Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is Oldest (aka Earliest Published) Books On My TBR.
At first, I went to my Goodreads to-read shelf to sort by publication year and look for the earliest, but then realized that I was missing many of the classics I want to get to. So… I went to my handy-dandy Excel spreadsheet (yes, I’m an Excel nerd!) dedicated to my future classics reading, and then did a little mixing and matching.
The results originally showed a few instances of multiple books by the same author, and I made the executive decision to limit it to one book each. In the end, it was very hard to whittle the list down, so…
Here is my list of 10 12 of the oldest books on my to-read shelf!
- Belinda by Maria Edgeworth (1801)
- Waverley by Sir Walter Scott (1814)
- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818)
- The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper (1826)
- The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte (1848)
- Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1862)
- David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (1850)
- The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot (1860)
- Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne (1872)
- Eight Cousins by Louisa May Alcott (1875)
- Black Beauty by Anna Sewell (1877)
- The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy (1878)
Note: I’ve read Frankenstein, but it was so long ago that I feel a reread is needed!
Have you read any of the books on my list? Any thoughts or recommendations?
If you wrote a TTT post, please share your link!
Bookshelf Fantasies 
Wow, some really..uh, ‘vintage’ choices here! I haven’t heard some of these titles since high school. Some good ones though!
Ha, yes, I’m slowly working my way through my classics list! Between my book group and a couple of challenges I try to participate in, I manage to squeeze in a bit of classics reading each year. 🙂
I liked Black Beauty.
I’m looking forward to reading it!
I’ve read David Copperfield, Eight Cousins, and Black Beauty. All great. Others are on my TBR list.
I’m in the midst of a different Louisa May Alcott book right now, and I’m looking forward to reading Eight Cousins as well (although I have a feeling I actually read this at some point as a kid, many (many!) years ago)
Wildfell Hall and Return of the Native are on my list as well! I pulled most of the Dickens off my list after reading a few of his though…you can really tell he got paid by the word!
I’ve really liked the Dickens books I’ve read, and want to read more… but one every couple of years or so is plenty! 🙂
I haven’t read any of these, but I would like to try The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
I’d been wanting to read that one anyway, and then a character in a completely different sort of book kept referring to it, which sparked my curiosity.
Great list – hope you get to read them soon!
Thank you! So many of them are big and/or dense that I think it will take me a long time! 🙂
I will need to add some of these to my (already toppling over) TBR of classic reads! Frankenstein is the only one I own but haven’t read yet, one day! So many classics, not enough time!
Exactly! Which is why I love participating in classics reading challenges — it gives me motivation to finally start a few of the books I keep saying I’ll read eventually!
David Copperfield and Return of the Native are two of my favorites! Frankenstein should be on my list, I keep thinking I’ve read it but I haven’t.
Great to know about David Copperfield and Return of the Native!! I’ve read and enjoyed other Dickens and Hardy books, so I really do need to get to these!
I think I own a copy of Black Beauty! I still need to read it though. Very cool that you want to read so many classics. 🙂
Thanks! I really do enjoy classics, but not too many at once… which is why it takes me so long to get to them!
If any topic deserves to have the constraints of ten broken, it’s this one; I wanna know about ALL the old books (even some of these, specifically the first two, are new to me). I loved Black Beauty growing up and need to reread it as an adult (though I’m confident I will still love it given that I spent half of my life defaulting to it as My Favorite Book when pressed for that answer).
But I have to say, that cover of Frankenstein is terrifying, and not in the usual way… It’s giving “what if a shirtless-man-cover romance novel got REAL weird.”
I’ve read a few of these and do fancy reading more Dickens. I’ve only read Great Expectations and Christmas Carol but I really liked both.
Lynn 😀
I really liked Great Expectations too! I’ve read a few others, and hope to pick and choose a few more to read (slowly!)
You should consider, if you haven’t already, joining The Classics Club and making a plan to read your choice of any fifty books in the next five years.
Already joined! 🙂 And I love doing the Classics Club spins — just finished my newest spin book yesterday!
I love this list! And I’ve actually read Black Beauty, long ago😁
I feel like I should have read Black Beauty way back when, because I definitely went through a horse phase back in elementary school! Lots and lots of Marguerite Henry books… but I’m pretty sure I missed Black Beauty.
I love the spreadsheet idea! I haven’t read any of these books but David Copperfield is a book I hope to read in the future. I hope you’ll love these books when you get to them 🙂
If you’d like to visit, here’s my TTT: https://thebooklorefairy.blogspot.com/2024/11/top-ten-tuesday-oldest-books-on-my-tbr.html
Thank you! I’ve been wanting to read David Copperfield for a while now, so hopefully 2025 will finally be the year for me to do it!
I’ve read a few of these–The Mill on the Floss, Lady Audley, Copperfield, Frankenstein and Around the World among them, and found them all enjoyable reads. Mill of course could get a tad depressing. My oldest reads list has a Scott too, The Bride of Lamermoor!
Great to know that you’ve enjoyed so many of these! The Bride of Lamermoor is on my TBR list too!
I’m not much for classics, so I’ve only read a couple of these and they were a looonnnggg time ago! Good luck with your classics reading. I hope you enjoy all these when you get to them.
Happy TTT (on a Wednesday)!
Susan
http://www.blogginboutbooks.com
Thanks so much! I do love classics, mixed in amongst everything else I enjoy reading!
I have read a few of these actually (though many ages ago) and reread at least a couple of them recently (including Black Beauty, which is one of my fav reads)… I have Eight Cousins (kind of) on my list as well..plus other Hardy and Dickens books
oh.. and my list is here!
I keep hearing how much people love Black Beauty! I’ll have to make it a priority in 2025!
Nice classics list! Have you read Jane Eyre? My favourite….
My TTT: https://cathysreadingbonanza.wordpress.com/2024/11/21/top-ten-tuesday-its-been-a-while/
Oh yes, I love Jane Eyre! I’m probably due for a reread…
I really liked Belinda and Lady Audley’s Secret! The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and The Mill on the Floss are also favs. 😀
That’s awesome to hear, especially re Belinda and Lady Audley — I don’t think I know anyone who’s read those!
I acutally own copies of both of them because my library didn’t have them, and I really wanted to read them. And I’m kind of glad I have them sitting on my shelves, because I wouldn’t mind reading them again. But I’m a fan of classics…especially ones written by women. 😀
When I first started putting together a classics list, I was bummed to see how much it skewed toward men, and have been making an effort to research and find classics to read by women authors. It’s great to hear that you liked these enough to want to reread them!