What are your favorite 19C books?

[DianeL]

I saw an adaptation of it on PBS's "Mystery" some years ago.

THAT would be so much fun!

[erechwydd]

Have recently been re-reading Alcott's darker works and enjoying that immensely. Drugs and secrets and love, oh my!

Until I studied Behind a Mask I had no idea that she'd written anything like that - blew me away a bit.

[DianeL]

erechwydd, when I was 17 or 18 my brother gave me a copy of the more lurid tales of Alcott, and it actually has been one of my more formative 19th-century reads. Probably also a bedrock for my gender expectations, not to use the term "feminism" in a context it might not be the most precision tool to use.

I always read a great deal of the usual period literature, and I live in Richmond, VA, a town intimately connected with Poe - but the Alcott thrillers and sensation-stories stuck with me. This is probably because (a) I never did read her more famous novels, and (b) I was aware, nonetheless, how outre' these pieces were compared to those. The result is that I've always approached 19th century literature with the framework that "Victorian" prose is nothing like so staid nor precious as its current reputation would indicate.

[Thurinius]

I don't really care for the Victorian era much. Too much bodice ripping, not enough meat for my taste. That said, my favorites...

The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde (This is a smart, well written Victorian novel with a dark side.)

War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (I am about 300 pages in and can hardly put it down. Immense in scope already, and very well written.)

Anything by Dostoyevsky - (Oddly, I haven't read brothers Karamozov yet, it will be next when I finish War and Peace. But I have read most of his others, and Crime and Punishment and The House of the Dead in particular I love).

The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas - (has anybody read his "new" one? http://www.amazon.com/Last-Cavalier-Adventures-Sainte-Hermine-Napoleon/dp/1605980005/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1306083613&sr=1-1

Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Treasure Island - Robert Lewis Stevenson

Here is some of my favorites that are set in the 19th C, but not actually written there.

The Flashman Series - George Macdonald Frasier (These are hilarious, and contain more history than you think).

The Sharpe Series - Bernard Cornwell

The Aubery-Maturin Novels - Patrick O'brien (All you ever wanted to know and then some about the Napoleonic Era Royal Navy.)

Have to agree with several of these. I'm 1113 pages into War and Peace and absolutely loving it. Before I started that I was on Anna Karenina, again which I loved. Though I disliked the two main characters: Anna and Vronsky. I couldn't warm to them at all. But every other character was a joy.

Flashman - so sad there won't be any more of them.
And the three musketeers I never get bored of that book. I can read it again and again.

[Antoine Vanner]

My father introduced me to Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines when I was eight. I read every other book I his I could get may hands on. I will never forget the feeling of awe and delight that his descriptions of Africa gave me. This in due course led me to having a very close involvement with Africa for the last forty years and where I've spent a quarter of my adult life. The reality was even better than Rider Haggard portrayed!

My own daughters became similarly addicted as children and one of them has been building up a significant Rider Haggard Library.

He didn't just write about Africa however - three of his best books are:

[I][I]Lysbeth, a tale of the Dutch [/I][/I](set in the 80-Years War and the Dutch struggle against Spain)

Montezuma's Daughter: An English adventurer arrives in Mexico just before Cortez and gets involved, on the Aztec side, in the conquest

Eric Brighteyes: An Icelandic Saga

And in addition to the above don't forget:

Nada the Lily: About the rise and fall of Shaka and the Zulu Empire

The Alan Quartermaine Series

She and the folllow-up Ayesha - the most unlikely and alluring heroine in fiction!

[Antoine Vanner]

Have to agree with several of these. I'm 1113 pages into War and Peace and absolutely loving it. Before I started that I was on Anna Karenina, again which I loved. Though I disliked the two main characters: Anna and Vronsky. I couldn't warm to them at all. But every other character was a joy.

Flashman - so sad there won't be any more of them.
And the three musketeers I never get bored of that book. I can read it again and again.

I started The Last Cavalier with high hopes and got about a third of the way before giving up. It seems to have been an essentially endless magazine or newspaper serial so that there is no real unified plot, just a series of incidents and adventures strung together. It was probably a profitable pot-boiler for Dumas but not worth resurrecting.

[Treebeard]

Newbie....

In no particular order:

Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain
Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain
Last of the Mohicans - JF Cooper
Deerslayer - JF Cooper
Treasure Island - RL Stevenson
Kidnapped - RL Stevenson
Three Musketeers - Dumas
Pickwick Papers - Dickens
Tale of Two Cities - Dickens
King Solomon's Mines - Haggard
Sherlock Holmes stories - Conan Doyle

A short segment in "Life on the Mississippi" talks about piloting a steamboat along a stretch of the river close to my home. Sam Clemens probably could still recognize many landmarks along that stretch of the river. The River itself changes by the hour, even now, with locks & dams every 30-40 miles, from St Paul, MN to Alton, IL

[Nefret]

Little Women
Emma
David Copperfield
The Devils
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
The Count of Monte Cristo

Updated (new books)

Pickwick Papers
Bleak House
A Tale of Two Cities
Jane Eyre
Sense and Sensibility
North and South