When I ask people about their favorite classic novels, I usually get a similar response from everybody: Jane Austen, A couple Brontës’, A few Dickens’, an odds-and-ends collection of complex modernist tomes, and of course a dystopian novel or two to garnish the collection. Here are a few great novels you have probably not heard of, but were nevertheless significant influences for some of the more common works on your bookshelf:

_____________________________________________________

Great Reading For Spring Break – Amazon Kindle Paperwhite with Special Offers, Wi-Fi, Black
_____________________________________________________

Ann Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho was a landmark of the gothic genre, but it favored using rational explanations over the supernatural.  MG Lewis’ horrifying depiction of evil within the Catholic church from the perspective of an outwardly pious but internally evil monk is as brutal today as it was two centuries ago. However, just like Marquis de Sade’s controversial and pornographic novels, The Monk has struggled to maintain its literary prominence because of the inherent subject matter.
Between Jane Austen’s early 19th century work and George Eliot’s peak in the 1870’s, Elizabeth Gaskell chronicled the social conflicts of rural England with a simple but transcendent voice that saw beyond the facades of men and women with an observant and sympathetic eye. Cranford is about a small English town taken over by women when the men must move to nearby Drumble to work, uprooting the long-standing gender dynamics and changing the social landscape indefinitely.
Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland is a standard of Children’s literature, but a similar-yet-completely-different work, Kingsley’s Water Babies, used the concept of fairy-tale parable to explore Darwinian evolution and the issues of social progress. When Tom, a ten-year old chimney-sweep, falls into a mysterious pond, he explores an undiscovered world of water-borne creatures from whom he learns how to understand this complex and industrializing world.
Charles Dickens and Emile Zola took great pains in dissecting the sheer difficulty of succeeding in the cutthroat world of industrializing England and France, but Verga’s story about a poor Sicilian family facing disaster goes beyond the conventional naturalist work to portray the impossibilities of a happy life in a newly-unified Sicily. Some of the most vivid realism of its day, The House by the Medlar Tree presented with stark lucidity what many other authors did in the late 19th century–bridge the gap between the old world and the new by depicting in great detail the impending consequences.
Joris-Karl Huysmans – Against the Grain 
Oscar Wilde was known as the unofficial king of late 19th century decadence, a movement exemplified by excess, debauchery and boundless pleasures. However, Huysmans’ study of a lavish life in response to 19th century materialism and industrialism is an ode to the dying grandeur of aristocratic Europe, as its main character, the Duc Jean de Esseintes, lives and dies by his own rules, away from the boorish “respectability” of the rising bourgeoisie.
Largely overshadowed by the great 19th century novels of adultery (See: Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina), Effi Briest has nevertheless survived in large part because of the praise of Thomas Mann and Samuel Beckett. Similar to Bovary for its subtle social critiques of rural life and marriage, Fontane’s tragicomic tale remains notorious for its ability to make the most erudite of readers weep uncontrollably.
A book that famed novelist John Fowles claims has “haunted” him all of his life, this mysterious novel from this even more mysterious novelist has shown up in the oddest of places, appearing in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and even being the supposed influence for F.Scott Fitzgerald’s naming of The Great Gatsby. When a 15 year-old boy arrives at a school in the countryside, his adventures to a lost mansion filled with aristocratic extravagance enamors the narrator to no end, yet it marks the pivotal turning point of his youth, where the mysteries of love and the unknown painfully fade away before his eyes.
Screen Shot 2015-03-13 at 2.28.17 PM
A little over a decade before James Joyce would publish his monstrous, groundbreaking Ulysses, Stephens’ novel about a sixteen-year old girl called Mary depicted the slums of early 20th century Dublin with colorful, imaginative language. The Charwoman’s Daughter contrasts the pains of poverty with simple pleasures,  and it reminds that reader that the language can always transcend the ugliness of daily life by painting a more poetic and beautiful landscape.
The subgenre of working-class literature was, in the early 20th century, largely overshadowed by the works of Upton Sinclair and Sinclair Lewis.  On the other side of the pond, though, Tressell’s jab at the vacuity of capitalism, where everything from daily life to the basic rhythms of work are revealed to be subject to the mechanisms of efficiency, became a cult classic among the working poor. Although it fueled brief socialist movements in England, the book has been largely forgotten for its surprisingly subtle treatment of the system that degraded the working class to destitution.
Panned by critics and largely forgotten during his own lifetime, Roussel’s surrealist novel about a lonely estate owner who creates macabre tableaux out of the dead is more of a poetic labyrinth than a straightforward tale. However, the ambiguity of his storytelling and the playfulness of his prose has helped revived the strange novel, and contemporary thinkers like Michel Foucault and poets like John Ashbery have credited this book as major influences of their work.
Huxley’s first novel has since been overshadowed by his dystopian Brave New World, but Crome Yellow is nevertheless a hilarious satire of British life and culture at a time when art and literature are marred by highfalutin pretension. When a shy poet goes to a country estate with his love interest, he meets a litany of ridiculously-named characters, many of them representing the decaying aspects of an intellectual class Huxley was quickly becoming a part of.
Kraus’ 800-page play has been read much more than performed, and his penchant for using both documents and personal accounts of the First World War to chronicle the fall of the Habsburg Empire has placed it among the great post-war novels of the 1920’s. Both an indictment of political language and an elegy to a lost empire, Kraus uses repetition to reinforce the impending doom awaiting the Austro-Hungarians, who must find whatever silver lining is left amid their impending suffering.
E.E. Cummings is largely remembered today as the grandfather of nonsense poetry, but his autobiographical war novel about being imprisoned in a large cell with several others during the First World War was to introduce many of the themes Cummings would extrapolate for the rest of his literary career. Far from the playful rhythm of his verse, The Enormous Room can be read as an anarchist text, the room symbolic man’s place in relation to the government imprisoning them and the government supposedly helping them.
An acquaintance of James Joyce and Sigmund Freud, Svevo rarely revealed his secret passion of writing, but his hilarious and thought-provoking Confessions of Zeno used Freud’s psychoanalytic studies to create a character as unpredictable as he is miserable, inextricably bound to the desires of his subconscious. When Zeno tries to quit smoking, for example, he shapes his whole life around the act of quitting, and the performance thereof becomes the source of all his happiness and misery.
Screen Shot 2015-03-13 at 2.27.02 PM
Pirandello is continuously featured in World Literature anthologies for his famous Six Characters in Search of an Author, a meta-theatrical play that brought him international attention. One, None and a Hundred Thousand, on the other hand, is on the surface a simple tale about a man alienated by his self-image, but at its heart is an exploration of the limitations of language, and how he are estranged from those around us because of such linguistic barriers.
These days, Henry Green is seen more as a influencer than a great figure himself, but Blindness is a literary masterpiece that displays the sheer breadth of his abilities. Green uses parenthetical statements and an idiosyncratic sentence structure to describe innovative methods of interpretation in a state of blindness. One of the great unsung architects of modernist literature, Green uses the concept of blindness to show that we are inherently blind to the true nature of reality.
Theodore Dreiser and John Dos Passos are still read today for their treatment of gritty urban life at the beginning of the 20th century, but Doblin’s sharp language, playful narration and honest depiction of life in down-and-out Berlin is both thrilling and cinematic. Using several forms of print–such as newspaper, street signs and popular music–Doblin (along with fellow Berliner Bertolt Brecht) would later influence the use of multimedia in late 20th century literature.
Screen Shot 2015-03-13 at 2.25.21 PM
Storm Jameson did what Tressel did with The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, chronicling the difficulties of working-class urban life during the depression in England. The narrator travels through London’s West End dreaming of a better life, but ultimately pushed to a state of mental weariness because of the endless pressures of domestic life. Without displaying her message too blatantly, Jameson picks apart the misconceptions of urban life amid the futility of abject poverty.
Of all the great few-thousand page masterpieces that were released in the first half of the twentieth century, Musil’s The Man Without Qualities is most often overlooked. A simple plot told in accessible language, Musil tells the story of Ulrich, an unassuming man who finds many lovers, joins a nationalist planning committee, then ends up in an oddly-spiritual relationship with his sister. Though unfinished, the novel is written with a philosophical elegance reminiscent of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past.
Laxness is now known as the grandfather of Icelandic fiction, but that’s probably the reason you’ve never heard of him. Heavily influenced by the Icelandic Sagas, Independent People tells the story of a man who begins growing the claws of Grimur, the demon-monster from the ancient poem. At once a reclamation of his heritage and also a journey through his home country, Laxness details the rise and falls of his beloved homeland with mythic undertones in a style the magic realists would eventually adopt.
A surrealist tale, a puzzle, a game, a metafiction — Julio Cortazar’s Hopscotch defies most if not all of the conventions of novel writing in this story about a man trying to come to terms with his place in the world in Bohemian Paris. Unlike the work of Hemingway and Henry Miller, Cortazar does away with the romanticism of Paris and isolates the author-figure from society, and in a novel that proclaims its own insignificance, it becomes very difficult for them to affirm their place in the world.

380 Comments »

  1. Then visit this endorsed web-page and discover how Accountant Burnsville can benefit you.
    In a photography business in particular, here are a number of items that are assets to be
    listed for your business. As an Accountant with an MBA Degree
    in you will be able to use your skills to analyze a
    company.

  2. First of all whenever you opt for weight loss
    measures the most important thing that you require is the motivation which is very difficult to get at home.
    They are an industry leader in effective HCG weight loss solutions and HCG support relating to the
    HCG Diet. t been faithful in exercise, now may be the time to figure out what you.

  3. This design is wicked! You certainly know how to keep a reader entertained.
    Between your wit and your videos, I was almost moved to start my own blog (well,
    almost…HaHa!) Wonderful job. I really loved what you
    had to say, and more than that, how you presented it.
    Too cool!

  4. Metabolic syndrome is a combination of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and a problem
    with sugar metabolism and obesity. This has however been made easier thanks to HCG supplements that come loaded with vitamin B12,
    minerals and amino acids that are likely to be absent in most diets for quick weight loss.

    Some people claim that HCG itself does not produce any
    significant weight loss.

  5. On the other hand, a quality of long standing
    durability and features like color & clarity of acrylic beads
    is much better than the glass beads. Dress up in peacock
    blue, soft pinks and bright orange sexiest colours of this season. You will be excited watching your kids
    in pastel tones especially when summer comes.

  6. A person necessarily assist to make critically articles
    I might state. This is the very first time I frequented
    your web page and so far? I amazed with the analysis you made to create this particular post amazing.

    Magnificent job!

  7. I am really loving the theme/design of your web site.
    Do you ever run into any browser compatibility problems?
    A couple of my blog visitors have complained about my blog not working correctly in Explorer but looks great in Chrome.

    Do you have any tips to help fix this problem?

  8. I see a lot of interesting content on your website. You have
    to spend a lot of time writing, i know how to save you a lot of work, there is a tool that creates unique, google friendly posts in couple of seconds,
    just search in google – k2 unlimited content

  9. On account of schedule development, your organization is likely to have the smallest
    achievable downtime which will benefit you essentially the most.
    Another was arrested by state troopers on an outstanding warrant and was turned
    over to federal immigration officials. Average cost
    of home survey report is $530 (£350).

  10. If you’d prefer to relocate completely hassle-free, Professional moving
    corporations area unit the simplest resort. That is
    reason for hiring moving companies that are able to help you transfer easier during this time.

    This could help in simplifying the moving process and keep your company so much cash
    in order to stop unnecessary financial waste.

  11. What i don’t understood is in reality how you are not really a lot
    more smartly-appreciated than you may be right now. You
    are so intelligent. You realize thus considerably on the subject
    of this subject, made me in my view believe it from numerous varied angles.

    Its like men and women are not involved until it’s one thing
    to accomplish with Woman gaga! Your personal stuffs nice.
    Always deal with it up!

  12. Sometimes this can be difficult with the zip or e-mail submit offers if the conversions aren’t very high.

    Chances are you’ll in all probability be supplied a wordpress theme that
    simplifies the method. t have to ship goods and many other troubles you don.

  13. If your visitor clicks on the ad, the visitor has
    to buy the product through Clickbank for you to get paid.

    CPA affiliate marketing is comparable to affiliate marketing sites,
    but, rather than promoting one or two products, and selling them, you can pick from
    your CPA network’s offers, (literally hundreds of delivers, including numerous distinct and popular niches) and you can be able to get
    paid to your lead generation efforts as well as for the sales.
    But if the church or religious institution is providing accommodation, then the
    Parsonage is calculated as the market value of the home, yard, furnishings
    and other utilities.

  14. But most web experts often forget to do some essential things that they need to do them
    after creating a website with wordpress. They are tasked with bringing
    order to your life in particular and society in general. Before you buy into a lie that you need a bigger Yellow Pages
    ad, more newspaper ads or whatever you’re currently being sold, make sure you’re leveraging your existing investments before
    you dump more money into a never-ending pit.

    It does hint at hunting for key words and then using human monitors to judge the severity of the content.
    In other words, your services need to be essential and worth the effort for consumers.
    The other man involved in this situation probably reflected back
    to your wife a very positive image of herself by giving compliments telling her everything about her is great, she deserves
    the best and so forth. What do they love about your product or
    service, and what do they want to see changed. 3) POST: Post
    a short advertisement on the Wall of each group you joined.
    If someone gives you the creepy crawly feelings, just block them right away,
    and forget they exist. Examining changes on the sentiment around your
    brand caused by Social Media can also be a helpful measure of the value of social
    media.

  15. Hello fantastic blog! Does running a blog such as this take a great deal of work?
    I’ve absolutely no expertise in programming however I was hoping to start my own blog soon.
    Anyhow, should you have any suggestions or tips for new blog
    owners please share. I know this is off topic but I
    simply wanted to ask. Thanks a lot!

  16. Okay, so you have a decent starting portfolio of ‘glamour photography’ shots you’ve taken and
    assembled to show the possibilities of your range and depth of photographic artistry.
    Indeed, Roberto Cavalli has drawn its own spot as one
    of Hollywood’s most sought-after Italian fashion brands.
    Fortunately, in this day and age of the Internet and the increasingly diverse global fashion market, you certainly
    don’t need to go all the way to Japan to get the very latest in Japanese fashion.

  17. t always expect to get a full sized gas grills equipped with a complete
    set of burner system such as rotisseries, side
    burner or infrared. But, for me at least, this product is well worth what I spent
    on it. I cannot tell you how often a buyer will walk into
    my retail store claiming they want a stainless grill.

    The Performance and Advantage styles of charbroil machines have a stainless steel style heat plate that could be replaced with a newer
    model if need be. While this can be found at Sears, be sure to check around for prices before ordering online so you can drive up and pickup free at the store.

  18. I am really enjoying the theme/design of your weblog.
    Do you ever run into any web browser compatibility issues?
    A small number of my blog audience have complained about my site not operating correctly in Explorer but looks great in Safari.
    Do you have any recommendations to help fix this issue?

  19. A real estate portfolio for the residential investor may be comprised of one or more single
    family dwellings, or they may be large portfolios of apartment
    complexes. Sarasota real estate investing requires lot of
    work, so you need to give your time, effort, knowledge, abilities and patience.
    If the tenant does become successful, the landlord could end
    up with an even higher rent than if he had been locked into a base rent only.

  20. I simply couldn’t depart your website prior to suggesting that I
    actually enjoyed the usual info a person supply for your visitors?
    Is gonna be back often in order to check out new posts

  21. I do not know if it’s just me or if perhaps everyone else experiencing problems with your website.
    It looks like some off the text on your contentt are running off the
    screen. Can somebody else please comment and let
    me know if this iis happening to them as well?
    This could be a issue with my browser because I’ve had this happen before.
    Appreciate it

  22. After going through the various services offered and their respective
    rates and charges, you can narrow down your list based on your budget
    and choose the company that offers the best service.
    The equation is the other way around and long distance
    movers would not be ideal for local moving jobs. Until government incentives
    are brought forth, most of these companies aren’t going to make any sizable investments into
    renewable energy.

  23. I’m amazed, I have to admit. Seldom do I come across a blog
    that’s both equally educative and interesting, and let me tell you, you’ve hit the nail on the head.
    The issue is something too few people are speaking intelligently about.
    I am very happy that I found this in my
    hunt for something relating to this.

  24. Fortunately for women, the lower back ages very well, so they should have no problems over the years with
    their tattoo. – Oxybenzone – carcinogen and contributor to vascular disease, may affect the brain and nervous system in animals.
    Frederick Mohs in the 1930’s who began this treatment for skin cancer.

  25. This design is wicked! You obviously know how to keep a reader amused.
    Between your wit and your videos, I was almost moved to start
    my own blog (well, almost…HaHa!) Wonderful job.
    I really loved what you had to say, and more than that, how you presented it.
    Too cool!

  26. Moving day can feel more like chaos than order, especially when there are
    half a dozen movers running around your home, packing up your belongings, and carrying out your furniture.
    Some of the heavy stuffs like piano create real
    problem for the removers. help you avoid pitfalls like this
    and find a real relationship.

  27. Howdy I am so grateful I found your weblog,
    I really found you by error, while I was looking on Google for something
    else, Regardless I am here now and would just like to say thanks
    for a fantastic post and a all round entertaining blog (I also
    love the theme/design), I don’t have time to read it all
    at the moment but I have saved it and also included your RSS feeds, so when I have time I will be back to read a great deal more, Please do keep up the excellent
    jo.

  28. One of the leading results of extended hours of being underneath
    the intense burning heat of the sun is the growth and development of Cancer.
    Booths, which have the appearance of a common telephone booth, also
    come in many variations. First of all choose a suntan lotion that
    has a lot of moisturizer in it.

  29. Read on further and get to know that whether moving companies are putting substantial amount of effort and hard work to
    fulfill the needs of their customers and satisfying them in a best manner.
    Arrange for the disconnection of old utilities connection and get hold of new firm
    or organize for the transfer of old connection, if doable.

    After concluding your research you will get experienced, secure, reliable, economical and quality moving
    service providers, if a Packers Movers full fill your relocation needs and
    preferences you can hire it for your shifting.

  30. Hair removal in some areas is essential to replace the
    areas where its growth has stopped. These use a number of techniques
    to move the natural oils down their hair such as boar bristle brushing and ‘scritching’ between washes.
    The doctors and the physicians must be experienced and trained
    in handling the laser instruments.

  31. The open-world cooperative role-playing game was published by 2K Games when it launched for the
    PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 gaming platforms
    in North America on Sep. Article Source: more cheat codes of
    your favorite video games as well as news on the video game industry and great deals on games,
    consoles and accessories, please visit. The device will final
    about five hours throughout video playback and seven hours during music playback inside standby mode.

  32. Now when it comes to the actually tweezing part,
    you want to make sure that you’re using a good pair of tweezers.

    To achieve the best results, become more proactive with the appropriate professional services and products for your specific condition, have a hair
    care analysis performed and get a personalized consultation.
    You can get great results at a much cheaper rate by
    looking for hair transplant abroad surgeons.

Leave a reply to Psn Free Codes Cancel reply