Classics

[stoutfellow]

I just finished reading Jane Eyre.

As far as nineteenth-century English-language literature goes, my experience is a bit spotty. I've read a lot of Dickens and a fair bit of Scott, Eliot, Collins, and Trollope; on this side of the pond, I've read quite a bit of Twain and some Hawthorne and Melville. I haven't read anything by Thackeray or Hardy, nor by Irving or Cooper (although I have Library of America volumes of both of the latter two). Any prose writer I haven't mentioned, you can probably assume I haven't dipped into. (Oh, wait; I've read Wuthering Heights as well.)

Anyone want to make any suggestions?

Actually, I'm debating tackling Les Miserables; I have a three-volume French edition that I bought in Paris in '89. That, however, will require considerable effort, and I may put it off yet again.

Addendum. My memory is going. I've also read a small amount of Kipling, and quite a bit of Austen, not to mention (in various amounts) Lewis Carroll, H. Rider Haggard, Arthur Conan Doyle, George Macdonald, O. Henry, and Robert Louis Stevenson.

Comments

[oilhistorian.livejournal.com]

Hugo is worth the effort, though I'll be the first to admit I read Les Mis in English rather than the original French.

I also really enjoy Cooper's works, though that may be the historian in me coming out.

For something a little different, might I suggest Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward? Late 19th century, but nevertheless an important and interesting work. Fairly short as well. More of a political novel than a literary novel, but intriguing.

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

Come to think of it, I did read Looking Backward - or at least attempt to - many years ago (probably in my teens). I may give it another try. Thanks!

[oilhistorian.livejournal.com]

How could I forget! Kipling. No better sense of the late Victorian Empire than in his works, both fiction and nonfiction.

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

D'oh back atcha; my memory must be going. I have read some Kipling, although, come to think of it, only his works for children - the Jungle Books, "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi", the Just-So Stories. I've never read Kim or The Light That Failed. I've got a (woefully incomplete) set of his short stories somewhere around here...

[dan-ad-nauseam.livejournal.com]

You seem to have missed Austen.

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

Ack. Definitely memory loss. Yes, I've read the six standard novels.

[dan-ad-nauseam.livejournal.com]

"Standard" = All

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

Not precisely; there are also the incomplete novels The Watsons and Sanditon.

[carbonelle.livejournal.com]

Thackery's VANITY FAIR is interesting on so many levels - only one of which is that Thackery is the next generation writing after the Napoleonic War - a bit like Boomer's tackling World War 2 novels.

Also good: MILL ON THE FLOSS by George Elliot.

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

Thackeray is probably the most important nineteenth-century English author I've never read; I'll probably pick up Vanity Fair on my next book raid. As I said, I've read quite a bit of Eliot - Middlemarch, Romola, Adam Bede - but not The Mill on the Floss. I'll keep it in mind.

[filkferengi]

Avoid Zola & Hardy like the bubonic. I quite liked _Villette_ by Charlotte Bronte [what I recall of it, anyway]. I'm a huge Alcott fan; how's your Emerson? He rocks too.