How many classics have you read? Some classics so dense, they need a study guide to understand. Others are filled with references practically lost to time. Many are incredible, though, or we wouldn’t consider them classics. The holidays are a perfect time to dive into classics. You have some time off work. The house is decorated, a fire is burning in the fireplace, and you’re stuck inside. That makes it the perfect time to curl up with a blanket, a warm drink, and a classic book you’ve been meaning to read for the last decade.
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
