The Classics Club

Recently established by Jillian, The Classics Club is a spot for bloggers and readers to connect and share their love of the classics. 

I must say it was quite the task conjuring up the list of classics I hope to read within the next five years. I love writing up a good list of TBR titles -- but that was precisely the problem. Before I knew it, my five-year plan was snowballing into a Bookish Bucket List: any book that I was hoping to read before biting the proverbial dust managed to worm its way onto The List before I realized I was getting ahead of myself.

Consequently, I have attempted to scale back big time. After a lot of pondering, I've written up a pile of 100 works of fiction (e.g., novels and collections of short stories) that I hope to read in the next five years. I've completed separate, and much shorter, lists in the categories of poetry, drama and non-fiction. All of the non-fiction titles relate to classic literature in some way, whether they're non-fiction texts by Victorian writers, biographies on beloved authors, or historical accounts of the period wherein the majority of my chosen texts are situated. Since I'm adding these additional titles, my overall goal is to complete the list in its entirety in six years, by March 2018.

I may change or lengthen this list as I become aware of or interested in new texts, but for the most part I'm happy with what I've come up with. Most of these titles are currently sitting on my bookshelves, waiting to be read, so this project should be fairly easy on the wallet. Anybody who peruses my list will notice that the long-nineteenth century is overwhelmingly represented. This is deliberate. I want to remain focused on my beloved Victorian and late-eighteenth-century novelists. However, I've also attempted to include texts from the Renaissance to the contemporary -- I've even included some American writers in there. In this, I'm hoping to continue to specialize in what I know best but also broaden my reading horizons a bit, become more well-rounded and all that. I haven't included any rereads, but many of my chosen texts I attempted to read on a previous occasion without making it to the end. I'd like to remedy that! 

So, without further ado, here is My List...

*Completed titles are highlighted in bold print. 

100 Works of Fiction 

 

1.   Atwood, Margaret – Alias Grace

2.   Austen, Jane – Catharine and Other Writings {Juvenilia}

3.   Austen, Jane – Sandition and The Watsons {Novel Fragments}

4.   Bage, Robert – Hermsprong

5.   Barrie, J.M. – Peter Pan

6.   Bonhote, Elizabeth – Bungay Castle

7.   Bradbury, Ray – Fahrenheit 451

8.   Braddon, Mary Elizabeth – Lady Audley’s Secret

9.   Brontë, Charlotte – The Professor

10. Bulwer-Lytton, Edward – The Coming Race

11. Burnett, Frances Hodgson – The Secret Garden

12. Burney, Frances – Camilla

13. Burney, Frances – Cecilia

14. Byatt, A.S. – Possession

15. Christie, Agatha – Murder on the Orient Express

16. Collins, Wilkie – The Moonstone

17. Collins, Wilkie – The Law and the Lady

18. Collins, Wilkie – No Name

19. Collins, Wilkie – The Woman in White

20. Conan Doyle, Arthur – The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes

21. Conan Doyle, Arthur – His Last Bow

22. Conan Doyle, Arthur – Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

23. Conan Doyle, Arthur – The Return of Sherlock Holmes

24. Conan Doyle, Arthur – A Study in Scarlet

25. Conan Doyle, Arthur – The Valley of Fear

26. Coventry, Francis – The History of Pompey the Little

27. Dacre, Charlotte – Zofloya

28. Dahl, Roald – Matilda

29. Dahl, Roald – The Witches

30. De Quincey, Thomas – Confessions of an English Opium Eater

31. de Sade, Marquis – The Crimes of Love

32. Delafield, E.M. – Diary of a Provincial Lady

33. Dickens, Charles – Barnaby Rudge

34. Dickens, Charles – Bleak House

35. Dickens, Charles – Dombey and Son

36. Dickens, Charles – Great Expectations

37. Dickens, Charles – Little Dorrit

38. Dickens, Charles – The Mystery of Edwin Drood

39. Dickens, Charles – Nicholas Nickleby

40. Dickens, Charles – Our Mutual Friend

41. Dickens, Charles – The Pickwick Papers

42. Dickens, Charlotes – Sketches by Boz

43. Du Maurier, Daphne – Rebecca

44. Edgeworth, Maria – Belinda

45. Edgeworth, Maria – Patronage

46. Eliot, George – Adam Bede

47. Eliot, George – Middlemarch

48. Eliot, George – The Mill on the Floss

49. Fowles, John – The Collector

50. Gaskell, Elizabeth – Gothic Tales

51. Gaskell, Elizabeth – Ruth

52. Gaskell, Elizabeth – Sylvia’s Lovers

53. Gaskell, Elizabeth – Wives and Daughters

54. Gibbons, Stella – Cold Comfort Farm

55. Grahame, Kenneth – The Wind in the Willows

56. Grossmith, George – The Diary of a Nobody

57. Hardy, Thomas – Far From the Madding Crowd

58. Hardy, Thomas – Jude the Obscure

59. Hardy, Thomas – The Return of the Native

60. Hardy, Thomas – Under the Greenwood Tree

61. Hawthorne, Nathaniel – The House of Seven Gables

62. Haywood, Eliza – Love in Excess

63. James, Henry – The Aspern Papers

64. James, Henry – The Portrait of a Lady

65. Kipling, Rudyard – The Jungle Book

66. Le Fanu, Joseph Sheridan – Uncle Silas

67. Lennox, Charlotte – The Female Quixote

68. Lawrence, D.H. – Mrs. Chatterley’s Lover

69. Lewis, C.S. – The Screwtape Letters

70. Lewis, Matthew – The Monk

71. London, Jack – The Call of the Wild

72. Marsh, Richard – The Beetle

73. Meredith, George – The Egoist

74. Mitchell, Margaret – Gone With the Wind

75. Mitford, Nancy – Love in a Cold Climate

76. Mitford, Nancy – The Pursuit of Love

77. O’Connor, Flannery – A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories

78. Oliphant, Margaret – Hester

79. Oliphant, Margaret – Miss Marjoribanks

80. Orwell, George – 1984

81. Peacock, Thomas Love – Nightmare Abbey

82. Plath, Sylvia – Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams

83. Pyle, Howard – The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood

84. Radcliffe, Ann – The Mysteries of Udolpho

85. Schreiner, Olive – The Story of an African Farm

86. Sewell, Anna – Black Beauty

87. Sterne, Laurence – A Sentimental Journey

88. Stevenson, Robert Louis – Treasure Island

89. Streatfeild, Noel – Ballet Shoes

90. Townsend, Stephen – A Thoroughbred Mongrel

91. Trollope, Anthony – Barchester Towers

92. Trollope, Anthony – The Duke’s Children

93. Trollope, Anthony – The Warden

94. Verne, Jules – 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

95. Walpole, Horace – The Castle of Otranto

96. Wharton, Edith – The House of Mirth

97. White, T.H. – The Once and Future King

98. Wodehouse, P.G. – Mating Season 

99. Wood, Ellen – East Lynne 

100.Woolf, Virginia – Mrs. Dalloway

Poetry

Barrett Browning, Elizabeth – Aurora Leigh

Barrett Browning, Elizabeth – Sonnets from the Portuguese

Byron, Lord George Gordon – The Major Works

Keats, John – The Major Works

Milton, John – Paradise Lost

Plath, Sylvia – The Collosus

Tennyson, Lord Alfred – The Major Works

Drama 

Behn, Aphra – The Rover

Ibsen, Henrik – Ghosts

Jonson, Ben – The Alchemist

Jonson, Ben – Volpone

Marlowe, Christopher – Doctor Faustus

Marlowe, Christopher – The Jew of Malta

Shakespeare, William – As You Like It

Shakespeare, William – The Merry Wives of Windsor

Shakespeare, William – Richard III

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley – The School for Scandal

Stoppard, Tom – Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

Wilde, Oscar – Lady Windermere’s Fan

Wilde, Oscar – Salome

Wilde, Oscar – A Woman of No Importance 

Non-Fiction

Austen, Jane – Selected Letters

Barker, Juliet – The Brontës

Beeton, Isabella – Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management

Bradshaw, John – In Defence of Dogs: Why Dogs Need Our Understanding

Darwin, Charles – On the Origin of Species

Fadiman, Anne – Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

Gaskell, Elizabeth – The Life of Charlotte Brontë

Gill, Gillian – We Two: Victoria and Albert: Rulers, Partners, Rivals

Greer, Germaine – Shakespeare: A Brief Insight

Keats, John – Selected Letters

Lear, Linda – Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature

Picard, Liza – Victorian London: The Tale of a City 1840-1870

Pool, Daniel – What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew

Tomalin, Claire – Charles Dickens: A Life

Tomalin, Claire – Jane Austen: A Life

Wollstonecraft, Mary – A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Woolf, Virginia – A Room of One’s Own