The Classics Club is “a club created to inspire people to read and blog about classic books.” To join, you must compile a list of 50+ classics you plan to read within five years or less.
I’m excited to sign up for the challenge, with a goal of completing 65 classics I have been wanting to read or reread. These are all books that I either already own, or that are in the public domain and therefore available as free e-books.
I’m setting my completion date as: July 6, 2021, four years from today. Wish me luck!
Below is my Classics Club reading list. I will also keep a separate page (organized alphabetically by author) that I will update with links to reviews as I go.
1. Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
2. Middlemarch by George Eliot
3. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen*
4. Watership Down by Richard Adams
5. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
6. Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Bradden
7. Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell
8. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
9. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
10. Night and Day by Virginia Woolf
11. No Name by Wilkie Collins
12. The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
13. Emily of New Moon by L.M. Montgomery
14. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
15. The Lark by E. Nesbit
16. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
17. The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton
18. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte*
19. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Ann Bronte*
20. The Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain
21. Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky
22. The Priory by Dorothy Whipple
23. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
24. Three Guineas by Virginia Woolf
25. The Shuttle by Francis Hodgson Burnett
26. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith*
27. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
28. The Crowded Street by Winifred Holtby
29. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier*
30. Belinda by Maria Edgeworth
31. Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
32. Westwood Stella Gibbons
33. The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maughm
34. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
35. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
36. Right Ho, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse
37. Evelina by Frances Burney*
38. Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope
39. Macbeth by William Shakespeare
40. Heidi by Johanna Spyri
41. The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen
42. The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank*
43. Dangerous Liaisons by Choderlos de Laclos
44. The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
45. Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell*
46. The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
47. Deerbrook by Harriet Martineau
48. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee*
49. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
50. Beloved by Toni Morrison
51. 1984 by George Orwell
52. Excellent Women by Barbara Pym
53. Mariana by Monica Dickens
54. Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
55. Tales of Men and Ghosts by Edith Wharton
56. The Ladies’ Paradise by Émile Zola
57. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
58. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood*
59. The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf
60. The Group by Mary McCarthy
61. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
62. The Journals of Sylvia Plath
63. The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas
64. The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
65. A Lost Lady by Willa Cather
*Denotes a reread
Do you see any of your favorite classics on this list? What classics have you been meaning to read?
Dwell in Possibility 
I came across your blog because you left a comment on Rhymes & Ribbons recommending To Say Nothing of the Dog. I figured anyone who liked that book must have a blog worth investigating! This is a great list of books. Quite a few of these are on my own Classics Club list. I just reread Mariana last week, Dorothy Whipple is very good, and Three Men in a Boat is a joy and a pleasure. I just noticed that your previous post is about a Mary Stewart book. Well! It sounds like we have similar taste in books. (As long as you liked Mary Stewart, that is. I’ll go read your post now and find out.)
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Jennifer, for some reason I didn’t see this comment until today- so sorry! It definitely sounds like we have similar taste in books. I love Mary Stewart and TO Say Nothing of the Dog is a new favorite. Have you read any other Connie Willis? I just followed you on bloglovin and look forward to chatting books in the future.
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I’ve read quite a few of these actually:
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Bradden
The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy +
Emily of New Moon by L.M. Montgomery*
No Name by Wilkie Collins
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte*
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Ann Bronte*
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith*
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie +
Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
Evelina by Frances Burney
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier*
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Excellent Women by Barbara Pym
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood +
*= a favorite
+= want to read it again
A few others are very good even if they don’t quite make my cut as favorites!
My list would probably include some of these:
Dangerous Liaisons Pierre Choderlos De Laclos
The Way We Live Now Anthony Trollope
Daniel Deronda George Eliot
Three Men in a Boat Jerome K. Jerome
Wise Children Angela Carter
Orlando: A Biography by Virginia Woolf
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
Germinal by Emile Zola
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino
But it’s not limited to those by any means. Actually it would be a pretty long list…
Best of luck!
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Wow that seems like such a good idea. I have been meaning to read more classics and thought of trying to read one a month or something. I might have to join you.
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DO IT. 🙂
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Have done. 😀
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Ha ha — yes, I saw that! We share Leaves of Grass. 🙂
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Great list! For my Classics Club reading, I have read some different books by the same authors – Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton, Armadale by Wilkie Collins, The Aspern Papers by Henry James. I would like to read your picks too though.
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This is a great idea! There are all these books on the list to read and a list and people to read with are perfect for accountability =D
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It’s definitely a great way to read more classics!
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Your #1 is DELICIOUS! I hope you enjoy it. 🙂 I’ve only read ten of these titles, but I’m a fellow clubber, so I wanted to say hello. I really want to read your #17. I love Wharton’s work. Very happy reading to you!
Here’s my list if you’re curious: https://ofcannonsandbooks.wordpress.com/my-classics-club-list-ii-50-titles-12-films/
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I’m glad to hear it- I’ve been meaning to read Portrait of a Lady for ages! I adore Edith Wharton too, and I’ll definitely check out your CC list. Happy reading to you as well!
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This is the greatest idea ever 😃 nobody ever wants to read classics with me… but this…this beautiful group of people who wants to do the same thing as me? I literally cannot wait to get home from work to put up my list 😁
So glad I stumbled across your post!
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The Classics Club is definitely a great idea, right?!! I’m happy you discovered it through my post too! I’d love to see your TBR list when you’ve completed it…
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So looking forward to it. Literally rushed home from work to compile my list 🙂 https://wordpress.com/post/introvertedbookwormblog.wordpress.com/219
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Creating the list is definitely half the fun!
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