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.