The Deader the Better, or, "The Classics, Reclassified"*

While rereading Pride and Prejudice last night, I noted my frustratingly lonely predilection for reading well-known authors who long ago ascended to the Pearly Gates, as it were. But I persist, because, in the words of my would-be mentor, Diane Sawyer, when asked what she was planning on reading one summer, "I haven't done justice to George Eliot." Speaking of which, while talking up Middlemarch at work the other day, somebody turned to me and said, "Is that by Dickens?" Well, no. Herewith, a sampling of some other Great Old Books I've enjoyed:

• Emma, Persuasion, and Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen
• Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte
• The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins
• Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe
• David Copperfield, and Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens
• Sentimental Education, by Gustave Flaubert
• Howards End, A Room with a View, and Where Angels Fear to Tread, by E.M. Forster
• The Vicar of Wakefield, by Oliver Goldsmith
• The Portrait of a Lady, and Washington Square, by Henry James
• Lady Chatterley's Lover, by D.H. Lawrence
• The Pursuit of Love, and Love in a Cold Climate, by Nancy Mitford
• Down and Out in Paris and London, and Keep the Aspidistra Flying, by George Orwell
• Vanity Fair, by William Makepeace Thackeray
• The Age of Innocence, and The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton

As you know, many of the above titles have been made into fine and quite delightful films. But there is nothing like the book!

*with apologies to Mr. Richard Armour