Today’s post is not especially Australian, but it was published in Australian newspapers as a recommended list of “masterpieces” or classics for Australians to read. It is in that sense that I am posting it in my Monday Musings series!
The list was published in 1910, with the heading “Best novels: A short list of masterpieces of fiction”. It explains that “an American paper offers the following as an excellent though, of course, limited list of the best books for one to read”. The interesting thing is that the books are categorised. See what you think.
It was replicated in many newspapers but the one I used for this post, because it needed little editing (as I recollect), is from Victoria’s Elmore Standard of 12 February (accessed 10 July 2023).
The list
I have value added with the author’s name, as this – curiously – was not included. Sure, most people probably knew the authors of these classics, but that’s not the point. The authors deserve recognition! I’ve also added first publication date, for interest.
- The best historical novel: Ivanhoe (Sir Walter Scott, 1820)
- The best dramatic novel: The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas, 1844-46 serialised)
- The best domestic novel: The Vicar of Wakefield (Oliver Goldsmith, 1766)
- The best marine novel: Mr. Midshipman Easy (Frederick Marryat, 1836)
- The best country-life novel: Adam Bede (George Eliot, 1859)
- The best military novel: Charles O’Malley (Charles James Lever, 1841)
- The best religious novel: Ben Hur (Lew Wallace, 1880)
- The best political novel: Lothair (Benjamin Disraeli, 1870)
- The best novel written for a purpose: Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852)
- The best imaginative novel: She (H. Rider Haggard, 1887)
- The best pathetic novel: The Old Curiosity Shop (Charles Dickens, 1840-41 serialised)
- The best humorous novel: The Pickwick Papers (Charles Dickens, 1836-37 serialised)
- The best Irish novel: Handy Andy (Samuel Lover, 1841)
- The best Scotch novel: The Heart of Midlothian (Sir Walter Scott, 1818)
- The best English novel: Vanity Fair (William Makepeace Thackeray, 1848)
- The best American novel: The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850)
- The best sensational novel: The Woman in White (Wilkie Collins, 1859)
- The best of all: Vanity Fair (William Makepeace Thackeray, 1848)
Don’t you just love these categories?
I’ve read some of these authors, but only a few of these particular books. Some I had to check who the authors were, like the author of Handy Andy. It is a male dominated list, though we do have George Eliot and Harriet Beecher Stowe, but what about Jane Austen! Ok, I’ll leave it there because my point is not to reconsider the list but share it as one reflection of the times, and what some American paper, apparently thought (though we don’t really know the provenance of the list).
All thoughts on any aspects of this list are welcome.
Whispering Gums 
Im working so this is a brief comment off the top of my head. I’m planning on reviewing both Ivanhoe and Midlothian this year, but I would rate Waverley as the better Hist.Fic.
I probably agree about V. Fair, but I’m sure I would have squeezed in a Bronte or two somewhere (also Spence’s Clara Morison, but that’s just me).
Thanks Bill. It’s an American list, so clearly Australia was completely off the radar when it came to literature!
Why Ivanhoe and Midlothian this year? Interesting, in terms of how literary reputations go, that these days Austen and the Brontes are way more read than people like Oliver Goldsmith.
I’ve been meaning to review them forever, and thought that if I said it I might actually get round to doing it.
I read the Vicar of Wakefield after reading Jo (Little Women) reading it secretly for amusement. Loved it.
Haha, re reviewing those books.
Mea culpa but I’ve had Vicar on my shelves since the early 705 but have never read it. I clearly should.
There was no television in my house, and I’d whip through a book every day or other day, so I was expecting to know every one of these. But no! I’ve barely read half of them. But a fellow blogger is reading Vanity Fair at the moment…
Me too Gwendoline … only about half for me too.
It would be quicker or me to say which ones I haven’t read, because I was a keen reader of the classics in my younger days.
I haven’t read The Count of Monte Cristo, the only translation in the list BTW, so I ordered a copy and was aghast to discover how long it is. 1245 pages in my Penguin Edition, not counting the introduction or the notes. I predict that the binding will fall apart before I get very far.
Haha, Lisa, I have an embarrassing story to tell about that book. I bought a copy In 1983 in Chicago en route to our new home (for 2 years) in Northern Virginia. Both Mr Gums and I read and enjoyed it, and I mentally ticked it off my list. About two decades later I saw some listing of it as the sort of length you’ve mentioned so I checked our copy. I was horrified to discover I’d bought an abridged version. I couldn’t believe I’d made such a mistake but yes, I had!
which
Hmm, I wonder if there might be a good reason to abridge it…
I’ll let you tell me if there is!!
The Count of Monte Cristo is the only one I have read!
O no, now you’re inspiring me to read it too!
Haha Lisa…
But I bet you read the full version!
Lisa I will be very surprised if you did not at least “enjoy” it. And yes WG I did read the full version.
I actually went to the footy one day years back and after in the pub told a few celebrating cronies ( our team won) I had just read Les Miserables and rated it the greatest thing to come out of humanities very existence. I got laughed at but one fella said that I needed to read Count of Monte Cristo as that was the greatest thing to come out of humanities existence. I did. He was nearly right.
To give an idea as to how classic literature is viewed in my observations many years back after being made redundant I worked for about 3 months in a bottle shop. It was to say the least hours of boredom during the day. So I read. When the rare customers came in they were nearly all intrigued by what I was reading. Les Miserables was easily the most commentated on. I had many ask where I was up to. What has happened so far? Is it like the film/tv series? Can I recommend you something to read after you have finished? and so on.
In Trent Daltons Boy Swallows Universe he actually has a part where the patrons of Bracken Ridge Tavern in north Brisbane are reading Conrad. After my six months in the bottlo I found a few of the regular “bottle of wine a day” types a little more erudite on the classics than I was prepared for. On the other hand the business owners I have dealt with over the years have at best read sports books.
How fascinating fourtriplezed though I’m not hugely surprised. I guess it can often be the sensitive types – am I stereotyping here? I am aren’t I? – who read the classics and end up being a-bottle-a-day people?
And, “He was nearly right”. Love it!
I dont know WG lol. My working life no longer get to be as sedantary and my book discussions are very limited to blogs such as this and Goodreads. I have alwys thought that once I retire I might join a book club of some kind.
I hope you do, and that you find a good one – or, start one up yourself!
I’ve lost track of the number of people who have read this and loved it, who are not reading classics on the regular: I bet you’ll be surprised and find it very accessible. There’s also an interesting biography of the author I’ve flagged to read alongside which sounds fascinating (the title is a play on the novel’s title IIRC).
Ooh, Marcie, what is the biography called?
Heheh I wasn’t being coy, I couldn’t remember, but I’ve got it “saved” at the library: The Black Count by Tom Reiss (with a Pulitzer sticker on its cover).
Well, Moby Dick had long been out, but was essentially unknown, so on nobody’s mind for best marine novel. Mr. Midshipman Easy is quite entertaining, but not on the same level.
Many Americans would pick Huckleberry Finn or something by Henry James, maybe The Europeans, as the best novel published by an American before 1910.
And though I have a hard time thinking of a religious novel published before 1910, there must have been something better than Ben Hur. (I’m tempted now to read one of John Henry Newman’s novels to prove the point.)
Haha George, I dare you to read him now you mention it.
Good catch re Henry James. Was it you who introduced me to Mr Midshipman Easy? Or, maybe it was another list from Trove. I recognised it, but from something fairly recent, not something long-known.
Now I think of it, Marryat and Newman attended the same private school. I may have mentioned Mr. Midshipman Easy in some context here.
Among Americans, Edith Wharton was also publishing before 1910, but I don’t know that she had hit her stride. There was also William Dean Howells, whom I have not read.
Yes, I think you may have mentioned Marryat in a Six Degrees?
When you mentioned James I was thinking Wharton but as you say she was still getting going. I’ve heard of Howells but not read him.
Hi Sue, and yes, I do love the categories, especially the “Pathetic” one! I wonder how these categories would match up today.
Hi Sue, yes I too like the categories, especially the “Pathetic” one! I wonder what books would complete the categories today.
Haha, Meg, I liked that one too. Love that you’ve picked it out. Do you have a modern novel to suggest for that? I guess they’re talking pathos.
Hi Sue, several come to mind in the ‘Pathetic’ category. My first thought was The Shiralee by Darcy Niland, and then several by Ruth Park. In this era, Swallow the Air by Tara June Winch.
Thanks Meg … great ideas though I still have to read The shiralee. My bad, I know!
I wonder if that’s what we now call sad-girl lit!
Or, what some call sad-girl lit! I don’t like that term, Brona. It feels to me like another put-down of women’s writing and I find myself inwardly rebelling!
I don’t disagree, but what would be a better term? Pathetic lit would have different connotations these days.
Moody-lit? Despair lit? Angsty lit? Yearning lit? Emo-lit?
Yes, I agree that “pathetic” wouldn’t work today. I guess I’m wondering if we need to have any term? But, if we had to, maybe Yearning or Emo would be better. Less gendered.
It’s so interesting to see this list, as some of the books are still much-loved prominent classics (e.g. The Woman in White, Vanity Fair, The Count of Monte Cristo), while others are lesser known (I wasn’t aware that Disraeli had written a novel) Thanks for posting this!
Thanks Jacqui … I felt exactly the same.
Interesting! I have never heard of their choice for Best Irish Novel!
Ha ha Cathy. Well, I guess that hasn’t remained a classic. Do you know the author? I hadn’t heard of him either.
Nope!
Interesting eh. Such are the vagaries of a creator’s life.
This one and the midhsipman novel were the two I had never heard of before.
I looked up Handy Andy and found this brief bio on Goodreads: Samuel Lover, born in Dublin in 1797, went to Dublin University. He fled his father’s stockbroking office and became an accomplished miniaturist and marine painter until failing eyesight forced him to abandon that craft.
Lover produced a number of Irish songs, of which several, including The Angel’s Whisper, Molly Bawn, and The Four-Leaved Shamrock, attained great popularity. He also wrote some novels, of which Rory O’ More (in its first form a ballad), and Handy Andy are the best known, and short Irish sketches, which, with his songs, he combined into a popular entertainment called Irish Nights. He joined with Dickens in founding Bentley’s Magazine, and he was the founder of the Dublin University Magazine.
Your can read his novel on Gutenberg – https://www.gutenberg.org/files/7180/7180-h/7180-h.htm
Thanks Brona. I looked him up in Wikipedia, where I think he is described as composer first, so what you say here accords!
Excellent! Thanks for that!
We may not have the “pathetic novel” but we sure had a spell when “misery memoirs” were a popular equivalent! I’d forgotten about Vicar Of Wakefield – in 1910 it would have been a real popular classic. It deserved that status as this novel has enormous charm.
Thanks Ian … fair call about “misery memoirs”. As for the Vicar, it’s clear to me that I must give it higher priority on my classics TBR.
I haven’t read She, but I have the feeling there are other more impressive imaginative novels, even in the 19th century, or even before
I’d love to know, who created this list. It’s a shame that the papers didn’t identify that. Maybe the creator/s gave some reasoning for their choices.
On this list I’ve only read Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Vanity Fair. Just last Friday I was talking with a fellow book fan who made me realize something. I thought books written in the 1700’s were easier to read that those from the 1800’s, chalking it up to something akin to a renaissance or something that changed how people write. However, my friend noted that the books I’d read easily from the 1700’s were American. Those from the 1800’s? British. Now looking at your list, I see quite a few American novels on there, and I didn’t even realize Uncle Tom’s Cabin was so old! I read it quickly. So, now I see it’s the style of the country and not the time period.
Fascinating Melanie about the style of the country. How observant your friend was to make that connection.
What a fun find! And these categories might not might a bad “year of summary” list for blogging. With some country alterations perhaps.
I’ve read six, haven’t heard of one of the authors (the Irish one) but haven’t heard of four of the titles.
Yes, I was thinking the same, Marcie. I hadn’t heard of about that many either.