Now here’s a wonderful idea:

“I’ve been trying to think of a way to unite those of us who like to blog about classic literature, as well as to inspire people to make the classics an integral part of life. I thought about several ideas but finally settled on inviting people to make out a list of (at least 50) classic titles they intend to read and blog about within the next five years.”

It comes from Jillian at A Room of One’s Own.

It was an invitation I couldn’t resist, and so I’ve made a list.

Sixty books over five years, from March 2012 to February 2017: an average of one per month

And I decided to allow myself just one book per author, so that The Classics Club can introduce – and re-introduce – me to as many authors as possible.

There are a few re-reads – marked in italics – and there are one or two books I started and pushed to the side and need to start all over again.

I updated my list in 2014 and I think – I hope – that these are the right classics for me:

1. The Female Quixote by Charlotte Lennox (1752)
2. Emmeline by Charlotte Turner Smith (1788)
3. A Sicilian Romance by Ann Radcliffe (1790)
4. A Simple Story by Elizabeth Inchbold (1791)
5. The Coquette by Hannah W Foster (1797)
6. The Antiquary by Sir Walter Scott (1816)
7. The Collegians by Gerard Griffin (1829)
8. Helen by Maria Edgworth (1834)
9. Old Goriot by Honore Balzac (1835)
10. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (1844)
11. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte (1848)
12. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackery (1848)
13. The Morgesons by Elizabeth Stoddard (1852)
14. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (1852)
15. Bleak House by Charles Dickens (1853)
16. Villette by Charlotte Bronte (1853)
17. The Daisy Chain by Charlotte M Yonge (1856)
18. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (1857)
19. Scenes of Clerical Life by George Eliot (1857)
20. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (1859)
21. Cloister and the Hearth by Charles Reade (1861)
22. Henry Dunbar by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1864)
23. Uncle Silas by Sheridan Le Fanu (1864)
24. Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell (1865)
25. The Fortunes of the Rougons by Emile Zola (1871)
26. Hester by Margaret Oliphant (1873)
27. The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope (1875)
28. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (1877)
29. The Leavenworth Case by Anna Katherine Green (1878)
30. Moths by Ouida (1880)
31. Belinda by Rhoda Broughton (1883)
32. Bel-ami by Guy Maupassant (1885)
33. La Regenta by Leopoldo Atlas (1885)
34. Thyrza by George Gissing (1887)
35. Eline Vere by Louis Couperus (1889)
36. The Real Charlotte by Somerville & Ross(1889)
37. Esther Waters by George Moore (1894)
38. Effi Briest by Theodor Fontane (1896)
39. The Beth Book by Sarah Grand (1897)
40. Elizabeth and her German Garden by Elizabeth Von Arnim (1898)
41. Red Pottage by Mary Cholmondeley (1899)
42. The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (1905)
43. Fidelity by Susan Glaspell (1915)
44. Cullum by E Arnot Robinson (1920)
45. Kristin Lavransdattir by Sigrid Undset (1922)
46. Anderby Wold by Winifred Holtby (1923)
47. The Home-maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1924)
48. The Constant Nymph by Margaret Kennedy (1924)
49. The Painted Veil by W Somerset Maugham (1925)
50. The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall (1928)
51. Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sea by Patrick Hamilton (1935)
52. The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann (1936)
53. Mariana by Monica Dickens (1940)
54. Black Narcissus by Rumer Godden (1947)
55. One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes (1947)
56. The Far Cry by Emma Smith (1949)
57. The World My Wilderness by Rose Macaulay (1950)
58. A Game of Hide and Seek by Elizabeth Tayor (1951)
59. Fenny by Lettice Cooper (1953)
60. The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West (1957)