2.6 From Dickens to Woolf: What is a Classic?

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Happy December! Welcome back to The Community Library, and to a whole new theme for this month! December’s theme is Classics, and we’re kicking it off with an episode that asks: what is a classic? I talk about Homer, Austen, Shelley, Dickens, Wilde, Woolf, Fitzgerald, Lee, and many, many more. I hope you enjoy this quick discussion episode!

Listen to the episode here

Download a full transcription of the episode here

Currently reading

Lists of must-read classics

  • Penguin UK: 100 must-read classic books, as chosen by our readers

  • BookBub: The best classic novels of all time, according to BookBub readers

  • The Guardian: The 100 greatest novels of all time: The list

  • Goodreads: Popular classic novels bookshelf

Lists of future classics

  • Barnes and Noble: Future classics: 50 literary greats

  • Bustle: 12 modern books that will become classics, according to people on Reddit

  • Why To Read: 10 modern books which will become the classics of the future

  • BookRiot: 100 must-read modern classics

Future classics I mentioned

My "flexible list" of classics

The Greco-Roman era

  • The Iliad by Homer, 1260 – 1180 BCE

  • The Odyssey by Homer, 1260 – 1180 BCE

19th Century

1810s, 1820s

  • Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, 1813

  • Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, 1823

1840s, 1850s

  • Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, 1847

  • Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, 1847

  • Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, 1851

1860s, 1870s

  • Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, 1861

  • Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, 1862

  • Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, 1865

  • Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, 1868

  • War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, 1869

  • Middlemarch by George Eliot, 1872

1890s

  • The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, 1890

  • Dracula by Bram Stoker, 1897

  • Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, 1899

20th Century

1900s

  • Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie, 1904

  • The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, 1911

  • Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery, 1908

1920s

  • The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925

  • To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, 1927

1930s, 1940s

  • The Grapes of Wrath by George Steinbeck, 1939

  • Animal Farm by George Orwell, 1945

  • The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1943

1950s

  • The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger, 1951

  • Lord of the Flies by William Golding, 1954

  • The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis, 1950

  • Charlotte's Web by E. B. White, 1952

1960s

  • To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, 1960

  • One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey, 1962

  • Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, 1961

  • The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton, 1967

When I say "classic novel", what's the first one that comes to mind? – Your votes

To keep the list short, I've excluded all titles that only received one or two votes.

Featured image: Some classics I brought with me while travelling.

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2.7 "He's Not Bad at Writing": Thoughts on Shakespeare with Laurence

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2.5 "Totally Buggin'!" Jane Austen's Emma and Clueless (pt. 2)