The Classics Club was founded in March 2012 with the aim of encouraging more people to blog about classic literature. Members are invited to create a list of at least 50 classic titles they intend to read and blog about within a maximum of five years. With characteristic over-enthusiasm, I originally set myself the goal of reading the 50 classics listed below between 1st January 2017 and 31st December 2018. I have now amended my end date goal to 31st December 2021, although I hope I may finish before then. I add links to my reviews once I have read them.
When constructing my list, the personal definition of “classic” I used is a book published more than 40 years ago, i.e. anything published before 1976, although most of the books on my list are a good deal older than that. I also decided to concentrate on two categories: women writers; and the works of John Buchan (one of my favourite authors who I believe is much underrated).
Women Writers
- Gothic Tales – Elizabeth Gaskell
- The Grass is Singing – Doris Lessing
- Memento Mori – Muriel Spark
- Romola – George Eliot
- Good Morning, Midnight – Jean Rhys
- The Left Hand of Darkness – Ursula K. Le Guin
- The Enchanted April – Elizabeth von Armin
- Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
- The Haunting of Hill House – Shirley Jackson
- Lady Susan – Jane Austen
- Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
- A Garden of Earthly Delights – Joyce Carol Oates
- Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day – Winifred Watson
- Carol (The Price of Salt) – Patricia Highsmith
- The Return of the Soldier – Rebecca West
- The Flowers of Adonis – Rosemary Sutcliffe
- Death Comes for the Archbishop – Willa Cather
- The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton
- All Passion Spent – Vita Sackville-West
- The Town House – Norah Lofts
- Katherine – Anya Seton
- Heat and Dust – Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
- Invitation to the Waltz – Rosamond Lehmann
- Villette – Charlotte Bronte
- The Last Man – Mary Shelley
- To the Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
- The Dark Tide – Vera Brittain
- The Crowded Street – Winifred Holtby
- Gaudy Night – Dorothy L Sayers
- The Bell – Iris Murdoch
- Kindred – Octavia E. Butler
- Fear of Flying – Erica Jong
- The Heart is a Lonely Hunter – Carson McCullers
- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – Betty Smith
- I Capture the Castle – Dodie Smith
- The Good Earth – Pearl S. Buck
- In a German Pension: 13 Stories – Katherine Mansfield
- The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman
- Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont – Elizabeth Taylor
- The Edible Woman – Margaret Atwood
John Buchan