25 Great Classics
Your local Wake County Public Librarians have selected "25 Great Classics," which we feel would enrich your reading experience and enhance your view of the world around us. Happy Reading!
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." So begins Pride And Prejudice, one of the best-loved and most enduring classics in English literature. Excitement fizzes through the Bennet household when young, eligible Mr. Charles Bingley rents the fine house nearby. He may have sisters, but he also has male friends, and one of these – the haughty, and even wealthier, Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy – irks the vivacious Elizabeth Bennet, the second of the Bennet girls. The romantic clash between the opinionated Elizabeth and Darcy is a splendid rendition of civilized sparring. As the characters dance a delicate quadrille of flirtation and intrigue, Jane Austen's radiantly caustic wit and keen observation sparkle.
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
In Victorian England, an orphaned young woman, the plain but spirited Jane Eyre, accepts employment as a governess at Thornfield Hall, a country estate owned by the mysteriously remote Mr. Rochester.
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
In the wild, bleak Yorkshire Moors of its 18th-century setting, Bronte’s novel focuses on the relationship of Catherine and Heathcliff, and the misery that results from their thwarted longing for each other.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll
When Alice follows a strange rabbit down a rabbit hole and passes through a looking glass, she experiences unusual adventures with a variety of nonsensical characters, including the Mad Hatter and the fiendish Queen of Hearts.
Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
In 2002, 100 major writers from 54 countries rated Don Quixote the world's best work of fiction: the novel tells the hilarious and touching tale of Don Quixote, an avid reader of Arthurian romances, who begins to believe that he is a knight errant with a horse, a squire and an honorable lady; but, his horse is a nag, his squire a peasant and his lady a prostitute....
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Three sons find their violent and vengeful lives exposed when their despicable father is murdered, and each man struggles to come to terms with his guilt over his involvement in the crime.
The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
An African-American man's search for success and the American Dream leads him out of college to Harlem and a growing sense of personal rejection and social invisibility.
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Retells the tragic times of the Compson family, including beautiful, rebellious Caddy; man-child Benjy; haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic; and Dilsey, their black servant.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
A young man, newly rich, tries to recapture the past and win back his former love, despite the fact that she has married.
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Perhaps the most controlled and beautifully articulated formal masterpiece in the history of fiction. Unhappily married to a devoted, clumsy provincial doctor, Emma Bovary revolts against the ordinariness of her life by pursuing voluptuous dreams of ecstasy and love. But her sensuous and sentimental desires lead her only to suffering corruption and downfall. Who is Madame Bovary? Flaubert's answer to this question was superb: "Madame Bovary, c'est moi."
Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Goethe’s masterpiece and perhaps the greatest work in German literature, Faust has made the legendary German alchemist one of the central myths of the Western world. Here indeed is a monumental tale, one of an audacious man boldly wagering with the Devil: his eternal soul in exchange for complete knowledge.
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
A tragic wartime romance set against the brutal and chaotic backdrop of World War I, this is the classic story of a volunteer ambulance driver wounded on the Italian front and the English nurse he loves and leaves behind. Considered to be the best American novel to emerge from World War I.
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
When Isabel Archer, a young American woman with looks, wit and imagination, arrives in Europe, she sees the world as "a place of brightness, of free expression, of irresistible action." She turns aside from suitors who offer her their wealth and devotion to follow her own path. But that way leads to disillusionment and a future as constricted as "a dark narrow alley with a dead wall at the end." In a conclusion that is one of the most moving in modern fiction, Isabel makes her final choice.
Ulysses by James Joyce
This account of several lower-class citizens of Dublin describes their activities and tells what some of them were thinking one day in 1904. Banned in the United States until 1933, it is now regarded as one of the greatest novels of the 20th century.
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Two children in 1930s small-town Alabama learn something about moral principles from their father, a lawyer appointed to defend an African-American man accused of raping a white woman.
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
This 16th-century classic follows the adventures of Don Quixote de la Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they travel through Spain and become subject to the noble knight-errant's fanciful imagination.
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
In an effort to escape the hypocrisies of life at his boarding school in Pennsylvania, 16-year-old Holden Caulfield seeks refuge in New York City.
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
This sprawling and often brutal novel, set in the rich farmlands of California's Salinas Valley, follows the intertwined destinies of two families–the Trasks and the Hamiltons–whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
In a classic story of good and evil, a gentle doctor's experiment into the duality of the soul goes awry and he is transformed into a hideous monster at night after taking a secret drug of his own creation.
Vanity Fair by William Thackeray
Chronicles the exploits of Becky Sharp, an unscrupulous young woman who is determined to achieve wealth and social success, and her sentimental companion, Amelia, who has fallen for a caddish soldier, set against the backdrop of English society in the early 1800s.
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
A classic three-part fantasy epic depicting the struggle between good and evil in Middle-Earth, in which the tiny Hobbits play a key role as part of a courageous group of adventurers on a perilous quest to destroy the dangerous One Ring.
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Anna Karenina tells of the doomed love affair between the sensuous and rebellious Anna and the dashing officer, Count Vronsky. Tragedy unfolds as Anna rejects her passionless marriage and must endure the hypocrisies of society. Set against a vast and richly textured canvas of nineteenth-century Russia, the novel's seven major characters create a dynamic imbalance, playing out the contrasts of city and country life and all the variations on love and family happiness.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Jim, a runaway slave, joins Huck Finn, who is fleeing from his cruel father, and together they journey by raft down the Mississippi River, experiencing many adventures.
Slaughterhouse-five by Kurt Vonnegut
Billy Pilgrim, a chaplain's assistant during World War II, survives capture by the Germans and the Dresden bombings only to return home and be kidnapped by aliens in a flying saucer from the planet Tralfamadore.
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Clarissa Dalloway spends a day preparing for one of her evening parties. Yet as the evening approaches, the unexpected arrival of her first lover, Peter Walsh, triggers vivid memories of the past until, piece by piece, Clarissa retells the story of her life.