This big question always comes up in literary circles. For that matter, what is a classic? Well, it needs to be at least a little old, though that word is subjective. It needs to have a lasting impact, though I’m not going to use any academic definitions of the western canon. Frankly, the western canon is far too white and male, and there are many overlooked classics from women and BIPOC writers. Maybe you’re preparing to answer this question at a holiday party. Maybe you’re just trying to figure out your next classic read. Either way, give this quiz a spin. From 1984 to Wuthering Heights, see how many of this not-at-all exhaustive list that you’ve read.
Now you can brag about how many classics you have read. If you still need some recommendations for classic books, check out our lists for modern classics, short classics, classics by people of color, and classics by women!
Classics Reading List
1984 by George Orwell A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie Anne Frank: A Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank Beloved by Toni Morrison Brave New World by Aldous Huxley Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Dracula by Bram Stoker Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury Foundation by Isaac Asimov Frankenstein by Mary Shelley Great Expectation by Charles Dickens If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte Les Miserables by Victor Hugo Little Women by Louisa May Alcott Love in a Fallen City by Eileen Chang Moby Dick by Herman Melville Native Son by Richard Wright One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez Our Nig by Harriet E. Wilson Paradise Lost by John Milton Passing by Nella Larsen Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier Selected Poems by Gwendolyn Brooks The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain The Awakening by Kate Chopin The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald The Iliad by Homer The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien The Round House by Louise Erdrich The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup Ulysses by James Joyce Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stow War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
