The Rough Guide to Classic Novels 1 (Rough Guide Reference)

388 Pages·2008·5.6 MB·English

by  Simon Mason

The Rough Guide To Classic Novels gives you
the lowdown on the best fiction ever written.
Over 200 of the world’s greatest novels
are covered, with fascinating information
about their plots and their authors – and
suggestions for what to read next.
Crime and punishment from the ribaldry of
Defoe’s Moll Flanders to the tough-guy noir
of Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep.
Love, sex and romance all the tears,
flirtations and obsessions, from
Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice to
Madame Bovary and Lolita.
Heroes and anti-heroes the dashing and the daring, and
a rogue’s gallery of villains and cads, from Tess of the
D’Urbervilles to Camus’ The Outsider.
...not to mention all the classics of Comedy and Satire,
Horror and Mystery and many other genres. With feature
boxes on World War I novels, Magic Realism, Balzac’s La
C omédie humaine and many others, this guide directs you
to all the classic literature you’ll ever need. THE ROUGH GUIDE to
Simon Mason is a prize-winning novelist.
MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR TIME ON EARTH Classic Novels
OTHER ROUGH Front cover: from Don Quixote to American Pastoral
GUIDES INCLUDE: Marilyn Monroe
reading Ulysses
© Eve Arnold/
Magnum Simon Mason
Back cover:
Virginia Woolf ©
Hulton-Deutsch
Collection/Corbis
Classic_Novels_final_cover_UK_in1 1 13/3/08 11:05:59
Foreword by Ian Rankin
ROUGHGUIDES
Classic Novels
Front cover: Marilyn Monroe © Magnum Photos
Back cover: Raymond Chandler © Corbis
Inside cover: Compartment C by Edward Hopper © Corbis
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The Rough guide to
Classic
Novels
www.roughguides.com
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Credits
The Rough Guide to Classic Novels Rough Guides Reference
Film reviews: Joe Staines Editors: Peter Buckley,
Editing: Joe Staines Tracy Hopkins, Sean Mahoney,
Layout: Andrew Clare Matt Milton, Joe Staines, Ruth Tidball
Proofreading: Karen Parker Director: Andrew Lockett
Production: Vicky Baldwin
Publishing information

This first edition published May 2008 by
Rough Guides Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL
345 Hudson St, 4th Floor, New York 10014, USA
Email:
The Rough guide to
Classic
Novels

by
Simon Mason
www.roughguides.com
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Contents
Preface ...................................................................................... vi
1. Love, romance and sex ...................................... 1
2. Families ................................................................47
3. Rites of passage .................................................77
4. heroes and anti-heroes .................................103
5. Making it ...........................................................133
6. Adventure .........................................................165
7. War, violence and conflict .............................185
8. A Sense of place ..............................................227
9. incredible worlds ............................................265
10. horror and mystery ....................................287
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11. Crime and punishment ................................303
12. Comedy and satire .......................................331
Index ................................................................................. 357
Themed boxes
A Fine Romance, part 1 .............................................................................. 3
A Fine Romance, part 2 .............................................................................. 6
Sex, censorship and the novel .................................................................36
Magic Realism ..............................................................................................62
School books ...............................................................................................80
Novel sequences .........................................................................................96
outsiders .................................................................................................. 109
La Comédie humaine .............................................................................. 135
Bildungsroman .......................................................................................... 140
The historical novel ................................................................................ 182
The picaresque ......................................................................................... 198
Novels of the great War ....................................................................... 206
The Chronicles of Bartsetshire and The Pallisers ............................ 262
good place, bad place ............................................................................ 277
The Complete Sherlock holmes ......................................................... 291
Literary bloodsuckers ............................................................................. 300
The first detective ................................................................................... 311
The best of Maigret ................................................................................. 329
Wodehouse’s world ................................................................................ 355
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Preface
Classic novels are, by definition, first class. They have stood the
test of time – or show the qualities that make them likely to do so.
Speaking for us, and to us, they tell the best stories and contain the
greatest characters. Above all, they entertain.
In The Rough Guide to Classic Novels the emphasis is on precisely this
quality. There are no novels chosen here simply for their worthiness
or their prominence in literary history. All merit their inclusion by
being, first and foremost, great pleasure-givers.
In making the selection, I have also tried to be sensitive to two
sorts of variety. Firstly, the variety of classic novels – the extraordi-
nary richness of fiction produced all over the world from the time
of Don Quixote to the present day. Here Jane Austen rubs shoulders
with Milan Kundera, Dostoevsky with Raymond Chandler, Voltaire
with Kenzaburo Ōe. Classic heavyweights from Tsarist Russia sit
alongside Modernist masterpieces from the deep American South,
solid triple-deckers from Victorian London mix with mind-bending
fables from Brazil and Turkey. Secondly, I have borne in mind the
variety of readers, whose tastes range from the traditional to the
avant-garde, across every conceivable type, style and genre. Whether
your preference is for page-turning plots or unforgettable characters,
short, challenging novels or long, spell-binding ones, there is some-
thing here for you to try.
The result is a selection of 229 novels (or sequences of novels such
as trilogies, etc.) by novelists from 36 different countries, published
between 1604 and 2002. Titles are grouped alphabetically by author
in a number of thematic chapters – “Comedy and satire”, “Horror
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and mystery”, “Crime and punishment”, “Rites of passage”, “Love,
romance and sex” and so on – to make them easier to locate. Each
main entry ends with a suggestion for further reading, usually, but
not always, by the same author, and for each work originally writ-
ten in a foreign language, a recommended English translation is
provided. Short reviews are also provided for any outstanding film
or television adaptations of the novels discussed, and there are boxes
throughout the book on a range of topics, such as the historical
novel and Magic Realism.
As its title suggests, the guide is limited to novels. Authors whose
main achievement is in short stories – Chekhov, Maupassant and
William Trevor are obvious examples – appear only in the sugges-
tions for further reading, alongside other great exponents of the
genre, such as Hemingway and Nabokov, who are also included as
novelists.
Inevitably the selection is a personal one, and not likely to be
precisely the same as anyone else’s. Some novels choose themselves:
who could exclude War and Peace or In Search of Lost Time or Moby
Dick? But other choices are less obvious, perhaps more contro-
versial. Together, they form a representative selection intended
to stimulate readers’ curiosity about some of the world’s greatest
novels. Enjoy!
Simon Mason
April 2008
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Jamie Attlee, Philip Atkins, Jerry Boyd, Amit
Chaudhuri, Craig Clunas, Lucas Dietrich, Ben Goodger, Dewi
Harries, Eluned Harries, Michael Holyoke, Allan Hunter, Cecilia
Kenworthy, Eddie Lambert, Andrew Lockett, Gwilym Mason,
Richard Milbank, Suzy Oakes, Stephen O’Rahilly, Neil Palfreyman,
Andrew Peerless, Tony Sloggett, Joe Staines, Will Sulkin and Martha
Whitt.
About the author
Simon Mason is a publisher and author. His novels for adults are:
The Great English Nude (1990), Death of a Fantasist (1994) and Lives of
the Dog-Stranglers (1998). He has also written a series of novels for
younger readers: The Quigleys (2002), The Quigleys at Large (2003), The
Quigleys Not For Sale (2004) and The Quigleys in a Spin (2005).
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