This request is from Lara:
I’m reading Jane Austen’s Bookshelf and it’s making me really curious about the classics. Something I haven’t felt in at least a decade. So it’s a really broad rec request. Which classics (especially women writers who aren’t necessarily ‘canon’) would the bitchery recommend? I have only one other requirement – that the book have a happy ending. Oh and preferably available as an ebook as my budget and location don’t stretch to collecting rare books.
Sarah: I was an English major at a women’s college in the south so my ‘classics’ curriculum was a lot of Southern Gothic writers. Eudora Welty and Flannery O’Connor didn’t write romances, or books with what Lara would think are happy endings so I’m really pondering.
The thing with classics in what is considered the literary canon, aka A Lot of Books by Dead White Guys, is that they don’t end happily in a way that corresponds with our understanding of romance. Two very different genres, in other words.
So I’m playing a little loose with the idea of a ‘classic’ here.
Would Anne of Green Gables ( A | BN ) be considered a classic? I think so, and it ends happily. The Blue Castle is even more romantic.
Elyse: A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf ( A | BN | K | AB )
Sarah: A Room with a View by EM Forster, ends with choices that romance readers would probably identify as a happy ending (though if you read the unpublished epilogue, well, maybe don’t do that).
The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim, which follows four women in a villa in Italy.
Oh! North and South! ( A | BN | K | AB ) The one with labor unions not the one with the US Civil War. By Elizabeth Gaskell
The Count of Monte Cristo ( A | BN | K | AB ) and The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas ( A | BN | K | AB ) – a dude, but also some excellently satisfying revenge.
Amanda: Dumas is one of the few classic authors I don’t feel is overrated.
Sarah: One more book that is probably mentioned in Jane Austen’s Bookshelf: Evelina by Fanny Burney. ( A | BN | K ) I read that in grad school and woo was that a fun one!
It’s epistolary, and very Dramatique!
Tara: I think Pamela by Samuel Richardson ( A | BN | K | AB ) counts, although I haven’t read it since I was in university.
Carrie: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. ( A | BN | K | G | AB | Au | Scribd ) As with any classic be warned of issues around xenophobia, racism, classism, and ableism going in.
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott ( A | BN | K | AB )
Not a romance but has a happy ending: A Little Princess by Frances hodgson Burnett and, also by her, The Secret Garden.
A lot of Dickens had at least some characters having happy endings
My Antonia by Willa Cather ( A | BN | K | AB ) had a bittersweet ending, everyone ends up at peace with where they are and Antonia has a very happy life.
Are there any classics you’d recommend? Let us know in the comments!
For classics with a strong romance:
– North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
– Daddy Long Legs by Jean Webster (bonus for being about a smart young woman going to school and being successful, which is also what I love about Anne of Green Gables books 1-3)
– Patricia Brent, Spinster by George Herbert Jenkins (available from internet archive)
Have a romance, but it is not as much a romance
– Lorna Doone by RD Blackmore (also has a great BBC mini series)
Not a romance
– the Count of Monte Cristo – by Alexandre Dumas – very fun and readable for something that long
– Dracula – Bram Stoker – it is surprisingly readable and fun. There are also some unexpectedly funny parts. It does have a happy / satisfying ending even though a few minor characters die. As a person with low scary/horror tolerance, I enjoyed it.
– Captain Blood – Raphael Sabatini – a fun pirate adventure and one of my favorite movies.
Far From the Madding Crowd was mentioned above, but I want to second it. I went through a Thomas Hardy phase in high school (I think the movie Tess with Nastassja Kinski had come out and I’d read about the movie). My favorite was Return of the Native, but I always felt that Far From the Madding Crowd was the only Hardy novel with a happy ending.
There is a movie version of Far From the Madding Crowd with Carey Mulligan as Bathsheba, and Matthias Schoenaerts, Michael Sheen, and Tom Sturridge as the men in her life. Juno Temple (Keeley in Ted Lasso) also has a small role.
Lots of good recs here – I don’t think I saw Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White, which has a happy ending, but more importantly Marian Halcombe, a wonderful character who received proposals of marriage from readers of the book and who many of the bitchery may adore too.
Project Gutenberg is currently the third place I look for ebooks of classics, as it has the greatest breadth but no focus on formatting. My first two in some order are 1) Standard Ebooks, which is another volunteer org that puts together proofread and nicely formatted free editions, and 2) Delphi Classics, which puts together both omnibus and (all) “parts” editions of authors’ works, with the US editions generally around $2-4 for all of an author’s available public domain works. Delphi sells on the major ebook sites or at their own website.
I want to read Random Harvest since I love the movie so much with Ronald Colman and Greer Garson. Have any of you read it?