Your top 10 Classic Books

What are you top 10 classic books (or 5)? Books that were published before 1923.
Like these here: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/classics/index.asp?PID=19271

Some of my favourites are (not in prioritized order) - I'm not quite sure that they're all from before 1923 though...

- Pride and Prejudice
- Sense and Sensibility
- Wuthering Heights
- Jane Eyre
- Lady Chatterley's Lover
- Les Miserables
- Peter Pan

... among others...

Nice list! Also you don't have to worry about a specific order, only if you prefer to :)

Three Musketeers
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
King Solomon's Mines
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Gulliver's Travels
Jane Eyre
Pride and Prejudice
The Golden Bowl
A Room With A View
Wings of the Dove
Emma
Vanity Fair
Crime and Punishment
The House of Mirth

Also not in any specific order, besides the order in which they popped into my head.

Jane Eyre
Pride and Prejudice
The Age of Innocence
Great Gatsby (which I think is 1925, but it still counts)
The Awakening

Good lists guys!

In no particular order:

Les Miserables
The Black Tulip
Northanger Abbey
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Odyssey
Great Expectations
The Histories
Macbeth (do plays count?)
Madame Bovary
Moll Flanders

Compiling this, I realize just how few of the classic novels I've read I'd consider good enough to be in any sort of Top X List. I need to read me some good classics.

No particular order, but here's a shot:

Pride and Prejudice
A Tale of Two Citiies
The Great Gatsby
Bleak House
Jude the Obscure
Sense and Sensibility
Jane Eyre
A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen
The Wings of the Dove
Great Expectations
The Age of Innocence

Not in any order.

The War of the Worlds
Complete Works of Shakespeare
The Man in the Iron Mask
The Bible
Peter Pan
Tale of Two Cities
Dracula
Frankenstein, or a Modern Prometheus
The Odyssey
Don Quixote

My top ten classic books:

The Brothers Karamazov
War and Peace
Gargantua and Pantagruel
Pere Goriot
Captains Courageous
Emma
Phineas Finn
Huckleberry Finn
Playboy of the Western World
The Winter's Tale

I have to say, these are my 10 favorites, these are not necessarily the 10 best classics.

In order, and using the term "book" loosely. Truth is I haven't read the many classics:

1. Crime And Punishment
2. Anton Chekhov's short stories
3. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
4. Heart of Darkness
5. A Midsummer Night's Dream
6. Life on the Mississippi
7. Pride and Prejudice
8. Notes from the Underground
9. Othello
10. Anna Karenina

1. Sense and Sensibility
2. Middlemarch
3. Nicholas Nickleby
4. David Copperfield
5. Tom Jones
6. Tess of the d'Urbervilles
7. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
8. Wuthering Heights
9. The Picture of Dorian Gray
10. Jane Eyre

I posted my list and completely forgot one of my favorite books of all time, Le Comte de Monte Cristo.

Let's see, off the top of my head I can think of:

1. Bleak House
2. Anna Karenina
3. Wuthering Heights
4. Jane Eyre
5. Candide
6. The Picture of Dorian Gray
7. The Trial
8. Siddhartha
9. Mrs. Dalloway
10. The Heart of Darkness (I actually didn't like this one, but I'm glad I read it and I think it's an important book because it is referenced endlessly in our culture).

Almost everyone loves The Brothers Karamazov.

not me. I read it and it was OK but tedium.

Hence the "almost" :)

Hey!

Anyone else?

Is any one else gonna reply? :(

I don't see your list in here anywhere...

Have not read enough yet

I'm sure you could list one or two if you're so desperate for others to do the same.

1. The 3 Musketeers
2. Northanger Abbey
3. Pride & Prejudice

Oh 3!

DevourerOfBooks...I'm sure you could list one or two

I'm sure I probably could, but not all of them would conform to your evidently very strictly held rules of pre-1923, so I shall refrain. What led you to use 1923, anyway? The fact that those are the books in the public domain?

Yeah

So you wouldn't consider Grapes of Wrath to be a classic then? Because it was published in 1939? The Great Gatsby misses it by two years? Faulkner's stuff? Animal Farm? Native Son? Lolita?

Northanger Abbey
Madame Bovary
Frankenstein, or a Modern Prometheus
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Count of Monte Cristo.
Demian
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby
A Study in Scarlet
The Island of Dr Moreau
The Metamorphosis and Other Stories

.

Wuthering Heights
A Tale of Two Cities
The Three Musketeers
The Scarlet Pimpernel
Scaramouche
The Virginian
Little Women
The Odyssey

1. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
2. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
3. Bleak House by Charles Dickens
4. Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
5. War and Peace by Lev Tolstoj
6. Victoria by Knut Hamsun
7. The Palliser novels by Anthony Trollope
8. Our Mutal Friend by Charles Dickens
9. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
10. Daniel Deronda by Charles Dickens

No particular order:

Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland et seq.
Jane Eyre
The Count of Monte Cristo
Little Women
A Little Princess
A Tale of Two Cities
Great Expectations
Sherlock Holmes stuff
Romeo and Juliet
Othello

I have no idea if these are all pre-1923, but they are my favorite classics:

The Story of San Michele by Axel Munthe
Pride and Prejudice
She
A Tale of Two Cities
Jane Eyre
Little Women
Letters from Earth

ETA that I just checked the B&N list of classics and found a few more:

The Importance of Being Ernest
The Prince and the Pauper
My Antonia

Nice lists!

Anyone else?

Gilgamesh
The Odyssey
The Old Testament
The Bhagavad Gita
The Tale of Genji
Don Quixote
The complete works of Shakespeare
Candide
Great Expectations
War and Peace

Be sure to check out numerous other discussions of lists at LT Groups such as "Books on Books" and "LT's List of Great Books You Should Read".

1. Pride and Prejudice
2. The Black Tulip
3. Crime and Punishment
4. Tess of the D'urbervilles
5. Jude the Obscure
6. Jane Eyre
7. Wuthering Heights
8. The Count of Monte Cristo
9. My Antonia
10. Vanity Fair

Not in any particular order (except numbers 1 and 2).

,

In no particular order.
Crime and Punishment
Bleak House
The Magic Mountain-Published in 1924 oops
Iliad and Odyssey
Anne of Green Gables
Pilgrims Progress
Robinson Crusoe
Treasure Island
A Tale of Two Cities
The Jungle
Leaves of Grass
Italian Journey

I put on the list a couple of extras in case Magic Mountain or Leaves of Grass do not meet the conditions to be on the list.

I will say this Narcissus and Goldmund would be on that list if it were not for the date thing.

'

It is getting sort of obnoxious that you keep bumping this thread. If you want to bring it back to the top, you can always comment on people's lists instead of just posting a period.

Are you looking for some that you can read online (hence the public domain thing)?

Just curious! Here is my list and I don't know that all fall into that time constraint:

Beowulf
Jane Eyre
The Canterbury Tales
Inferno
A Tale of Two Cities
Crime and Punishment
Les Miserables
Hamlet/Romeo & Juliet (can't choose)
Frankenstein
The Scarlet Letter

Sorry, 10 just isn't enough! LOL A 2nd list of 10:

Pride and Prejudice
The Illiad/The Odyssey
The Three Musketeers
The Metamorphosiss
Moby Dick
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Don Quixote
Robinson Crusoe
Middlemarch
Animal Farm

Ah... I like your list thatbooksmell. It makes me want to amend mine. So I would like to add Moby Dick but, who do I remove from my original list. I am leaning towards A Tale of Two Cities or perhaps Anne of Green Gables. But somehow booting any of these great books off a top ten list does not seem right. Even so Moby Dick is now on my list.

I'm going to cheat, like thatbooksmell, and have two lists of ten. So, here goes:

The Count of Monte Cristo
Tom Jones
Pride and Prejudice
Great Expectations
Bleak House
Jane Eyre
Jude the Obscure
Wuthering Heights
Madame Bovary
Silas Marner

And my "not ready for the top 10" list:
The Idiot
Crime and Punishment
Les Miserables
The Three Musketeers
Ivanhoe
Dracula
Frankenstein
The Moonstone
The Hound of the Baskervilles
The Picture of Dorian Gray

These are pretty much in order. I'm sure I've fogotten something, but oh well...

By the way, as far the kantokid's 1923 constraint, Time magazine realeased a list of the 100 greatest novels of the 20th century in 2005 and for some reason, they only included novels published after 1923. I have no idea why, but I think that Ulysses was published in 1923, so maybe this was Time's was of saying "Wow, that was a really great book, so these are the 100 best attempts as surpassing it since then." I don't know. So, anyway, maybe kantokid wants all of those 1901-1923 novels that got screwed in the Time list to get theirs?

>48 vincent1959:, Yes, I agree, think I'm gonna chuck Gilgamesh for Moby Dick.

This is going to be hard and I know I'll change my mind as I think longer on it.

In no particular order;

King Solomon's Mines 1885 and
She 1886 by H. Rider Haggard

H. Rider Haggard was the Steven Spielberg of his day. Even if his some of his charactors aren't want we would call politically correct today they are still great adventure stories.

The Odd Women 1893 by George Gissing.
George Gissing continues with social commentary where Dickens leaves off.

Ned Myers: or Life before the Mast 1843 by James Fenimore Cooper.

Cooper is not noted for is nautical books which are some of the best of the period. He served as a Midshipman in the U.S. Navy from 1808 till 1810 and spent time on a merchant ship also. So he knows of where he writes.

Private Yankee Doodle: Dangers and Sufferings of a Revolutionary Soldier 1830 by Joseph Plumb Martin. This biographical naritive is a good read and there are not many books writen by the common soldier from the Revalutionary War. Every soldier from any war will feel a kinship with J.P. Martin.

La Curée or The Kill (1871-2) by Emile Zola.
This is his second novel of his twenty-novel cycle about the exploits of various members of an extended family during the French Second Empire Period. This is the first one I've read and am looking forward to reading others as well.l

White-Jacket: or, The World in a Man-of-War (1850) Herman Melville.
Melville signed on a whaler in his younger years and didn't like it. He jumped ship in Typee and eventually made his way to Hawaii and signed on an American Frigate to get back to the States. This book is fictional story based on his experiances on that trip.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 1885 by Mark Twain, Always liked Huck better than Tom. Tom was (in my opinion) to smart for his own good.

Elmer Gantry 1927 by Sinclair Lewis. I know it's a little past the 1923 referance point, but this (along with It Can't Happen Here) are not only my favorite Lewis books but they are also on my top 50 favorites list

I knew I'd edit it!

The Hunchback of Notre Dame 1831 by Victor Hugo

Don Quixote 1600 (or there about)by Miguel de Cervantes

#51 usnmm2

Loved your list! It had many suggestions of classics I haven't read yet--some I didn't even know about. And your comments were very hepful.

I've got to find that J.F. Cooper book, Ned Myers: or Life Before the Mast I've read a lot of Cooper--one of my Dad's favorite authors. I doubt he knew about this one because he was in the Coast Guard and we read lots of "sea stories"--Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana would go on my top ten list.

I agree with The Hunchback of Notre Dame and would include Les Miserables also. (no Touchstone!) And Huckleberry Finn beats out Tom Sawyer in my list, too. Don Quixote has been a favorite of mine since I was a teenager as has Moby Dick but I don't know the Melville novel you included.

I'm making a list of the ones i don't know--it will be fun to find some new "old" classics and since the ones you picked that I do know are all favorites of mine I'm sure I'll enjoy the others. Thanks for the "adventure" today!

1. Bleak House

2. Pride and Prejudice

3. Jane Eyre

4. The Pickwick Papers and it says much about the genius of Dickens that I can so love both his early riotous romp and his later, greater, masterpiece

5. Moby Dick A book I loathed for years and failed miserably to complete, until I tried again last week and adored it. Cometh the right age, cometh the book, perhaps?

6. The Arabian Nights I have several translations from several decades but would hate to have to chose one.

7. Middlemarch

8. Twenty-thousand leagues under the sea - the first book I ever finished that wasn't written specifically for children.

9. Alice in wonderland and through the looking glass

10. A guilty secret the Prisoner of Zenda

#52: MusicMom41

Glad you enjoyed the list. You might try the Naval Institue Press for "Ned Myers" or "white Jacket" Of course there is good old E-Bay and Abe Books also (that where I picked up my copies.)

I haven't read "les Mis..." yet but it's on my short list. Hugo wrote a good short story called "A Fight With a Cannon" if your interested in classic naval literature.

In no particular order:-

Wuthering Heights
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
Moby Dick
Les Miserables
Frankenstein
Bleak House
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Therese Raquin

Aeneid
Odyssey
Lusiads
Gulliver's Travels
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
The Jungle Book
Divine Comedy
Pilgrim's Progress
Wind in the Willows
Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Interesting! I'll say (off the top of my head) . . .

Don Quixote
Lord Jim
Moby Dick
All Quiet on the Western Front
The Great Gatsby
Huckleberry Finn
Crime and Punishment
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Tevye's Daughters
The Red Badge of Courage

I like the rule that the book had to have been written before 1923. It makes things more challenging.

Return of the Native

The Count of Monte Cristo

Jane Eyre

Persuasion

Crime and Punishment

Middlemarch

Cymbeline

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

the poetry of Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Daisy Miller

*Wow. My list is an Anglo-Saxon love festival almost. I must remedy this in the near future.

Crime and Punishment mitigates it a little!

The only one on your list I haven't read and loved is Return of the Native--I own that and couple of others by Hardy but the only one of his I have read so far in Under the Greenwood Tree which I really loved but understand it's not typical of his more famous novels.