Anyone a reader of pre-20th century novels?

[michaelm]

The suggestion of Hardy may have been mine, Vraithe. I've always enjoyed him. I'm perpetually mystified how Tess is his most well known novel, though. There are a lot of English Lit-type tropes to work with, but the story... (for the record, Far from the Madding Crowd is his best).

I wouldn't have said Tess either. I'd go for Jude the Obscure or Far From the Madding Crowd.

[TheFallen]

Geez, pre-20th century novels... I've had to read a gutful of those, courtesy of school and later.

I'm surprised that nobody's mentioned Dickens – not a personal favourite of mine by any means, but even so. And no George Eliot?

I'm unsurprised to see Jane Austen mentioned – hats off to her.

However, I'm not loving Wuthering Heights as much as the rest of you apparently are – way WAY too much repressed and frustrated sexuality, what with all the lowering landscapes and equally lowering central male protagonist. If only Emily Bronte had got out more...

Nor am I a huge Hardy fan – I prefer him as a poet, rather than a novelist.

Speaking of the C19th, a shout out here for Vanity Fair by Thackeray – a ripping yarn.

Not a huge amount of novels in English literature if you go back into the C18th... possibly Henry Fielding and Daniel Defoe deserve an honourable mention, with the former being arguably the first recognisable novel in the English language.

Look across the channel to France and there are many riches to be found. The 19th century gives us such luminaries as Flaubert with Madame Bovary, Balzac and his entire La Comédie Humaine and of course Hugo and Stendhal spring to mind.

As for the C18th? Voltaire's Candide is a personal favourite, as are Les Liaisons Dangereuses by de Laclos and Manon Lescaut by the Abbé Prévost.

Go back even farther and you'll find La Vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel, written in the early 1500s by Rabelais and thus beating Don Quixote by near on 100 years.

I'm delighted to see mention of much older mythological sagas, such as the Kalevala, Beowulf, the Illiad, the Odyssey, Gilgamesh, Le Morte D'Arthur and the Saga of the Volsungs. Can I add into the mix the following:-

The Aeneid.

The Mabinogion.

The Older and Younger Eddas.

Le Chanson De Roland.

Paradise Lost.

[Vraith]

Somewhat of a tangent from literature, but I think I heard the Kate Bush song

Hah...I heard the Pat Benatar cover, which made me curious about Kate Bush [and I became a fan], which made me read WH.

TF, I think it was, has indicated something I agree with...not to diss totally the Brits, cuz there was some stuff, especially [IMO] 1830-ish to 1930-ish. [though I can't stomach Dickens...I just can't. I've tried.]...those foreigners did a helluva lot of the best stuff.

To make up for no liking Dickens, a Brit I'll take is Blake [even if not a novelist].

[Wildling]

I love Poe. And a few novels from the 1800's, like Dracula, Phantom Of The Opera, and Frankenstein. But aside from that, I guess I just don't read as much older stuff as the rest of you do.

That said, I've carried around with me to various houses and cities a copy of War And Peace. Never read it. Too intimidating. But I do have it.

[TheFallen]

Good call, V. Blake was unbelievably gifted, both as an artist and a poet. He was pretty much the first Symbolist in both fields, a clear 80 years before Symbolism emerged as an artistic movement.

The man was a veritable genius.

[michaelm]

I'm surprised that nobody's mentioned Dickens

Indeed, I have all but one of Dicken's fiction works in my collection (never got round to buying The Mystery of Edwin Drood, but I will one of these days).

He and I even share a common place of birth (although he was born about two miles from where I was born if we're going to split hairs over it).

It's hard to pick out what Dickens brought to literature, but to me it was the fascination with the characters from his books, often based in stereotypes or stock characters, but rarely without a depth that few had provided before. There are more holes in Dickens' plots than a <insert name of thing with lots of holes here>, but it doesn't really matter as the stories move along at such a pace. You really can see that his works had their roots in serialization, and I don't think he lost that approach too much as he continued to write.

There are of course some books that are less good than others. Little Dorritt comes to mind - I think Oscar Wilde's quote says it all: "One would have to have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without dissolving into tears...of laughter."

I would certainly place A Tale of Two Cities in my top 10 all time favorite books. David Copperfield and Great Expectations are also great books. I think he wrote some great books, some good books, and some not so good books; but even the not so good books are pretty good overall.

[aliantha]

I agree with you on Dickens, michaelm. I read a lot of his work when I was in school and enjoyed a fair bit of it. Miss Havisham sitting in her wedding gown with her moldering cake is not an image one is likely to forget. I've always meant to go back and read the rest of his books, but haven't gotten around to it yet. Maybe one of these days...

As for the Russians, it took me three tries (or maybe it was four) to get into The Brothers Karamazov, but I finally managed to get through it. War and Peace was easier. I've also read Anna Karenina, and liked it the best of the three.

[michaelm]

War and Peace has a reputation for being long and being difficult that it totally doesn't deserve. I'm sure I have quite a few books that are longer, and it wasn't a difficult book at all.

[Avatar]

Just boring.

--A

[michaelm]

Just boring.

--A

I didn't find it boring at all, and it made me think that I should read more Tolstoy (something I still haven't done).

[Avatar]

It's been a long time since I battled through it because it was one of those books you should read. Maybe I'll give it another chance one day.

--A

[michaelm]

It's been a long time since I battled through it because it was one of those books you should read. Maybe I'll give it another chance one day.

I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would, but I probably read it at a time when I was reading quite a few French and Russian authors.

[peter]

Lets see. I think I've read most of Conan Doyle [Holmes and the Challenger novels at least - there's probably shed loads more]. Wilkie Collins I love - 'The Woman In White' is one of my favorite all time books. I think I've got a good deal of HG Wells under my bely [typo that I decided to leave in to remind me of what I need to do next!]. Dickens I've read a little but not exhaustively and of course Hugo {Les Miserables - the greatest novel ever written even in translation [by Denny]}. Stoker's Dracula and Shellys Frankenstein [the first wonderful the second....mmmm ....not so sure about]. RLS's Treasure Island, fantastic [saving Kidnapped for a rainy day]. What else; Eugene Onegin, The Three Musketeers, and of course Verne! [JTTCOTE and ATWI80D - fantastic!], Moby Dick and Alice in Wonderland. Half of Robinson Crusoe, the 'Raffles' novels of Hornung [great suave stuff]. So yes - I've read a little of the pre-20th century stuff, but nowhere near enough Austin, Proust, Thackery etc [ie the more 'literary' end of the market.]

I read 'Kim' not so long back and was amazed that this would have been standard fare for a Victorian kid [who could read]. It was hard enough for me and I doubt that very many of todays kids would have the bredth of vocabulary to be able to deal with it.

[Appologies for any stuff I included that is not actually pre-20th C. I didn't check all the dates.]

Can I just go off topic here a little; clearly when reading any book written in earlier times one will encounter aspects that one is not comfortable with [take H Rider Haggards descriptions of Africans and the treatment thereof in his 'Quatermaine' books], but this rarely becomes an obstacle for me which I am unable to surmount - untill recently that is. Not so long back I fetched up with a desire to read some of the old 'clubland hero' stuff of between the wars England [Buchan and the like] and duly purchased myself a combined volume of the 'Bulldog Drumond' novels of Sapper. By the second book I was so put off Drummond with his anti-semitism and disdain for everything that was not of the upper classes that I stopped reading the novels all together. His cruelty at one point went as far as murdering one of his adversaries in a vat of acid [complete with prurient descriptions] and I think this was the point, or soon thereafter, that I decided these books were not for me. Perhaps I missed out on something really special [the guy who introduced the novels would have it so] but I don't care. As far as I'm concerned he can go swing!

[nb My latest 'craving' is to get into 'whodunnits' and in particular 'Locked Door Mysteries' in which the crime committed is apparently impossible. I'm told [in Wikipedia] the very best of it's type is a book named 'The Hollow Man' by American Auther John Dickson Carr.]

[Morning]

Yes.

[Vraith]

Wilkie Collins I love - 'The Woman In White' is one of my favorite all time books

Stoker's Dracula and Shellys Frankenstein [the first wonderful the second....mmmm ....not so sure about]

the very best of it's type is a book named 'The Hollow Man' by American Auther John Dickson Carr.]

On the first: Really? I don't think I'd have guessed that. Despite issues I have with Collins, like much more than Dickens.
On that note: you MIGHT be interested in a book called "Drood," by Dan Simmons [who just came up in another thread. I like him]. Wilkie is the main character/narrator, entangled with Dickens and "The Mystery of Edwin Drood." [which...damn...nevermind, can't think of a way to say it without at least a dash of spoiler] It's fun, and Simmons does a very good job of capturing the physical structure and emotional "feel" of Wilkie, without being a bad imitation/copy of the language/style. When I finished it, I'm not sure I'd have recommended it to anyone...but as time has passed I've realized it keeps popping into my thoughts, and the thoughts are almost all positive.

On the second: I've always liked Frankenstein more than Dracula...and it tends to hold even into the realm of the films and offshoot/genre works. Frank works and Vlad works made/written at roughly the same time, almost always prefer the bolts to the teeth. [with the possible exception of "Nosferatu."]

On the last: I'm going to have to look into that.

[aliantha]

I felt the same way as peter about Drac v. Frankie. (An appropriate topic, with Halloween coming up on Friday -- good going, you guys! ) While both of the books are classified now as horror, I think the authors had very different sociological aims. Shelly's work was all about how society treats The Other, while Stoker was examining more intimate relationships (and not just sexual ones, although that was part of it, of course).

The name Dan Simmons is ringing a bell. What else has he written? EDITED to add: Found the other thread. Oh duh, *that* Dan Simmons. He's definitely 20th century.

[Wildling]

Anybody read the Phantom Of The Opera?

[aliantha]

Anybody read the Phantom Of The Opera?

I did -- on the insistence of my daughter Batty.

Funny thing about that book: When the movie version of the musical came out, Batty went into a rant about one reviewer's take on it. The reviewer thought the male lead -- not the Phantom, the other one -- was too much of a milquetoast. But of course, that's exactly the way Hugo wrote him. Clearly the reviewer had never read the book.

[Wildling]

Anybody read the Phantom Of The Opera?

I did -- on the insistence of my daughter Batty.

Funny thing about that book: When the movie version of the musical came out, Batty went into a rant about one reviewer's take on it. The reviewer thought the male lead -- not the Phantom, the other one -- was too much of a milquetoast. But of course, that's exactly the way Hugo wrote him. Clearly the reviewer had never read the book.

I had the same kind of feeling when I read it.

Oddly enough, I get the same type of feeling from the good guys in Dennis Wheatley books. Though, of course, they came along a little too late to be mentioned here.

[Vraith]

I felt the same way as peter about Drac v. Frankie. (An appropriate topic, with Halloween coming up on Friday -- good going, you guys! ) While both of the books are classified now as horror, I think the authors had very different sociological aims. Shelly's work was all about how society treats The Other, while Stoker was examining more intimate relationships (and not just sexual ones, although that was part of it, of course).

The name Dan Simmons is ringing a bell. What else has he written? EDITED to add: Found the other thread. Oh duh, *that* Dan Simmons. He's definitely 20th century.

On the first...matter of taste, I guess, in preferring. On the rest there...I agree on the different focus/concerns. Except I think there is a significant subtext in Frank of the intimate relationships that's often overlooked.
Not that peeps don't notice that it's there, I think they do.
I just think it's often ranked too low in the hierarchy of subjects/themes. Reverse with Drac, the sexual aspects tend to dominate the dialogue somewhat [but not entirely] undeservedly.
Oh...and I always think of Frank as SF. I know it's generally genrelized to horror, but in my brain it defaults to the SF shelves. I think that's cuz there are a LOT of references/theme-borrowings/parallels/allusions to Frank in SF, and I ran across tons of it in my formative SF years.

On the second...yea, that Simmons, sorry. But at least it's written to connect aesthetically with Pre-20, and it contains references, books, and peeps that are definitely "on topic."