Recommend some books to me

[womzilla]

Assume that I have read no novel published in the 19th century, in any language--I'm embarrassed by the degree this is almost completely true. (I will probably list the few I have read in a comment to this post.)

What are the first 20 or 30 novels I should read to close this chasm of ignorance? And where should I look for other recommendations? I've found a couple of "great novels of the 19th century" lists, but not many.

Oh, it probably doesn't make sense to recommend more than two novels by the same author. And for these purposes, "novel" can include "single, outstanding collection of short fiction and/or drama".

Edited to add: Lots of great stuff recommended so far, though unsurprisingly heavy on English-language works, though French and Russian have shown up. I'm haven't seen any recommendations for anything originally in Italian, German, or Spanish--is there really no one noteworthy in German literature between Goethe and Mann? Or Spanish between Cervantes and Borges?

Comments

[redbird]

Are you looking to close a gap in your education, or to find nineteenth-century fiction you'll enjoy? Obviously, with luck there will be some overlap, but what you like in twentieth and twenty-first century writing is more relevant to the latter.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

I have no idea what I would or wouldn't like from nineteenth century fiction. For instance, I listened to about the first third of Pride and Prejudice on audiobook a couple of years ago and would not have guessed beforehand how much I would enjoy it--far, far more than I expected to. I got distracted (the audiobook CDs after the first two were badly damaged and I had to switch over to another book, the extremely similarly themed Nineteen Eighty-Four), but I certainly intend to return to it.

So I suspect I'm looking for recommendations of books that will fill the gap; if I start them and hate them, I'll just move on.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

The ones I'm sure I've read:

• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn


• The Scarlet Letter


• The Turn of the Screw


• The Mystery of Edwin Drood


• Billy Budd, Sailor


• Silas Marner


• Heart of Darkness (written, apparently, in 1899, though I read it in an Early Twentieth Century British Lit survey)


• The Red Badge of Glory (at least, I'm pretty sure I read this)

And some proto-f&sf:

• Dracula


• Around the World in Eighty Days


• Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass


• The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde


• Tales of Mystery and Imagination


• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court


and

• the major science fiction novels of H. G. Wells

But (with the exception of Dracula) I'm likely to consider re-reading them if they come highly recommended.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

Argh! Tired I am. Red Badge of Courage.

[esmeraldus-neo.livejournal.com]

Add to the proto-sf list my other two pet texts: Frankenstein and Goblin Market.

You will enjoy them, and they are iconic. GM is also extremely short and easily found online--it's not a novel, just a poem.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

I honestly can't remember if I've read "Goblin Market" in its entirety--I have difficulty reading poetry--but last year I saw an excellent staged reading of it which I think included the entire text.

And yes, given my passions, interests, and position in the Science Fiction Active Reserves, the one 19th century work that it is most actively disgraceful that I have not read is Frankenstein. I should probably start there.

(The one work of literature that I consider it most actively disgraceful to have not read is either King Lear or Gravity's Rainbow. I've never actually read Hamlet, but I've seen two excellent productions of it, one lightly abridged and one complete.)

[esmeraldus-neo.livejournal.com]

I'm seeing Lear tomorrow afternoon at the Globe.

[shsilver.livejournal.com]

Mark Twain: Just about any of his novels, particularly A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn>/i> (1884)
Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers (1844), The Count of Monte Cristo (1846)
H.G Wells, The Time Machine (1895), The War of the Worlds (1898)
Jules Verne, Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Around the World in Eighty Days (1873))

[montoya.livejournal.com]

Dickens Tale of Two Cities (set in the French Revolution) is good, reading somewhat like a fantasy novel only without the magic.

Jane Austen is, as you say, delightful.

Dumas' Three Musketeers is okay, but Brust's Phoenix Guards is vastly better.

Beyond that, we get into stuff that I read in high school. Mark Twain's Roughing It and The Innocents Abroad may not be brilliant, but they're fascinatingly matter-of-fact essays about a world that no longer exists, and Twain is a solid stylist. James Fenimore Cooper's Deerslayer is unconscionably bad. I hated Doestoyevesky back then, but I don't think that means much.



Anything other than that is high school lit, and I don't know that I trust my reactions to books I had to read in high school lit.

[esmeraldus-neo.livejournal.com]

"Jane Austen is, as you say, delightful."

Yes. There are only a few, so you can do the complete works fairly easily.

[sarah-ovenall.livejournal.com]

I love The Moonstone and The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. I think the former is considered the first detective novel written in English.

You mentioned Pride and Prejudice and I have to add that Persuasion is my favorite Austen novel.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

p_straub55 also highly recommended Collins and was surprised when I mentioned that he had been suggested by a couple of people here, and had shown up on a couple of polls of "best-loved novels".

[firecat]

Moby Dick, Melville
War & Peace, Tolstoy
Tale of Two Cities, Dickens. I also like David Copperfield.
any Sherlock Holmes (A Study in Scarlet is the first novel and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is the first short story collection)
any Jane Austen (my favorite is Persuasion)
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
Vanity Fair, Thackaray
The Warden & Barchester Towers, Trollope

(I listened to most of the above on audio, by the way, except for Jane Eyre and Sherlock Holmes.)

You've already read Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass but you might want to check out Martin Gardner's wonderful annotated edition.

The OH really likes Hunchback of Notre Dame, and says you "should read the real proto-SF" (by which he means Frankenstein).

[rkdioxin.livejournal.com]

Several agreements: if you're going to read just one book per author, then TALE OF TWO CITIES and PRIDE AND PREJUDICE and HUCK FINN are the ones I'd choose. For Dostoevsky, CRIME AND PUNISHMENT is more novel-ish altho I've always loved "Notes from the Underground." While I recognize it's importance, neither love, money nor a balanced budget could induce me to read MOBY DICK again.
Also:
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES by Thomas Hardy
IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST by Oscar Wilde (ok, it's a play not a novel)
any of the Sherlock Holmes stories
TREASURE ISLAND by Stevenson is the acknowledged classic (plus, y'know, pirates) but as a child I was very fond of KIDNAPPED (probably because of the Scottishness)
MADAME BOVARY by Flaubert

[maureenkspeller.livejournal.com]

There are lots of great suggestions here already, but I'll throw in one or two more ideas.

Fenimore Cooper is tedious but necessary if you want a proper historical overview. If you don't, there are far more enjoyable things to read, really. On the other hand, I love Moby Dick.

I'd suggest something from Elizabeth Gaskell, and I'd go with Mary Barton because it gives such a vivid picture of working-class life in industrial Britain – worth pairing with Dickens, something like Hard Times.

My favourite Austens are Northanger Abbey (because it's funny – no, really), and Mansfield Park, which isn't, but I still rate it.

I absolutely second The Count of Monte Cristo which is baggy but wonderful. Hugo's Les Miserables is long but enjoyable too.

Hardy – if you fancy something light/early, try Under the Greenwood Tree but if you want Hardy in all his pomp, my personal favourite is The Return of the Native, for the mighty descriptions of Egdon Heath. Jude the Obscure is so depressing, it's unbelievable, and I have still not reread it. Hardy's poetry is also worth looking at, seriously. It is amazingly good stuff.

Dickens – Great Expectations is quite atmospheric. I read it last year and could hardly put it down, much to my surprise.

Henry James – Washington Square surprised me by being quite readable.

And probably loads of other things that temporarily elude me.

[esmeraldus-neo.livejournal.com]

Everything brisingamen says is true, with special emphasis on the humor in Northanger Abbey and the depressing-ness of Jude the Obscure.

Really, I would avoid Hardy until you get through some of the other stuff. He's good, but it's got to be the most depressing thing I have ever read, bar none.

[nppyinzer.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to dredge up the reading list from the American Lit class I took a few years ago, because it was heavy on late-18th century. Check out Hamlin Garland's Main Travelled Roads; that was definitely the best of the reading list, though it is a collection of short stories.

You can't go wrong with Tolstoy's short fiction; there are a bunch of different collections to choose from.

If you've never read them, get Frankenstein, Cyrano de Bergerac, and The Count of Monte Cristo.

I've liked the small number of Maxim Gorky's plays that I've read, though I think most of them came after 1900. As did Jack London's The Iron Heel, which I think you'd enjoy.

I read Madame Bovary in high school, and it inspired a fire of hatred in me that burns to this very day.

[washa-way.livejournal.com]

Lots to think about here, Zilla.

*I'll state for the record my dislike for Melville, James (I've read the first fifty pages of The Portrait of a Lady three times), and Eliot, and Before reading any Cooper, I suggest a quick examination of Twain's brilliantly caustic essay "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses," which is sort of a "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" for the 19th Century.

*So: Two Dickens for sure: Oliver Twist and A Tale of Two Cities. (I'd also suggest his short story "The Magic Fishbone," which is like some kind of proto-Pratchett tale--quite spendid.)

*The Three Musketeers is a grand buckle to swash, much funnier than I'd expected, and not unlike the Richard Lester movies in tone (though sadly without Raquel Welch). Highly recommended.

*Frankenstein is a definite necessity. In fact, I just finished it last night.

*Austen is a scream--incredibly droll and pointed under a veneer of politeness. Pride & Prejudice is the place to start.

*My opinion of Henry James mirrors Oscar Wilde's--"Mr. Henry James writes fiction as though it were a painful duty"--but Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray is excellent (as is The Importance of Being Earnest if you're up for reading a play.)

*Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre and Emily B's Wuthering Heights. (I read the latter in Manchester, in the winter, during a snowstorm--perfect timing!) They're where all the romance novel and spooky-old-house tropes of modern lit came from.

*Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat is delightful, and gives you a good appreciation for Connie Willis' ...To Say Nothing of the Dog to boot.

*I'm very fond of The Return of the Native, which I read back in HS, and enjoyed Jude the Obscure, though I'm less fond of it.

*Gogol's short story "The Overcoat" is wonderful, and I keep meaning to read Dead Souls, but I haven't yet.

*I'm currently reading Edward Mackay's massive nonfiction book, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds; so far so good.

*My favorite 19th-Century book, however, is probably the surprisingly readable and beautifully presented Origin of Species.

And I've been meaning to read novels by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky for years and just haven't gotten around to them yet. Watch this space.

Recommendations

[(Anonymous)]

As one who still jokes about giving gifts of the latest entry in the *Headbanging Tunes Recorded after 1974 with Lyrics by Roy Thomas Derived from Mimetic Novels* series, I find this post rather amusing, but here goes:

1) Anthony Trollope, *The Way We Live Now* -- one of his best mostly standalone books (Trollope is the British Balzac, in a lot of ways, even if his roman-fleuve is mainly confinedto the Barsetshire and Parliamentary novels), as Trollope surveys the good, the bad and the ugly;

2) Charles Dickens, *Little Dorrit* -- If only for the Circumlocution Office and "How Not to Do It," but also for Dickens's own take on the fabulous financier Merdle (more credible in *The Way We Live Now's" Melmotte, but still well-done);

3) George Eliot, *Middlemarch* -- One of those rare novels which is actually as good as people say and even a little better. I read it because of a convict's admission that she rationed herself to two chapters a day so it'd last a while (it has 86 chapters in all) in P.D. James's *Innocent Blood,* and I had to agree with her daughter who said she couldn't have done it, because it's a marvelous novel;

4) George Gissing -- My favorite first-rate second-rate Victorian author, so it's very hard to keep it down to two, but I'd suggest *The Nether World* for his look at the working-class suffering for Mad Jack's Dream and *New Grub Street* for its lower-middle class intellectual squalor (George Orwell wrote a very fine essay on Gissing in which he remarks that it was hard -- circa 1948 -- to find his books, and that he hadn't read *Born in Exile,* which he'd heard was his masterpiece. Oh, no, close parenthesis before mentioning *The Odd Women,* *The Whirlpool* and...);

5) Emile Zola, *Germinal* -- A great novel about a mining strike;

6) Ivan Turgenev, *Fathers and Sons* -- Because it gave us the first fictional nihilist;

7) Stendhal, *The Red and the Black* -- For Julien Sorel's progress in the uneasy Restoration (1814-30). Close runner-up: *The Charterhouse of Parma,* for its account of the Battle of Waterloo;

8) Gustave Flaubert, *Sentimental Education* -- Surveying the later years of the July Monarchy (1830-48) and the fall of the Second Republic (1848-51). Possibly his masterpiece, even if the first book to come to mind for him will always be *Madame Bovary* (which Flaubert tended to regard in later life as Conan Doyle viewed Sherlock Holmes);

9) Honore de Balzac, the books featuring Vautrin, *Old Goriot,* *Lost Illusions* and *A Harlot High and Low* (okay, that's three, and his major role is in the third. But Vautrin is best appreciated if you understand what he hopes to do for Eugene de Rastignac in the first book and what he does do for Lucien de Rubempre in the second and third);

10) Herman Melville, *White-Jacket* -- Hard as it is to believe, Melville was once a very popular author, in the days before *Moby-Dick* and *Pierre* relegated him to the fringes of literature. This book, subtitled *The World in a Man-of-War,* is fresh and fun and contains a brilliant set piece involving the Neversink's physician, Mr. Surgeon Cuticle; and

11) William Makepeace Thackeray, *Vanity Fair* -- For the scintillating Sharp (Becky, naturally) whose mother was a Montmorency, and also because I think its subtitle is wrong, and that William Dobbin is as heroic a character as a reader could wish (speaking tomeavesishly, of course).

Happy reading!

Re: Recommendations

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

Is Germinal the novel with the horse that spent its entire life down the mine? If so, it features heavily in Tom Wolfe's essay "People Should Write More Novels Like the Ones I Enjoy" from the late 1980s (oh, wait, that wasn't the actual title).

Re: Recommendations

[(Anonymous)]

"A novel may be good, though Tom Wolfe may praise it." -- The Black Panther to Monica Lynne, *Avengers* #74.

Oh, sorry, that was "a cause may be right, though a leader or two may be wrong."

Seriously...I'm sure it is, but I don't remember the horse at all. (I read *Germinal* a long time ago.) I do remember a rabbit named Poland (John Kerry wouldn't have, right, Turdblossom? No, Mr. President), though.

My memories of *Nana* are much sharper, despite my annoyance that the titular heroine is able to cause so much damage in such a short period of time (Zola began plotting out his sequence before the Second Empire fell, and didn't realize how little time it had). If you don't want to give Tom Wolfe any satisfaction, you could read that instead. According to Gustave Flaubert, "it is a Colossus with dirty feet...but it is a Colossus."

Elsewhere, I see that times are trying for you, Nellorat and Supergee. If there's anything an Anonymous Sparrow can do, please let me know.

Carry on.

[esmeraldus-neo.livejournal.com]

No one has pointed you at George Eliot, that I see. Try Mill on the Floss. It has some very funny bits, against a touching human story.

I'm going to e-mail you the reading list I set myself for my 19thC exam.

Oh, yeah...everyone's mentioned Jane Austen's novels, but don't miss her Juvenilia.. It's hilarious stuff, and available online.

For a sample, try this one called The Beautifull Cassandra, which is only a few hundred words: http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/juviscrp.html#beaucassand

[esmeraldus-neo.livejournal.com]

And possibly the funniest book assigned me before I switched advisors: Samuel Butler's The Way of All Flesh.

I should add here that I'm a British literature specialist, and my knowledge of American lit is rather less. But speaking of fantastic texts, I think no one has mentioned Poe.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

I did--in my short list of works I've actually read is Tales of Mystery and Imagination. I've read fairly widely in Poe--probably more than any other 19C writer, actually, except possibly Wells.

[baldanders.livejournal.com]

Don't let the Henry James haters put you off at least trying him; I think he's marvelous, and if you're a Delany fan -- I don't know whether you are -- you're already prepared for a writer that people dismiss with nonsense like "Mr. Henry James writes fiction as though it were a painful duty" (a typical facile but empty quip from Wilde, the master of facile but empty). The truth is the opposite: James writes as though writing is a joy. He is bursting with a love of words that can indeed be overwhelming. I certainly understand finding him impenetrable, but if you find his style congenial you'll find one of the sharpest observational minds ever to write fiction.

A 19th-century novel you won't find on many lists but that I think you might find fascinating is Charles Robert Maturin's late gothic novel Melmoth the Wanderer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melmoth_the_wanderer).

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

I don't have a problem with ornate or difficult prose in general--I read James when I was also reading William Faulkner and Gene Wolfe--but there was something about James that made me itch. I absolutely loathed The Turn of the Screw when I read it in college, and was so turned off by it that I decided never to read James again.

The admiration in which he is held by readers and writers I respect has, in recent years, made me suspect that this was not necessarily the best decision and that I certainly owe him a second chance.

[washa-way.livejournal.com]

Before you extend that chance, be aware that I'm also a fan of Faulkner and Wolfe, but James turns me off completely. I read "The Beast in the Jungle" in grad school and felt it was a ten-page story (with an obvious twist) extended to thirty pages through the magic of repetition, hesitation, and abstraction.

But don't take my word for it. Take a look at Virginia Woolf's parodic account of meeting James for tea:

"Henry James fixed me with his staring blank eye--it is like a child's marble--and said “My dear Virginia, they tell me-- they tell me -- they tell me-- that you-- as indeed being your father's daughter, nay your grandfather's grandchild-- the descendant, I may say, of a century-- of a century-– of quill pens and ink-- ink-- ink-pots, yes, yes, yes, they tell me-– ahm m m-- that you, that you, that you write in short.”

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

Dude, the fact that writer is easily parodied is not evidence that the writer isn't great. In fact, many (most? all?) great writers are *more* easily parodied than mediocre writers.

Still, that's cruel *and* funny, which is often a tasty combination.

[maureenkspeller.livejournal.com]

It suddenly occurred to me late last night that I'd forgotten to mention my favourite Mary Shelley, The Last Man, which clearly proto-science fiction, featuring a journey across a depopulated Europe. Seriously underrated, in my opinion.

[bugsybanana.livejournal.com]

Now that I'm back with net access, I can jump in.

I am fond of Austen, and since you've already delved into Pride and Prejudice, I'll put in a plug for Emma, which is probably my favorite.

No one has mentioned Guy de Maupassant, who I shied away from for ages thinking he sounded as boring as Proust, but he is wonderful. He specialized in short stories -- some good ones are the notorious "The Necklace," which you may have encountered in school, "The Jewels," "Mouche," "Two Friends," "The Hand" and "The Horla" which are both vaguely stfnal, and a bunch of others. I also love his young-Parisian-on-the-make novel Bel-Ami, and would be delighted to have someone else around who's read it!

Dostoyevsky is good too, I've read Crime and Punishment and Notes from Underground, but the Russians apparently consider him a pot-boiling hack!

My understanding is that Germany and Spain were pretty barren novelistically in the 1800s. For Spain, I've heard of Benito Pérez Galdós, but haven't read him. OTOH, the Germans can claim E.T.A. Hoffmann.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

I read about the first third of Crime and Punishment half my life ago. Really enjoyed it--can't remember why I didn't finish. (One of the reasons I'm undertaking this project is that, in general, the 19C literature I've attempted, I've enjoyed, and I don't know why I haven't read more of it.)

Oh, Hoffmann. Right. Never heard of Pérez Galdós, alas.