?
Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Grey
Arthur Conan Doyle - The Sign of Four
Henrik Ibsen - Hedda Gabler
Thomas Hardy - Tess of the d'Urbervilles
George R. Gissing - New Grub Street
Arthur Conan Doyle - The White Company
Arthur Conan Doyle - The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Charlotte Perkins Gilman - The Yellow Wallpaper
George Grossmith - The Diary of a Nobody
Karl May - Winnetou
George R. Gissing - The Odd Women
Lewis Carroll - Sylvie and Bruno
Mark Twain - Pudd'nhead Wilson
Anthony Hope - The Prisoner of Zenda
George Bernard Shaw - Arms and the Man
H.G. Wells - The Time Machine
Oscar Wilde - The Importance of Being Earnest
Rudyard Kipling - The Jungle Book
H.G. Wells - The Island of Dr. Moreau
Anton Chekhov - The Seagull
Sarah Orne Jewett - The Country of the Pointed Firs
Bram Stoker - Dracula
H.G. Wells - The Invisible Man
Edmond Rostand - Cyrano de Bergerac
H.G. Wells - The War of the Worlds
Henry James - The Turn of the Screw
Knut Hamsun - Victoria
Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness
Kate Chopin - The Awakening
E. Nesbit - The Story of the Treasure Seekers
Otter
This list is too Anglophone
I refuse to subject literature to a popularity contest for highbrow reasons
?
Tolstoy, Father Sergius
Kate Chopin, The Awakening
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
The Yellow Wallpaper
The Turn of the Screw
Last edited by Amber; 02-16-2014 at 02:28 PM.
Damn, I forgot Jude the Obscure...possibly partly because I was trying to limit the selection. I deliberately omitted poetry and factual works but there's no reason people can't nominate them!
Heart of Darkness
The Importance of Being Earnest
You seek a great fortune, you three who are now in chains. You will find a fortune, though it will not be the one you seek.
But first you must travel a long and difficult road, a road fraught with peril.
You shall see things, wonderful to tell. You shall see a... cow... on the roof of a cotton house. And, oh, so many startlements.
I cannot tell you how long this road shall be, but fear not the ob-stacles in your path, for fate has vouchsafed your reward.
Though the road may wind, yea, your hearts grow weary, still shall ye follow them, even unto your salvation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pukq_XJmM-k
Should always be read alongside this: Chinua Achebe: "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness'"
“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.”
― Anais Nin
+ Drama > Shaw, The Devil's Disciple; Strindberg, Miss Julie
Not so much into poetry ...but let's say Swinburne and D'Annunzio from that period
Last edited by Amber; 02-16-2014 at 02:59 PM.
None of them.
I voted The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds because, of all the books listed, only those 2 have I read. Haven't had a chance to get my hands on a copy of The Invisible Man yet. H.G. Wells kicked ass.
+ The Golden Bough
Interesting article about racism in Heart of Darkness. It is disturbing when you encounter racism in older literature. I would call it the condescending variety of racism in HOD. Once at a thrift shop, I bought a beautifully bound old book about Vienna that was written in 1904. I was excited about my find, until I started reading it. Almost immediately, the author began a scathing description of the Jews and the Jewish ghettos in Vienna with such obvious hatred. For me, it was a glimpse at the mentality that allowed the holocaust.
You seek a great fortune, you three who are now in chains. You will find a fortune, though it will not be the one you seek.
But first you must travel a long and difficult road, a road fraught with peril.
You shall see things, wonderful to tell. You shall see a... cow... on the roof of a cotton house. And, oh, so many startlements.
I cannot tell you how long this road shall be, but fear not the ob-stacles in your path, for fate has vouchsafed your reward.
Though the road may wind, yea, your hearts grow weary, still shall ye follow them, even unto your salvation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pukq_XJmM-k
Dracula's a pretty good book.
"The stake on which we fight is of balanced on life and death"- Van Helsing (paraphrase)
I feel like a simpleton for having read barely any of these.
EDIT: Also, I like how "Otter" is a choice.
It's my view that the 1890s were a rather rubbish time for literature and that even the H.G. Wells books can seem dated and somewhat tame. I would probably choose a Wilde or an Ibsen or the after-mentioned Jude the Obscure.