Essential Classics

Last year, Penguin Books came out with an Essential Classics collection. The list included:

• Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
• Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
• Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
• The Odyssey, Homer
• Hamlet, Shakespeare
• Moby Dick, Herman Melville
• Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
• Oedipus, Sophocles
• Walden, Henry David Thoreau
• The Inferno, Dante Alighieri
  

Since any such list is going to draw lots of opinions, they are asking for votes for a new list.

Here's my list (not limited to the options on their survey):

• To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
• The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
• 1984, George Orwell
• Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
• Persuasion, Jane Austen
• The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
  
• Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
• Hard Times, Charles Dickens

These aren't necessarily my favorite classics, but ones I think should be at the top of your list to read in part to know what they are about and part that they cover a mix of issues and time periods.

If I were talking favorite classics I'd have to list as my top 10:

• Burmese Days, George Orwell
• A Modest Proposal, Jonathan Swift
• The Scarlet Pimpernel, Emmuska Orczy
• Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
• Persuasion, Jane Austen
  
• The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
• Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
• The Hound of the Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle
• Frankenstein, Mary Shelley