What is your favorite 19th century novel? Why?

Oscar Wilde—though actually I like his plays (e.g., The Importance of Being Earnest) and fairy tales more than his novel… but such devastating wit!

You’re making me realize how little 19th century lit I’ve read or remembered reading.

I’d have to say Taras Bulba by Nicholai Gogol. I read it in HS and loved the romanticism. Every Cossack married to a nomadic life on the Russian steppes and heroes capable of delivering their own patriotic elegy moments before they die. Also, there’s the element of forbidden love.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. This is one of my favorite books ever written (tied with Animal Farm and Hitchhikers Guide five part triology, I know, kinda different than Jane..) The story is timeless, Jane is an incredible heroine, and the writing is fabulous. There is a slow part towards the middle/end, but that usually happens in older novels. I think this is one of the best books for any girl to read. (or guy.)

@Les, I was just about to say that. Jane Eyre is one of my all-time favorites. It’s hard to pinpoint what makes the Brontes such compelling writers but I honestly could not put it down.

Bronte sisters used rich and complex sentences; used characters, plot and location to further the story; were able to imply w. great subtleness sexual attraction, antipathy, class issues, greed, snobbery, jealousy, and the other strong emotions without being obvious or blatant. The era wouldn’t have allowed it, of course.

19th century lit. is wonderful. I couldn’t possibly pick a favorite.Try Jane Austin, Herman Melville, Tolstoy, Gustave Flaubert, Trollope, Galsworthy, Dostoevsky, George Eliot (a female author), Hardy, Victor Hugo, Dickens, Henry James, Zola, Mark Twain, R.L. Stephenson, James Fenimore Cooper, Samuel Butler.

One of the ways to choose is by weight. Which one isn’t too heavy to read on the subway or in bed w/o wrist fractures?.

Jane Austen, especially Emma. Although P&P is probably better known, I think Emma is her best work!

What richness to chose from. Why have to pick one? Tolstoy is right up there for me, as is Dostoevsky. And Hardy, whose short stories give me the shivers. And I too loved Jane Eyre, which I read when I was but a young girl. But, I have been affected possibly most by Zola—whose images of stark realism still help me see contemporary scenes with fresh insight.

I like Persuasion by Jane Austen. Even though Anne Elliot is less charming and ironic than P&P’s Elizabeth Bennet, there is just something so compelling about a plot centered on a second chance.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I love the vernacular and humor.

Great answers all! I teach literature non-credit courses at a community college and always looking for new ideas. The Nineteenth century British are my favorites – I love to leave the complexities of the rotten 21st century for the different complexities of the 19th. Favorites have always been Austen since I was a young girl, worked my way through Dickens in my 20s and 30s and have recently been reading and teaching Anthony Trollope. Barchester Towers is a wonderfully comedic novel!

@ gailcalled and skfinkel – I am the mother of a friend of Ben’s from Brown. Been following Fluther for a while but only recently joined.

bram stokers Dracula

How can we forget Melville! Moby Dick is a challenge to get through, but such an incredible book. And, on a lighter note, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Louisa May Alcott. There aren’t many books from the 19th century that can still engage young people today, but Little Women is one of them. Probably not appropriate for a college-level course, though…

i loved victor hugo’s book (i forget the title), about the last hours of a man on death row. read it in french. unbelievable.

I’m with occ on the ‘Moby Dick’ call, especially 2nd time round when you know to skip all the scientific cetacean palaver. I’ve also got a recording of Charles Laughton reading a concise version, he makes a perfect Ahab, and after a few listens you end up knowing whole pages of it off by heart: “They think me mad – Starbuck does – but I am Demoniac ! I am Madness Maddened !

I agree too. Moby Dick is great.

@ occ Actually I did include Little Women in a course I called Groundbreakers: Three 19th Century Woman Novelists. The other books were Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and Willa Cather’s My Antonia. It was fun to look at Little Women from a feminist perspective.

@janbb: Would be interesting to read Little Women next to March, which is next on my reading list.

I’ve done that – it’s really cool to juxtapose the two books. Also to read about Louisa May Alcott’s real father Bronson Alcott and her relationship to him and the other transcendalists. The father in March is very much based on Bronson Alcott.

I have to confess to being an Oscar Wilde girl myself.

I’m biased by dint of birthplace, but Hamsun’s “Hunger” and “Mysteries” are pretty high up on my list.

I’ve heard of Hamsun but not read him – thanks for the suggestion!

Wilde, Dostoevsky, and Hardy are up there on my list.

Great Expectations would be a bestseller if released new today. Dickens f’ing rules.

Oscar Wild…

“I wish I had said that.

Oh but you did Oscar, but you did”

Another that I was bowled over by is Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure. At the time it was originally published, the book caused so much controversy that Hardy never wrote another novel. Of course, today it is not as shocking, but I did find parts of it to be shocking. I also enjoyed the film.

Middlemarch; Mill on the Floss; heartbreaking, wise, and funny. DH Lawrence, fabulously visual, strange wonderful utopianism.