The Classics Club

After giving it some thought, I've finally decided to join The Classics Club. The Classics Club is, according to its administrators, a place "to unite readers who blog about classic literature and inspire people to make the classics an integral part of life!" Right! Can you guess what does that mean? It means I'm going to start writing about literature, or, more specifically, about the classics I intend to read in the next five years -let's say between June 1st, 2014 up until June 1st, 2019.

I've set a rather conservative goal, since I want to avoid feeling too overwhelmed by the amount of books ahead of me. The list is divided into several thematic sections, which overlap at some point, but I think I'm satisfied with the ending result. None of these books is a reread for me -except for some essays which I've read fragmented but never in full- since I want to push myself a little and read new things.

The list goes as follows:

Literary criticism and/or women's issues
Or, I want to improve my knowledge of a number of things related to literature, and women, and women in literature.

1. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, by Mary Wollstonecraft
2. A Room of One's Own, by Virginia Woolf
3. The Madwoman in the Attic, by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar
4. The Common Reader, by Virginia Woolf
5. The Golden Bough, by James Frazer
6. Around the World in Seventy-Two Days, by Nellie Bly
7. The Life of Charlotte Brontë, by Elizabeth Gaskell
8. The Subjection of Women, by John Stuart Mill
9. In Seven Stages: a Flying Trip Around the World, by Elizabeth Bisland
10. The Essays of George Eliot, by George Eliot
11. Inner Workings: Literary Essays 2000-2005, by J.M. Coetzee
12. Selected Prose, by Matthew Arnold
13. How to Read and Why, by Harold Bloom
14. The Hero with a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell
15. A Backward Glance, by Edith Wharton

Victorian literature, but not strictly Victorian
Or, I want to also include some late eighteenth-century and early twentieth-century books into the mix.

1. No Name, by Wilkie Collins
2. Villette, by Charlotte Brontë
3. My Brilliant Career, by Miles Franklin
4. Bleak House, by Charles Dickens
5. A Sicilian Romance, by Anne Radcliffe
6. The Castle of Otranto, by Horace Walpole
7. Agnes Grey, by Anne Brontë
8. Ruth, by Elizabeth Gaskell
9. Shirley, by Charlotte Brontë
10. A Room with a View, by E.M. Forster
11. Cecilia, by Frances Burney
12. What Maisie Knew, by Henry James
13. The Professor, by Charlotte Brontë
14. Belinda, by Maria Edgeworth
15. A House to let, by Charles Dickens et al.
16. The Law and the Lady, by Wilkie Collins
17. Man and Wife, by Wilkie Collins
18. The Barchester Chronicles, by Anthony Trollope
    • The Warden
    • Barchester Towers
    • Doctor Thorne
    • Framley Parsonage
    • The Small House of Allington
    • The Last Chronicle of Barset
19. Herland, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
20. Lady Susan and Other Works, by Jane Austen
21. The Shuttle, by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Miscellanea
Or, I'm dying to read these books but can't find a proper category for them.

1. The Diary of Samuel Pepys, by Samuel Pepys
2. Oroonoko, by Aphra Behn
3. The Winter's Tale, by William Shakespeare
4. The Tempest, by William Shakespeare
5. Pamela, by Samuel Richardson
6. The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath
7. The Diary of John Evelyn, by John Evelyn
8. The Life of Samuel Jonhson, by James Boswell
9. South! The Story of Shackleton's Last Expedition, 1914-1917, by Ernest Shackleton
10. American Notes for General Circulation, by Charles Dickens
11. Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, by Mary Wollstonecraft
12. Round the Red Lamp, by Arthur Conan Doyle
13. A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland, by Samuel Johnson

Bonus
Or, I can't believe I haven't read this one yet, given that I've unknowingly plagiarised its title.

1. A Pair of Blue Eyes, by Thomas Hardy