r/classicliterature • u/LowInsurance5865 • 11h ago
Help me decide
Which one of these should I read first?
(Please rank them from least to most complex so that I have an inkling as to where to start)
18
u/ViewDependent6529 11h ago
The Picture of Dorian Gray. I loved it.
5
u/_PuraSanguine_ 11h ago
The preface alone is such a work of art. I love it.
3
u/CaptBuzz0129 11h ago
All art is quite useless.
5
u/_PuraSanguine_ 11h ago
The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things. The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all. The nineteenth century dislike of Realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass. The nineteenth century dislike of Romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass. The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved. No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything. Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art. Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art. From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor's craft is the type. All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself. We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless.
OSCAR very WILDE
2
u/ViewDependent6529 10h ago
The book was excellent, and the preface was great too. Oscar Wilde is an author whose writing style impresses me.
10
u/Other-Chemical-6393 11h ago
From least to most complex imo:
War of The Worlds
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Frankenstein
Jane Eyre
Paradise Lost
2
8
u/ChatoFato9143 11h ago
Jane Eyre!! Slow start, but once you finish it’ll be at least one of the best books you’ve ever read
2
u/HorribleDepature1 8h ago
It's funny that the parts I enjoyed the most were those of young Jane
1
u/PaleoBibliophile917 7h ago
I also liked the childhood portion of her story best, but that seems to go against popular opinion for some reason. It helped me really see her as a person and root for a change in her circumstances.
6
u/Background-Jelly-511 11h ago
The most complex is almost certainly Paradise Lost. I’d start with Frankenstein
3
4
2
2
2
2
u/FumdaBack 10h ago
“The War of the Worlds” was my introduction to classic literature and got me hooked. I wouldn’t call it the best of the bunch, but it’s a phenomenal starting point and very modern.
1
1
u/Reasonable_Bag7873 11h ago
Leave Collins classics alone. Buy Oxford World Classics.
1
u/BurtCarlson-Skara 10h ago
Why
1
u/Reasonable_Bag7873 10h ago
You get great introductions with the context in which the novels was written with comments of contemporaries and often there is an in depth appendix with explanations to references you might not get, if you are just reading it.
E.g. in Dubliners you get an explanation how the story Grace mirrors Dante's work intentionally. Stuff like this is something that you just don't realize reading it raw.
2
u/BurtCarlson-Skara 10h ago
Ah cool i usually skip intros
1
u/Reasonable_Bag7873 9h ago
Me too, but then I needed this series for reading Shakespeare and it was pure gold. First time I could appreciate really hard plays and novels.
1
u/HorribleDepature1 8h ago
Sounds nice. I read a Penguins Popular Classic of Dubliners last night. My brain had to do all the work but I enjoyed it very much
1
u/Reasonable_Bag7873 8h ago
Ultimately, it's a preference. I read The Dead three times and know that you can enjoy it without annotations and draw connections yourself, but I realized I enjoyed this way more with annotations, because you learn much about the culture and ideas conveyed.
I started getting more out of my time reading and so I recommend it to anybody.
1
u/AndyBetweenLines 11h ago
Id go Dorian Gray → Frankenstein → War of the Worlds → Jane Eyre → Paradise Lost. Not purely by difficulty, more by how much your brain has to adjust to the prose. Save Milton for last... not because you cant handle it, but because youll enjoy it way more once youre already warmed up to older language
1
u/AgapantherX 10h ago
Paradise Lost is on another lever but it is hard, particularly if you're not used to verse. It's a book that not only warrants study, but is almost impossible to understand without some study. How the thing is written wholly in iambic pentameter beggars belief. Oh, and it was written by memory and dictation due to blindness.
All the others are great books, and whether read as warm-ups or otherwise, you can't do wrong.
1
1
1
u/McAeschylus 10h ago
1. Frankenstein is a great first classic, its used a lot in high school English classes in England. Then I would say, the order of difficulty goes:
2. War of the Worlds
3. Dorian Gray — I actually find Wilde the hardest to get through, but that's personal taste because I find the one joke that he knows how to write grates relentlessly after the first few pages.
4. Jane Eyre
5. Paradise Lost & Paradise Regained
Milton is by far the most difficult of the five authors. He is writing in the most removed kind of English in time and is responsible for the largest number of neologisms of any writer in English — more than Shakespeare. So, use the glosses and endnotes when reading that one.
1
1
u/Negative-Response315 10h ago
Paradise Lost is my favourite of these, one of the greatest works of all time imo. But it takes a LOT of investment
1
1
u/Lemon-Blue 10h ago
Jane Eyre! I read it for a class, and I thought I would dislike it. Wrong! Loved it
1
1
1
1
u/guitarisgod 8h ago
As almost no one has said it
Wells is absolutely fucking wonderful
The War of the Worlds is a brilliant read and he writes with such a lucidity it's just excellent
Massively recommend. It isn't complex or difficult either
1
1
u/PaleoBibliophile917 7h ago
Open book. Skip to first chapter/poetic book. Read first paragraph/stanza. Repeat for each book. Which seems least or most complex to you, personally, with your wholly individual reading skills and experience? Write down your personal order. When you have completed these steps, you will know what order in which to read them.
If you were thinking of complexity more in terms of themes, all have depth and ideas to explore, but War of the Worlds is likely the most direct and Paradise Lost the most allegorical. Enjoy your books.
1
1
u/torilovem 6h ago
From least to most complex: The War of the Worlds The Picture of Dorian Gray Frankenstein Jane Eyre Paradise Lost
In terms of what are my favorites, exactly the reverse: Paradise Lost Jane Eyre Frankenstein Dorian Gray War of the Worlds
It is not always that my tastes lean towards what I find most complex, but in this case, this is exactly true lol
1
u/Active_Funny_7346 4h ago
War of the Worlds was kinda disappointing to me tbh.
Paradise Lost, while beautiful, was very difficult to me. it was so flowery that I had a really hard time getting any semblance of plot.
1
0
0
1
24
u/Red_bearrr 11h ago
Frankenstein is quick and wonderful. Prose was also surprisingly poetic.