golding, William: Lord of the Flies
- Gutcheon, Beth: Still Missing
- Hardy, Thomas: Far From the Madding Crowd
- Hardy, Thomas: Jude the Obscure
- Hardy, Thomas: Mayor of Casterbridge
- Hardy, Thomas: Return of the Native
- Hardy, Thomas: Tess of the D’Urbervilles
- Hawthorne, Nathaniel: The House of Seven Gables
- Hawthorne, Nathaniel: The Scarlet Letter
- Hawthorne, Nathaniel: The Blithedale Romance
- Heller, Joseph: Catch-22
- Hemingway, Ernest: A Farewell to Arms
- Hemingway, Ernest: A Moveable Feast
- Hemingway, Ernest: For Whom the Bell Tolls
- Hemingway, Ernest: The Old Man and the Sea
- Hemingway, Ernest: The Sun Also Rises
- Hesse, Hermann: Siddhartha
- Hesse, Hermann: Steppenwolf
- Holding, Elisabeth Sanxay: The Blank Wall
- Homer: The Iliad
- Homer: The Odyssey
- Hugo, Victor: Les Miserables
- Hugo, Victor: The Hunchback of Notre Dame
- Hurston, Zora Neale: Their Eyes Were Watching God
- Huxley, Aldous: Brave New World
- Ibsen, Henrick: Doll’s House
- Irving, Washington: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
- Ishiguro, Kazuo: Remains of the Day
- James, Henry: Daisy Miller
- James, Henry: Portrait of a Lady
- James, Henry: Turn of the Screw
- James, Henry: Washington Square
- Joyce, James: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- Joyce, James: The Dubliners
- Kafka, Franz: Metamorphosis
- Kafka, Franz: The Trial
- Kerouac, Jack: On the Road
- Kesey, Ken: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
- Lawrence, D.H.: Lady Chatterley’s Lover
- Lawrence, D.H.: Sons and Lovers
- Lee, Harper: To Kill a Mockingbird
- Marquez, Gabriel Garcia: One Hundred Years of Solitude
- Maugham, W. Somerset: Of Human Bondage
- Melville, Herman: Bartleby the Scrivner
- Melville, Herman: Billy Budd
- Melville, Herman: Moby Dick
- Miller, Arthur: Death of a Salesman
- Miller, Arthur: The Crucible
- Milton, John: Paradise Lost
- Mitchell, Margaret: Gone with the Wind
- Montgomery, L.M.: Anne of Green Gables
- Morrison, Toni: Beloved
- Morrison, Toni: Song of Solomon
- Morrison, Toni: Sula
- Morrison, Toni: The Bluest Eye
- Nabokov, Vladimir: Lolita
- O’Conner, Flannery: Wise Blood
- Orwell, George: 1984
- Orwell, George: Animal Farm
- Paine, Thomas: Common Sense
- Panter-Downes, Mollie: Good Evening, Mrs. Craven
- Plath, Sylvia: The Bell Jar
- Plath, Sylvia: The Journals of Sylvia Plath
- Plato: The Trial and Death of Socrates
- Remarque: All Quiet on the Western Front
- Rhys, Jean: Wide Sargasso Sea
- Salinger, J.D.: The Catcher in the Rye
- Salinger, J.D.: Nine Stories
- Salinger, J.D.: Franny and Zooey
- Salinger, J.D.: Rise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters and Seymour
- Shakespeare, William: A Midsummer Night’s Dream
- Shakespeare, William: A Winter’s Tale
- Shakespeare, William: All’s Well That Ends Well
- Shakespeare, William: Antony and Cleopatra
- Shakespeare, William: As You Like It
- Shakespeare, William: The Comedy of Errors
- Shakespeare, William: Hamlet
- Shakespeare, William: Henry IV
- Shakespeare, William: Julius Caesar
- Shakespeare, William: King Lear
- Shakespeare, William: Love’s Labor’s Lost
- Shakespeare, William: Macbeth
- Shakespeare, William: Measure for Measure
- Shakespeare, William: The Merry Wives of Windsor
- Shakespeare, William: Merchant of Venice
- Shakespeare, William: Much Ado About Nothing
- Shakespeare, William: Othello
- Shakespeare, William: Richard III
- Shakespeare, William: Romeo and Juliet
- Shakespeare, William: The Taming of the Shrew
- Shakespeare, William: The Tempest
- Shakespeare, William: Twelfth Night
- Shakespeare, William: Two Gentlemen of Verona
- Shelley, Mary: Frankenstein
- Silko, Leslie Marmon: Ceremony
- Sinclair, Upton: The Jungle
- Sophocles: Antigone
- Sophocles: Oedipus Rex
- Steinbeck, John: Of Mice and Men
- Steinbeck, John: The Grapes of Wrath
- Steinbeck, John: The Winter of Our Discontent
- Steinbeck, John: Cannery Row
- Steinbeck, John: East of Eden
- Steinbeck, John: The Pearl
- Steinbeck, John: Tortilla Flat
- Steinbeck, John: Travels with Charley in Search of America
- Stevenson, D.E.: Miss Buncle’s Book
- Stevenson, Robert Louis: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
- Stevenson, Robert Louis: Treasure Island
- Stoker, Bram: Dracula
- Stowe, Harriet Beecher: Uncle Tom’s Cabin
- Strachey, Julia: Cheerful Weather for the Wedding
- Streatfield, Noel: Saplings
- Swift, Jonathon: Gulliver’s Travels
- Thackeray, William Makepeace: Vanity Fair
- Thoreau, Henry David: Civil Disobedience
- Thoreau, Henry David: Walden
- Tolkein, J.R.R.: The Hobbit
- Tolkein, J.R.R.: The Lord of the Rings
- Tolstoy, Leo: Anna Karenina
- Tolstoy, Leo: War and Peace
- Twain, Mark: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
- Twain, Mark: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
- Verne, Jules: Journey to the Center of the Earth
- Verne, Jules: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
- Vonnegut, Kurt: Slaughterhouse Five
- Walker, Alice: The Color Purple
- Watson, Winifred: Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
- Wells, H.G.: The Time Machine
- Wells, H.G.: The War of the Worlds
- Wharton, Edith: Ethan Frome
- Wharton, Edith: The Age of Innocence
- Wharton, Edith: The Glimpses of the Moon
- Wharton, Edith: The House of Mirth
- Whipple, Dorothy: Someone at a Distance
- Whitman, Walt: Leaves of Grass
- Wilde, Oscar: The Picture of Dorian Gray
- Williams, Tennessee: A Streetcar Named Desire
- Williams, Tennessee: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
- Woolf, Virginia: Mrs. Dalloway
- Woolf, Virginia: Orlando
- Woolf, Virginia: A Room of One’s Own
- Woolf, Virginia: To the Lighthouse
- Zola, Emile: Germinal
