pre 20th century literature

[khalakh_the_3rd]

What would you say are the pre 20th Century novels that you really must read, if you're going to read any?

[Inderjit Sanghe]

It is a difficult question to answer-there are so many pre-20th century novels which need to be read, but if I could condense it down to just 10, the novels would be.

Don Quixote-Cervantes
Madame Bovary-Flaubert
War and Peace-Tolstoii
Crime and Punishment
Brothers Karamazov-Dostoevskii
Pride and Prejudice-Austen
Tristram Shandy-Sterne
Charterhouse of Parma-Stendahl
Old Goirot-Balzac (difficult to choose one novel from his brilliant "human comedy")
Hunger-Knut Hamsun

Making this list was more difficult than I thought it would be, but in terms of influence and importance, there may be "better" books, or books which I liked better, but I think these novels would be my top pre-20th century "must reads"-any such list is entirely arbitrary, of course, but I do not think that many people would argue with the inclusion of "Don Quixote" and "Madame Bovary", or a novel by Dostoevskii, Tolstoii or Balzac.

[ranzy]

I have already read some pre 20th Century American, English and Italian novels (Melville, Hawthorne, Twain, Dickens, Wilde, Austen, Manzoni, Verga...). There's still a lot I'd like to read but mostly I think I should now point toward French and Russian writers, because I've read none of them.