Your Top Ten Works of Fiction By Women: Classic and Contemporary

Create and post here two lists of your personal* top ten works of fiction** written by women. One list should be contemporary (defined for this purpose as 1960 and later), the other should be classics (defined for this purpose as books published before 1960).

Don't feel that you have to create both lists, but one or the other or both is just fine.

* personal: not books you think are the most important to literature, the ones which are favorites and or important to you for any reason.
**worded thus so as to include short fiction collections.

Now, I'm off to get some work done and mull all day on this:-)

I think I have mine:

Contemporary
1. Home by Marilynne Robinson
2. The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch
3. The Silent Duchess by Dacia Maraini
4. At the Still Point by Mary Benson
5. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
6. We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
7. Beloved by Toni Morrison
8. Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
9. Babel Tower by A. S. Byatt
10. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

Classic
1. The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton
2. The Shutter of Snow by Emily Holmes Coleman
3. The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead
4. Iphigenia by Teresa de la Parra
5. The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim
6. Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset
7. Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell
8. The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West
9. The Scarlet Pimpernel by Emmuska Orczy
10. All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville-West

Contemporary (in no particular order):
1.Beloved by Toni Morrison
2.Burger's Daughter by Nadine Gordimer
3.Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter
4.Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood
5.Patterns of Childhood by Christa Wolf
6.House of Day, House of Night by Olga Tokarczuk
7.The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich
8.The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston
9.Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson
10.The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson

Classic:
1.Inanna by Anon -- who, of course, was a woman
2.The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
3.The Lais by Marie de France
4.Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
5.Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
6.Middlemarch by George Eliot
7.Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset
8.The Saga of Gosta Berling by Selma Lagerlof
9.Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
10.To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

And another category -- Top 10 Children's/YA works of fiction by women:

1.Heidi by Johanna Spryi
2.The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
3.Eight Cousins by Louisa May Alcott
4.Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
5.The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
6.Strawberry Girl by Lois Lenski
7.Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton Porter
8.Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin
9.Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren
10. Nancy Drew by Carolyn Keene

Have to give this some thought . . . back later.

Okay, here's my list. If you ask me again in a month, it might be different:

Since 1960
1. Robber Bride, Atwood
2. The Girl with the Pearl Earring, Chevalier
3. Like Water for Chocolate, Esquivel
4. Bridget Jones's Diary, Fielding
5. Kappa Child, Hiromi Goto
6. Unless, Carol Shields
7. Mosquito, Roma Tearne
8. A Complicated Kindness, Toews
9. Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali
10. Hippolyte's Island, Barbara Hodgson

Before 1960

1. To the Lighthouse, Woolf
2. Orlando, Woolf
3. Mansfield Park, Austen
4. Out of Africa, Blixen/Dinesen
5. The Little White Horse, Goudge
6. Lieutenant Nun: Memoir of a Basque Transvestite in the New World, Erauso
7. Jane Eyre, C Bronte
8. Wuthering Heights, E Bronte
9. Return of the Soldier, West
10. Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield

Kristin Lavransddatter Sigrid
Undset
The Good Earth Pearl Buck
Gone with the wind Margaret Mitchell
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen
Rebecca Daphne DuMaurier
My Antonia Willa Cather
Friendly Persuasion Jessamyn West
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Betty Smith
Out of Africa Karaen Blixen
A Lantern in her Hand Bess Streeter Aldrich

Contemporary (not in order)
The Poisonwood Bible Barbara Kingsolver
The Time Traveler's Wife Audrey Niffenegger
The Final Reports on the Miracle at Little No Horse Louise Erdrich
Like Water for chocolate Laura Esquival
A Thousand Acres Jane Smiley
Father Melancholy's Daughter Gail Godwin
Unless Carol Shields
Breathing Lessons Ann Tyler
I Capture the Castle Dodie Smith
For Love Sue Miller

Contemporary:

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
The Wake by Margo Glantz
The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Children of the New World by Assia Djebar
Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy
The Women's Room by Marilyn French
Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively
Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende

That was such a hard task! There's no space for Toni Morrison and Alice Walker who I love and who I wouldn't hesitate to put on my list of ten books to have on a desert island (because there is more in them to think about, but The Women's Room and Woman on the Edge of Time mean a lot to me personally)

Classic:

The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West
All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville-West
The Diary of a Provincial Lady by E. M. Delafield
Voyage in the Dark by Jean Rhys

This list was equally hard but for a different reason. I thought I read a lot of older books but actually I read older books by men - James, Trollope, Tolstoy, Bulgakov, Wilkie Collins etc etc. But I hadn't realised how few books by women I have read and enjoyed from before 1960. Also, the only ones I have read tend to be part of the Virago Modern Classics series. Hmmm, this might be my next reading focus.

Hmm, very challenging task. This list may look different in a week. Or a day. Although some of these would never move off these lists. These aren't in any particular order.

Contemporary:

1. Louise Erdrich: The Last Report on the Miracle at Little No Horse
2. Isabel Allende: The House of the Spirits
3. Barbara Kingsolver: The Poisonwood Bible
4. Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid’s Tale
5. Toni Morrison: Beloved
6. Rose Tremain: The Colour
7. Gail Tsukiyama: The Samurai's Garden
8. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Half of a Yellow Sun
9. Kate Grenville: The Secret River
10. Julia Alvarez: either In the Name of Salome or In the Time of Butterflies

Classic:

1. Zora Neale Hurston: Their Eyes Were Watching God
2. Willa Cather: My Antonia
3. Edith Wharton: The Age of Innocence
4. Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre
5. Louisa May Alcott: Little Women
6. Daphne DuMaurier: Rebecca
7. Harper Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird
8. Mary Shelly: Frankenstein
9. Virginia Woolf: Mrs. Dalloway
10. Charlotte Perkins Gilman: The Yellow Wallpaper

Contemporary & Classic:

Awake, Monique; Astrid van Royen
Darkmans - Nicola Barker
Middlemarch - G. Eliot
Orlando - Virginia Woolf
Run: A Novel- Ann Patchett
The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton
The Edwardians - Vita Sackville West
The Mill on The Floss G.Eliot
The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel (P.S.) - Barbara Kingsolver
To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
Under the Net - Iris Murdock

Contemporary: (in no particular order)

1. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
2. I Lock My Door Upon Myself by Joyce Carol Oates (changes on a minute by minute basis)
3. Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories of Angela Carter
4. Women of Algiers in Their Apartment by Assia Djebar
5. Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El-Saadawi
6. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (ok, maybe Beloved...)
7. The Idea of Perfection by Kate Grenville
8. The Land of Green Plums by Herta Müller
9. The Siege by Helen Dunmore
10. The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Classic: (partial list...will finish later)

1. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
2. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
3. Middlemarch by George Eliot aka Marian Evans
4. North & South by Elizabeth Gaskell
5. The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
6. Persuasion by Jane Austen

more to come here.

Hmm- this is hard
Contemporary ( in no order)
1. My Year of Meats by Ruth L. Ozeki.
2. A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews
3. The World to Come by Dara Horn
4. Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
5. The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Safak
6. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
7. The Mammoth Cheese by Sheri Holman
8. Conceit by Mary Novik.
9. The Lizard Cage by Karen Connelly
10. Heir to the Glimmering World by Cynthia Ozick.
I think that I could add a few more.
Classic?
1. Pride and Predudice by Jane Austen.
2. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
3. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
4. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
... wandering off to look at bookshelves

Hmm- this is hard
Contemporary ( in no order)
1. My Year of Meats by Ruth L. Ozeki.
2. A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews
3. The World to Come by Dara Horn
4. Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
5. The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Safak
6. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
7. The Mammoth Cheese by Sheri Holman
8. Conceit by Mary Novik.
9. The Lizard Cage by Karen Connelly
10. Heir to the Glimmering World by Cynthia Ozick.
I think that I could add a few more.
Classic?
1. 2773690::Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.
2. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
3. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
4. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
... wandering off to look at bookshelves

Very difficult. These aren't in any order other than how I thought of them, and like some others I can't come up to 10 for classics, something I will have to remedy. I am also cheating a little bit by grouping some books by the same author. As with many "best of" lists, this primarily reflects my recent reading, as well as my current mood.

Since 1960

A Place of Greater Safety/Wolf Hall/The Giant, OBrien by Hilary Mantel
The Balkan Trilogy by manningolivia::Olivia Manning
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by jacksonshirley::Shirley Jackson
The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard
The Siege/The Betrayal by Helen Dunmore
Half of Yellow Sun by adichiechimamandango::Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Varieties of Exile by gallantmavis::Mavis Gallant (some stories in this collection may have be written pre-1960)
Desperate Characters by Paula Fox
American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell (thanks, Lois)
Brookland/The Testimony of Yves Gudrun by Emily Barton

Classic
The Straight and Narrow Path by Honor Tracy
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner
Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim
The Mountain Lion by Jean Stafford -- added 8/21

Edited to see if I could have better luck with touchstones, but apparently they're not happy this morning.

Can't resist a book list!

Pre-1960:
Middlemarch
Jane Eyre
The Return of the Soldier
Cold Comfort Farm
Rebecca
Forever Amber
Gone With the Wind
The Enchanted April
The Bell
Frankenstein

Post-1960:
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Women's Room
The Madness of a Seduced Woman
The Color Purple (by Alice Walker, of course - can't believe that one doesn't get a touchstone!)
Picnic at Hanging Rock
Affinity
As If I Am Not There
We Need to Talk About Kevin
The Secret History
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell

(They'll probably have changed again by tonight thought he pre-60's list is pretty static.)

Hmm I tend to lean toward happy-ish books, and my classics are Jane Austen heavy, but if I'm honest, I have to admit that they're just my favorites.

Classics:
1. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
2. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
3. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
4. Evelina by Fanny Burney
5. The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe
6. Villette by Charlotte Bronte
7. Middlemarch by George Eliot
8. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
9. Persuasion by Jane Austen
10. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

Contemporary:

1. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
2. White Teeth by Zadie Smith
3. The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
4. Poison Study by Maria V. Snyder
5. Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen
6. Out by Natsuo Kirino
7. The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
8. The Honk and Holler Opening Soon by Billie Letts
9. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
10. Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear

In no particular order:

Classics:
Memoirs of a dutiful daughter by Simone de Beauvoir
The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir
Wuthering heights by Emily Bronte
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Out of Africa by Karen Blixen
Gone with the wind by Margaret Mitchell
Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan
Ten little niggers by Agatha Christie
Entoli by Dido Sotiriou

Contemporary:
The women's room by Marilyn French
We need to talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
With the light of the wolf, they return by Zyranna Zateli
The secret story by Donna Tart
The lover by Margeurite Duras
Original Sins by Lisa Alther
Other women by Lisa Alther
Wild Swans by Jung Chang
84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff

These are off the top of my head and in no particular order, just as they came to me.

Contemporary:
Akhenaten by Dorothy Porter
Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson
The Snow Ball by Brigid Brophy
Pallaksch, Pallaksch by Liliane Giraudon
The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante
White Snake and Other Stories by Geling Yan
Goodbye, Tsugumi by Yoshitomo Banana
The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston
Métaphysique des tubes by Amélie Nothomb
The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

Classic:
Scenes from the life of Cleopatra by Mary Butts
Summer Will Show by Sylvia Townsend-Warner
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The House Spirit and other stories by Okamoto Kanoko
The Sea Wall by Marguerite Duras
Orlando by Virginia Woolf
Seven Gothic Tales by Isak Dinesen
HERmione by H.D.
Precious Bane by Mary Webb
(It was painful to leave out Burney's Evelina and Rose Macaulay's The Towers of Trebizond, so I'm disingenuously sneaking them in here in this post scriptum ;-) )

Oh, bloody tough choice.

Contemporary:
The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Beloved by Toni Morrison
The entire Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter
Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
Small Island by Andrea Levy
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
The Sorrows of an American by Siri Hustvedt
Possession by A.S. Byatt (and The Children's Book was excellent too)
We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

Classic:
The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh.
A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

I think I cheated a bit there, putting in a couple of kids books into the classics category - but I loved them when I was a kid, so surely they count as classics by now?? My childhood was quite a while ago. :)

I think I cheated a bit there, putting in a couple of kids books into the classics category - but I loved them when I was a kid, so surely they count as classics by now?? My childhood was quite a while ago. :)

Whew! I was all ready to call you out on that, but then I saw your note. Okay, you're safe. Go ahead and put in books that were probably published in my lifetime (anytime after August 1963) . . . went to check: Harriet the Spy-> 1964 and Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day -> 1972.

I don't see why putting children's books in should be a cheat but I notice there are quite a few non-fiction ones starting to creep in - eg. Out of Africa (#6), Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter and The Second Sex (#16) and A Room of One's Own (#19). All admirable books but definitely not "works of fiction".

ETA - So I'm going to have a little cheat too and throw in an extra book, The Picture of Dorian Gray, which I just saw mentioned on another thread and couldn't believe I'd forgotten to include it in my list. That's the trouble with these lists, isn't it? There's always something you can't bear to leave out.

I actually started a nonfiction list too, but left it out. Here are the books I've put on it so far.

The Guns of August by Barabara Tuchman
The Proud Tower by Barbara Tuchman
Them: A Memoir of Parents by Francine du Plessix Gray
Borrowed Finery by Paula Fox
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman
Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman
River of Shadows by Rebecca Solnit

Booksloth --I'd argue that Out of Africa and A Room of One's Own are both highly fictionalized (haven't read the other two so can't comment). There's no bold line between fiction and non-fiction. Back in post #5 I also listed Infidel, which is another memoir. I threw it in because I could only find nine books otherwise, and it fit Lois's criteria better than any other book by a woman that I've read.

But I have to question adding The Picture of Dorian Gray. Are you calling Oscar Wilde a woman, or am I missing something?

#23 LOL! I'd still argue for all three of those being non-fiction (I haven't read Infidel so can't comment on that one) but you're dead right about Oscar. Just forgot for a minute we were looking for female writers.

Oscar would get a giggle out of that!

I think he would too.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali certainly considers her book, Infidel, nonfiction.

I realize after thinking about all of your lists that I mostly read nonfiction by women. Also, I see that I only have 72 women on my LT list and a number of those are for wishlisted books. Clearly, I need to do better:

I am not sure I can come up with 10 of each. Let's see:

Classics:
1. Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
2. The Finn Family Moomintroll by Tove Jansson
3. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
4. Five Children and It by E. Nesbit

Contemporary:
1. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
2. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
3. People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
3. OK, all the Harry Potter Books.... That's 7 right there! ;-)
4. Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison

>27 krazy4katz: krazy: stick around here, we'll hook you up with some great women's lit!

Thank, teelgee! I am already interested in reading some of the books on these lists.

k4k

Ayaan Hirsi Ali certainly considers her book, Infidel, nonfiction.

You're absolutely right, and I consider it non-fiction as well (although there is always a fictional element to any memoir, IMO). I included it in my list because the book spoke to me more strongly than any fiction book I would have listed in its place.

Yes, Nickelini. Infidel is an amazing book! If I were to include nonfiction, my lists would also include:

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs
The Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt
The Camino by Shirley MacLaine
The Loony Bin Trip by Kate Millett
Jailed for Freedom by Doris Stevens

et alia...

k4k

Added The Mountain Lion by Jean Stafford to my classics list in post 13.

Can I play too? This is my favorite fiction by women writers:

Contemporary:

The Sparrow and Children of God by Mary Doria Russell
Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Kay Penman
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The House of Spirits and Ines of my Soul by Isabel Allende
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Out by Natsuo Kirino
Find Me by Carol O'Connell (last of the Mallory mystery series)

Pre-1960:

The Heaven Tree (orig. published IN 1960) by Edith Pargeter (who also wrote as Ellis Peters)
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
My Antonia by Willa Cather
Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

There are more, lots more, but these are my top 9 each (giving me a chance to add one more to each list).

ETA what is UP with those dratted touchstones today? No link for PRIDE AND PREJUDICE? THE HOUSE OF the SPIRITS? Sheesh.

ETA and it's also not picking up on The Heaven Tree, which is a relatively obscure novel by Edith Pargeter aka Ellis Peters. (see if they'll work now...)

I didn't add The Enchanted April on my list, but almost did. It is indeed a great book. I'd think that anyone reading this thread who hasn't read it yet would move it to the top of the to-read list.

As for the touchstones to Pride and Prejudice and House of the Spirits . . . they seem to be working now. Sometimes you just have to edit your thread and just send it again (you don't necessarily have to actually change anything). I've noticed that touchstones are wonky for several very popular books. Sometimes you can click on "other" and find an edition that works. The Color Purple is another book that never seems to work.

Never mind ....they just LOOK like they're going to work.

Ha ha! I got Pride and Prejudice and House of the Spirits to work by using the trick above--click "other" and then select another edition. Let's see if I can get The Color Purple working . . .

Haha, I told you they were wonky. :)

Fortunately, the ones without the Touchstones are so well-known that it isn't a huge problem. It's worse when the Touchstones don't work for some obscure book...

It seemed in my post (#13) that the touchstones just gave up after a certain point -- that is, they almost all worked for the first group and then towards the last 5 or 6 none of them worked. As though you can only have a certain number of touchstones in one post?

So many great lists here! But reading them I'm still having enough I can't believe noone has mentioned... moments to feel compelled to also write my own. A few of these are not available in English, sorry.

In no particular order, allowing just one title per writer:

Classics:
Nightwood by Djuna Barnes
Two serious ladies by Jane Bowles
The saga of Gösta Berling by Selma Lagerlöf
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
To the lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Rosen på Tistelön by Emily Flygare-Carlén
To kill a mockingbird by Harper Lee
Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren
Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan

After 1960:
We have always lived in the castle by Shirley Jackson
Lifsens rot by Sara Lidman
AntiChrista by Amélie Norhomb
Moominpappa at sea by Tove Jansson
The driver's seat by Muriel Spark
Magic for beginners by Kelly Link
Bestiarium by Mare Kandre
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
Far Away by Caryl Churchill
Complete plays by Sarah Kane

A list tomorrow would look completely different, of course...

Storeetilir . . . I got the touchstones working. Go back to post 34 where I've explained how I did it. I just hate letting technology get the better of me ;-)

Thanks, Nickelini! You are a genius! I edited my post 27 and all touchstones working now. k4k

>38 Nickelini: That works if you have the "other" choice, which you don't always.

#40 Or if it just says "loading" and never stops, which is what happened to me.

So many interesting lists! And the cheats are even interesting! :-) I was so tempted to cheat, as I was so tormented trying to decide on just one book of Atwood, Oates...etc.

I'll go make threads for nonfiction and children's just for a bit more fun...

#42 That will be fun - you can see we were all itching for someone to volunteer to do that. I also tried to nominate just one book per writer but it's hard to do when you believe one author is better than the whole of the rest of the world put together.

In no particular order (except that the first two are my all-time faves in both categories):

Classic:

1. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
2. Middlemarch by George Eliot
3. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
4. Excellent Women by Barbara Pym

Contemporary:

1. Charming Billy by Alice McDermott
2. A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
3. Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
4. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
5. Back When We Were Grownups by Anne Tyler
6. Inventing the Abbots and Other Stories by Sue Miller

and last but not least:

7. Three Junes by Julia Glass - who is guest posting for me on 1st books: Stories of How Writers Get Started this week!

Which I know are short lists, but I've had a list on my author site for some time now, and when I tossed out the male authors, this was what was left. Interesting to realize the list is more than half women authors.

:-)

Here's my list. I hate to say I didn't include Virginia Woolf in the classics though I know she belongs there because I still haven't read her. Mea Culpa.

Contemporary

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
Beloved by Toni Morrison
A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy
The Holdfast Chronicles by Suzy McKee Charnas
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel (P.S.) by Barbara Kingsolver
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

Classic

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Middlemarch by George Eliot
The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

Thus far the contemporary authors with the most mentions are:

Margaret Atwood, 11
Toni Morrison, 7

4 mentions each:
Sarah Waters
Lionel Shriver
Barbara Kingsolver
Alice Walker

3 mentions each:
Angela Carter
Louise Erdrich
Hilary Mantel
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Jane Smiley

2 mentions each:
Muriel Barberry
Amelie Nothomb
Elif Safak
Helen Dunmore
Iris Murdoch
A. S. Byatt
Maxine Hong Kingston
Anne Carson
Tove Jansson
Laura Esquivel
Assia Djebar
Shirley Jackson
Susanna Clarke
Arundati Roy
Kate Grenville
Anne Tyler
Isabel Allende
Marilyn French
Ann Patchett
Carol Shields
Audrey Niffinegger
Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird was finished in 1959, published in 1960 and won the Pulitzer in 1961)

Contemporary writers mentioned who have been translated into English:

Europe:
Dacia Maraini, Italian
Tove Jansson, Finnish, Swedish-speaking
Herta Müller, Romanian, German-speaking
Muriel Barbery, French
Zyranna Zateli, Greek
Marguerite Duras, French
Liliane Giraudon, French
Elena Ferrante, Italian
Amélie Nothomb, Belgian, French-speaking
Mare Kandre, Swedish
Sara Lidman, Swedish
Elif Safak, French born of Turkish Descent, writes both in Turkish and English
Olga Torarczuk, Polish

North Africa & the Middle East
Assia Djebar, Algerian, writes in French
Nawal El-Saadawi, Egyptian, writes in Arabic

Asia
Banana Yoshimoto, Japanese
Natsu Kirino, Japanese
Geling Yan, Chinese

Latin America
Laura Esquivel, Mexican (Spanish)
Margo Glantz, Mexican (Spanish)

I could have missed some, and these are contemporary, not classic.

I think you missed the contemporary Chinese author Geling Yan for the Asian category above. She was in my list.

>48 marietherese: added!

Classic
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery
The Double Hook - Sheila Watson
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - I'm putting this here because I think it deserves "Classic" status
Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
The Rover - Aphra Behn
Wild Geese - Martha Ostenso
The Diary of Anne Frank - Anne Frank
Rilla of Ingleside - L. M. Montgomery

Contemporary
The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace - Margaret Atwood
Lives of Girls and Women - Alice Munro
The Rehearsal - Eleanor Catton
The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt
Burnt Shadows - Kamila Shamsie
The Boy Next Door - Irene Sabatini
February - Lisa Moore
The Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley
The Guests of War Trilogy - Kit Pearson - YA that I loved as a kid

Contemporary
1. Alias Grace-Margaret Atwood
2. White Teeth--Zadie Smith
3. The Color Purple--Alice Walker
4. Magic for Beginners--Kelly Link
5. Tipping the Velvet--Sarah Waters
6. What was Lost--Catherine O'Flynn
7. The Secret History--Donna Tartt
8. The Dogs of Babel--Carolyn Parkhurst
9. Sexing the Cherry--Jeanette Winterson
10. The Lovely Bones--Alice Sebold

Classics will take a little more thought....

Contemporary
1.The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
2.Small Island by Andrea Levy
3.Sorry by Gail Jones
4.All Our Worldly Goods by Irene Nemirovsky
5.Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
6.Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
7.The Secret River by Kate Grenville
8.The Butterfly Man by Heather Rose
9.People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
10.The Guernsay Literary and Potatoe Peel Pie Society by Annie Barrows

Classic
1. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
2. To Kill a mocking bird by Harper Lee
3. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
4. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
5. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
6. My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin
7. The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
8. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
9. TBR
10.TBR :-)

Yep, I'm still thinking about the classics -most were read during school and I can't remember if they were abridged editions or "childrens" edition.
And the contemporaries will change and change no doubt - good books keep getting written.

Not sure I can narrow it down to a top 10, but these are favorites that I have read many times that haven't been mentioned:

The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark

The Little House and Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton

The Diary of Lady Murasaki

Life Among the Savages and The Lottery by Shirley Jackson

Shewings by St. Julian of Norwich

Essays by Fran Lebowitz and Sandra Tsing Loh

The Epicure's Lament by Kate Christensen

Citizen Girl by McLaughln and Krauss

In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden

>53 nohrt4me2: you're back! hurrah! (cloning or reincarnation?) I just finished a Muriel Spark and have been thinking of reading another at some point.

#54 Can't let that pass without recommending her absolute classic The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. She's a truly great writer but until you've read JB you've only really seen her on half power.