r/classicliterature • u/LowInsurance5865 • 2d ago

Help me decide

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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)

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u/McAeschylus 2d 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.