The Classics Club

The Classics ClubThe 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

  1. Gothic Tales – Elizabeth Gaskell
  2. The Grass is Singing – Doris Lessing
  3. Memento Mori – Muriel Spark
  4. Romola – George Eliot
  5. Good Morning, Midnight – Jean Rhys
  6. The Left Hand of Darkness – Ursula K. Le Guin
  7. The Enchanted April – Elizabeth von Armin
  8. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
  9. The Haunting of Hill House – Shirley Jackson
  10. Lady Susan – Jane Austen
  11. Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
  12. A Garden of Earthly Delights – Joyce Carol Oates
  13. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day – Winifred Watson
  14. Carol (The Price of Salt) – Patricia Highsmith
  15. The Return of the Soldier – Rebecca West
  16. The Flowers of Adonis – Rosemary Sutcliffe
  17. Death Comes for the Archbishop – Willa Cather
  18. The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton
  19. All Passion Spent – Vita Sackville-West
  20. The Town House – Norah Lofts
  21. Katherine – Anya Seton
  22. Heat and Dust – Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
  23. Invitation to the Waltz – Rosamond Lehmann
  24. Villette – Charlotte Bronte
  25. The Last Man – Mary Shelley
  26. To the Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
  27. The Dark Tide – Vera Brittain
  28. The Crowded Street – Winifred Holtby
  29. Gaudy Night – Dorothy L Sayers
  30. The Bell – Iris Murdoch
  31. Kindred – Octavia E. Butler
  32. Fear of Flying – Erica Jong
  33. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter – Carson McCullers
  34. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – Betty Smith
  35. I Capture the Castle – Dodie Smith
  36. The Good Earth – Pearl S. Buck
  37.  In a German Pension: 13 Stories – Katherine Mansfield
  38. The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman
  39. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont – Elizabeth Taylor
  40. The Edible Woman – Margaret Atwood

John Buchan

  1. The Power House
  2. Sick Heart River
  3. A Lost Lady of Old Years
  4. Witch Wood
  5. Mr. Standfast
  6. Castle Gay
  7. The Half-Hearted
  8. The Watcher by the Threshold
  9. John Macnab
  10. Greenmantle