Recommend me some good English lit - copyright expired

Cafe Society
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So, I have read Dickens (not all, by any means, but plenty), Thackeray, Trollope, Austen, Scott, Hardy, Hawthorne, Conrad, and (stepping outside of English) Hugo and Dumas pére. Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy are not strangers to me. Melville - well, I tried, he defeated me.

I have also read any number of early-20th Century pulpy novels by such as Haggard and Edgar Wallace. Enjoyable as far as they go, but perhaps a bit repetitive.

I am looking for great or wonderful or at least enjoyable novels by other authors, either originally in English or with creditable translations. The main other requirement is that they should be out of copyright, so I can find them for my Kindle for free (or next to it). I am a cheapskate, after all.

Not particularly interested in short stories, drama or poetry. It’s the novel for me, big, deep and rich, with wonderful characters that will engage my emotions.

So, how about it, who has some ideas for me?

Grateful in advance,
Roddy

2

Have you read George Eliot? I think Middlemarch qualifies as big, deep, and rich.

For lighter fare, how about Wilkie Collins (The Woman in White, The Moonstone).

3

• Lady Murasaki, The Tale of Genji
• Henry Fielding, Tom Jones — Bawdy fun
• Stendahl, The Red and the Black — Al Gore’s favorite novel
• Henry James, The Ambassadors
• Edith Wharton, The Custom of the Country
• Booth Tarkington, The Magnificent Ambersons
• Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie

4

Did you go straight for Moby Dick, or have you tried some of his earlier, more accessible nautical yarns? Redburn is a loosely (and somewhat fictionalized) autobiographical account of Melville’s first sea voyage as a youth, and my favorite of the bunch. There are also White Jacket, and his tropical tales, Typee and Omoo.

5

Weird choice - I’d never heard of this guy until recently - but I’ve now read two books by Arnold Bennet (ca. 1860-1930) and really enjoyed them. The Card and especially The Old Wives Tale are light, but show a keen understanding of human nature. They are both set in small-town England in the midst of change from quaint nineteenth century life to the fast-paced twentieth century.

6

Mark Twain’s an obvious recommendation.

And if you’re looking for someone less known, check out Winston Churchill. Not that Winston Churchill, the other one.

7

How about the Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle? Most of them are in the public domain now. Novels, novellas, and short stories. I picked up the entire Holmes library from Amazon for my Kindle for like 30 cents.

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More ideas:

The Sea Wolf by Jack London. The title character is fascinating.

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.

Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne. Maybe some of his other stuff too, but this is what I remember liking.

9

You absolutely must try The Flying Inn, by G. K. Chesterton. This is a wonderful comic epic written around 1920 that’s amazingly current almost a century later.

The plot goes something like this. In Britain, a coalition of meddling nanny-state tyrants and Muslim extremists conspires to have all alcohol prohibited. Upon hearing the news, an old English innkeeper and a wild Irish sea captain decide that they’re going to defy the authorities and keep selling beer. The authorities show up to arrest them, but they escape and start touring the country with a cask of ale and a large round of cheese, bringing good cheer to the oppressed populace. Many madcap adventures ensue. It’s one of the most hilarious novels I’ve ever read–not the old-fashioned humor that’s kind of funny if you pretend to be a Victorian, but really funny. And it has lots of poetry, including the famous Rolling English Road.

Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.
A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,
And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire;
A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread
The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head.

I knew no harm of Bonaparte and plenty of the Squire,
And for to fight the Frenchman I did not much desire;
But I did bash their baggonets because they came arrayed
To straighten out the crooked road an English drunkard made,
Where you and I went down the lane with ale-mugs in our hands,
The night we went to Glastonbury by way of Goodwin Sands.

His sins they were forgiven him; or why do flowers run
Behind him; and the hedges all strengthening in the sun?
The wild thing went from left to right and knew not which was which,
But the wild rose was above him when they found him in the ditch.
God pardon us, nor harden us; we did not see so clear
The night we went to Bannockburn by way of Brighton Pier.

My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage,
Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age,
But walk with clearer eyes and ears this path that wandereth,
And see undrugged in evening light the decent inn of death;
For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen,
Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.

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Another comic novel is Jerome Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat (to say Nothing of the Dog).Highly recommended.

Assuming by “English” you mean in the English Language, there is also James Branch Cabell, who is well represented in Gutenberg–I would recommend *Jurgen *and *Figures of Earth *from that list.

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Wow - getting some good ideas here. Thanks for starting this thread, Roderick.

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I think I tried Eliot once, maybe it’s time to try again.

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Most of these sound lovely (except Dreiser, too preachy for me).

Thanks.

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I think it was Typee (or Omoo) that I tried and failed at. Maybe I could try again.

15

Thanks, I have read these at one time or another, as well as pretty much all of Twain, and Sherlock Holmes. Appreciate the suggestions, though.

16

Making notes on cuff to check these out. Thanks!

17

I see that no one mentioned H. G. Wells or Edgar Rice Burroughs, both with quite a few titles.

Two Years Before the Mast is a memoir of a voyage in the 1830s as seen by a common sailor.

Project Gutenberg isn’t the only place to find things to read. Google has a lot of scanned books, including some that are out of copyright. There’s also Baen Books, a science fiction publisher with a number of their titles available for free download. A search for “free books download” lists many more sites.

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Thanks, Rik, I have read “Two Years Before The Mast” a number of years ago, and enjoyed it very much. Wells might be worth another look, I’m sure he has a lot of stuff I haven’t read. I’m afraid I devoured about all of Burroughs as a kid.

I downloaded a bunch of the earlier suggestions (special thanks to Walloon, bup, ITR champion and Reno) last night, and I will surely start one of them as my next book, after I finish my current one, yet another Dickens (Dombey and Son).
Roddy

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Charlotte Bronte is conspicuously absent from your list. Did you try her and she wasn’t to your liking? Her two sisters were darned good writers, too.

My favorite Bronte novel is not Jane Eyre but Villette. I like her snarky observations on the character of the Belgians.

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The Fairie Queene by Spenser and Gorboduc by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville.