Comments on Best Books of the 19th Century - page 1

Wuthering Heights is just SO histrionic. I refuse to vote for it!

Vilette needs to be voted up there over Jane Eyre! What's going on with this, people?

PS- I appreciate your principled stand, Wealhtheow. :)

I like the character of Lucy Snowe (of Villette) better than Jane Eyre, but I think JE is a better novel. But I still voted for both. :)

Oh, I voted for them both too, I just think Vilette is the more powerful book. but that's what these lists are for, I guess. :)

I tried adding The Brothers Karamazov and Huckleberry Finn to the list, but it said they were not published in the 19th century. What gives?

Huck Finn is already on the list (currently #9), and Brothers Karamazov had the wrong pub. date listed, so you should be able to add it now.

Elective Affinities (a/k/a Die Wahlverwandtschaften) published 1809 is listed as not published in the 19th century.

My list is kind of a joke since half of them are in the database as not published in the 19th Century ... like Herman Melville's The Confidence Man or Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus.

Crap books that don't deserve to be in here: Wuthering heights, Frankenstein, Heart of Darkness, Moby Dick.
Great books which weren't here and i had to add: The hunchback of notre dame, Fathers and sons, Dr. Jekyll and Mr hyde, Pere Goriot, The Idiot

Elective Affinities and Sartor Resartus have addable dates now. As do The Confidence Man and The Brothers Karamazov.

Anything else that needs a new original publication date, just mention it and I'll see if I can fix it.

Tried to add The Beetle by Richard Marsh, published 1897, says it isn't from the 19th century.

I edited the original publication date. The Beetle should now be addable.

Heart of Darkness is on of the greatest novels i have ever read

Sheridan Le Fanu's In a Glass Darkly was first published in 1872, but I can't add it.

It should be addable now.

Well, you could vote for other books.

Villette is a good book but better than Jane Eyre would be a hard sell. LOL! Yep it is a woman's list. ;)

Made it combine duplicates, so they should be gone.

No Origin of The species?

You could add it.

I tried and wasn't able to.

I just voted for it; it should be on the list somewhere now.

Wow, there are some harsh comments on here. Wuthering Heights isn't my favorite book by the Brontes, but it's not crap. My favorites are Jane Eyre and The Tenant of Wildfield Hall.

I can't believe Frankenstein is so high up...it's a terrible book...but what's with all the Wuthering Heights hate? WH is way better than a lot of books on here. And also, isn't A Little Princess 1900s? Not sure. (Oh, just checked. Looks like an earlier version was published in 1888.)

For some reason, a lot of people seem to have very strong opinions about Wuthering Heights, either for or against.

I agree that Frankenstein is terrible. It's painful to watch the main character run from place to place whining out his troubles to every passerby, who then tells him how wonderful he is. Ugh.

Lots of good stuff here.

What you just said about Frankenstein is how I feel about Tess of the D'Urbervilles... I LOATHE that book.

The Count of Monte Cristo is the best book on the list...the people that didn't vote for it are the ones that were intimidated by the length and therefore didn't read it.

As for Pride and Prejudice, my wife and I couldn't even sit through the horrible play.

Isn't it weird....very few American books on this list!

I counted 23 on the first page - but American writing was very much in its youth in the 19th century.

i like this list!
i just added a dutch classic from this time period: Eline Vere, written by Louis Couperus. good reads says it's published in 2007, but looks like that is about a new translated version, the original is from 1888 so very much fits the list!

Yeah, GR has its original publication date as 1889, so that's fine.

Ugh, I cannot believe Wuthering Heights inched its stupidity so high up the list!

I like a lot of the books on the list, though I wish Jane Eyre was first.

Excellent list. Thank you.

Nat wrote: "Ugh, I cannot believe Wuthering Heights inched its stupidity so high up the list!

I like a lot of the books on the list, though I wish Jane Eyre was first."



I agree... I like my stories with SOME redeeming points and WH is horrible. Jane Eyre, on the otherhand, is a gothic masterpiece.

James wrote: "The Count of Monte Cristo is the best book on the list...the people that didn't vote for it are the ones that were intimidated by the length and therefore didn't read it.

As for Pride and Prejudic..."

I totally agree with you! The Count of Monte Cristo was by far my favorite book ever. Pride and Prejudice was ok. Once I read the Count I have trouble reading rather boring books by Jane Austin. They're all the same.

Call of the Wild was published in 1903.
My Antonia was published in 1918.
Lord Jim was published in a magazine beginning in 1899 but wasn't published as a book until 1900. Not sure about that one.

I love, love, love this list! Almost all of my favourites are listed here!

willl read

Fun list. For me the value of a list like this is to see what I've missed. There must have been something in the rainwater in the nineteenth century. Literature, the arts, the sciences were all on steroids, and it was a global phenomenon. I read and read, and the list gets longer instead of shorter. Incidentally, I've read WH more times than I can remember, and each time it's gotten better and richer.

This is an incredible list. Of the top 100, I've read about 25% of them and probably another 50% are to read. If I had to absolutely choose my favorite it would be The Count of Monte Cristo. The mind of Dumas spinning that tale, wow...

I agree with Longhare; this was an incredible age, and the literature reflects it.

Wow! Read the comments about this list. A lot of haters. Every book on this list has stood the test of time because people were able to relate something to their own lives. None of them are crap! And, I do not believe there are "womens" books on the list. Personally, I loved reading little women! Really made me think about how I treat the other people in my life. People that I supposedly love. True, there are some on the list I would not read, but thats just me. I consider this to be a great list of some of the greatest classics ever written. Thanks for putting it together.

I was flummoxed by the fact that I couldn't vote for ten of my top fifty-one 19th century books, having received the screen admonishment that each book was "not published during this century", even though my cursory online researches indicate that all met that criterion. Examples: "UNCLE REMUS" and "THE SONG OF HIAWATHA". (Possibly GOODREADS' "originally published" date is missing or in error for those ten works, or, more likely, it's just user-error on my part) But I enjoyed seeing how much I've missed out on, so I appreciate the efforts of this list's author(s) and contributors. Thanks ya'll...

Yeah, it's a problem with the GR database, especially now that Amazon's less-than-accurate data is running roughshod over the existing data.

ETA: You might try a general search, rather than from your own shelves? Might be an uncombined copy with an inaccurate first publication date (or none at all).

Thanks Susanna... I've tried BOTH general searches and searches of my shelves for the "system-vetoed" works, getting the same result. I appreciate the input; didn't know that Amazon data had been imported, good to know.

Wow, "Wizard of Oz" just makes the cut. I thought it was published in 1901, but according to its Goodreads page it was 1900.

Yep, it came out May 17, 1900.

Alessandra wrote: "I agree that Frankenstein is terrible. It's painful to watch the main character run from place to place whining out his troubles to every passerby, who then tells him how wonderful he is. Ugh.

L..."I agree with both your agree, and about Tess. Actually I really dislike most of the fallen woman reborn again novels. They're all the same and it gets quite boring.

'Tess" is a fallen woman reborn again novel? Interesting perspective on rebirth. I'm going to have to re-read it in the Goodreads Hardy discussion group.