Books not only make you a well-read person, but are also an excellent source of entertainment. There are so many good classic books, covering various genres like romance, suspense, horror, fiction, science, travel, etc. Here is a list of some classics that you shouldn’t miss!
Although written several centuries ago, classic books continue to allure the readers even in the modern world. They are termed as timeless, as the authors followed certain structural guidelines while writing them. Most of these books depict the period in which they were written. Here are a few classics that are all-time favorite books of the bibliophiles.
It is Jane Austen’s second novel which was published in 1813. It’s a tale about the misunderstandings and prejudices that arise between Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy, and is set in the backdrop of Victorian England. This novel is among the most popular novels of Jane Austen and has been adapted into several films.
It is a classic tale of a young married woman, Emma, whose romantic expectations about love are not fulfilled by her husband. Due to this, she commits adultery which finally leads to her destruction.
Racial inequality is the central theme of Harper Lee’s ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ which was published in 1960. The story is told through the eyes of Scout Finch, who is a 6-year-old girl, and is set in backdrop of Great Depression in America.
It is a book where Charles Dickens, through his principal characters, portrays the oppressive nature of the French aristocracy towards the peasant class.
It is an epic poem which was written in 12 books, and published in 1674. In this poem, Milton tells the story of the fall of man from the grace of God by using a variety of poetic devices.
It is a majestic novel, divided into 8 parts, which was published in the periodical ‘The Russian Messenger’ between 1873 to 1877. The main character of the novel is Anna Karenina, and the book deals with a variety of themes like marriage, fidelity, hypocrisy, society, family, desire, etc.
It is the longest, and most popular, play written by the great playwright, William Shakespeare. This play depicts the conflict of Prince Hamlet who faces a dilemma, where he has to choose between personal revenge and moral values.
It was published, in the year 1922, in Paris. This great saga consists of 18 episodes, and approximately 265,000 words. Joyce structured it with the help of stream of consciousness technique. Though the book garnered a lot of criticism when it was published, it is now considered to be the greatest work of modernist literature.
The novel depicts the period of the American Civil War and the Reconstruction, and has a lot of social and historical references. This novel won the Pulitzer Prize in the year 1937, and was also made into a movie.
It was published in the year 1847. The novel depicts the tale of Jane Eyre, an orphan girl, and how she finds true love after going through various trials and difficult situations in life.
In addition to these, there are some more books that are a part of the rich literature and have stolen the hearts of many readers. The following is a list of classic books that everyone should read.
• A Doll’s House ~ Henrik Ibsen
• A Farewell to Arms ~ Ernest Hemingway
• A Journey to the Centre of the Earth ~ Jules Verne
• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ~ James Joyce
• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ~ Mark Twain
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland ~ Lewis Carroll
• Animal Farm ~ George Orwell
• Beloved ~ Toni Morrison
• Black Beauty ~ Anna Sewell
• Catch-22 ~ Joseph Heller
• Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady ~ Samuel Richardson
• Crime and Punishment ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• David Copperfield ~ Charles Dickens
• Don Quixote ~ Miguel de Cervantes
• Dracula ~ Bram Stoker
• Far from the Madding Crowd ~ Thomas Hardy
• Frankenstein ~ Mary Shelley
• Great Expectations ~ Charles Dickens
• Gulliver’s Travels ~ Jonathan Swift
• Lady Chatterley’s Lover ~ D. H. Lawrence
• Les Misérables ~ Victor Hugo
• Little Women ~ Louisa May Alcott
• Lolita ~ Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
• Moby-Dick; or, The Whale ~ Herman Melville
• Mrs Dalloway ~ Virginia Woolf
• No Exit ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
• Oedipus the King ~ Sophocles
• Oliver Twist ~ Charles Dickens
• One Hundred Years of Solitude ~ Gabriel García Márquez
• Rebecca ~ Daphne du Maurier
• Robinson Crusoe ~ Daniel Defoe
• Romeo and Juliet ~ William Shakespeare
• Silas Marner ~ George Eliot
• Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde ~ Robert Louis Stevenson
• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes ~ Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer ~ Mark Twain
• The Canterbury Tales ~ Geoffrey Chaucer
• The Catcher in the Rye ~ J. D. Salinger
• The Color Purple ~ Alice Walker
• The Dangerous Liaisons ~ Pierre Choderlos De Laclos
• The Grapes of Wrath ~ John Steinbeck
• The Great Gatsby ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Lord of the Rings ~ J. R. R. Tolkien
• The Metamorphosis ~ Franz Kafka
• The Mill on the Floss ~ George Eliot
• The Moonstone ~ Wilkie Collins
• The Picture of Dorian Gray ~ Oscar Wilde
• The Prince ~ Niccolò Machiavelli
• The Scarlet Letter ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne
• The Trial ~ Franz Kafka
• The Way of the World ~ William Congreve
• The Wind in the Willows ~ Kenneth Grahame
• Treasure Island ~ Robert Louis Stevenson
• Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea ~ Jules Verne
• Utopia ~ Thomas More
• Vanity Fair ~ William Makepeace Thackeray
• War and Peace ~ Leo Tolstoy
• Wuthering Heights ~ Emily Brontë
Each of these classics is distinct from the others and many readers have mentioned that every time they read a book again, they came across something that they had not noticed earlier. Pick up some of these books to enjoy reading timeless classics.
