Last week, one of my favorite Booktubers, Carolyn Marie Reads, posted a video listing her top 5 classic authors. I, in turn, began to reflect upon my top five favorite authors. Favorite books are one thing, but favorite authors in particular are another. Which authors, and their work, have impacted me the most as a whole? In addition to novelists, I also included a poet. Poetry has always been a big part of my life, so it would be a crime not to include them in this list.
Jane Austen
The number one spot has always and will always belong to Jane Austen in my world. Sense and Sensibility was the first classic novel I picked up when I was eleven years old, and since then I’ve been obsessed. After that, Persuasion, Emma, Pride and Prejudice, and Northanger Abbey all have such special places in my heart, and their characters feel like old friends. The only Jane Austen novel I haven’t dipped my toe into is Mansfield Park, and quite frankly, I don’t know if I want to pick it up anytime soon. I kind of like having one Jane Austen book unread, waiting for me when the time is right. Maybe it’ll be my gift to myself when I turn 40 or 60. The best part about my Jane Austen obsession? We were both born on the same day, December 16th!
Agatha Christie
I love mysteries, but more succinctly, I love Agatha Christie mysteries. Her books are important to me in a way that’s somewhat opposite to Jane Austen's. For Austen’s books, I save them for special occasions, ferreted away for when I want an extra special treat. Agatha Christie, however, was such a prolific author that whenever I am in a slump or have read a book I didn’t like, I have an unread Poirot or Mrs. Marple waiting in the wings to save me! Since I read my first Agatha Christie novel in 2021, Murder on the Orient Express, I have read eight of her novels in total. But, the fact that she wrote 66 detective novels and 15 short story collections in her lifetime, I have a while to go before I become worried about running out. Even when I feel meh about the mystery, it’s still a fun time! My absolute favorites? And Then There Were None and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. If you want a place to start with Agatha Christie’s work, these are both great choices.
Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley is one of the few on this that I allowed myself to include even though I have only read one of her works: Frankenstein. While this is by no means the only book she has written, i.e. The Last Man, Lodore, and more, Frankenstein is a book I have returned to almost every year since I read it for the first time in high school. The characters’ stories, and the Creature’s story in particular, have had a huge impact on me as a writer. When I think about the kind of characters I want to write in my novels, I want to create characters like the Creature. Every time I read Frankenstein, my heart goes out to him, and I can almost trick myself into thinking the story might change for him at the end. I get so invested and emotionally attached to his story, that I want my future readers to feel the same way about the characters I create.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
My poetess!! Elizabeth Barrett Browning is on this list because she has established herself as a favorite during two different times in my life. Once when I was a teenager, I first found her poetry online, and again just this past January. I reread her poetry collection, Sonnets from the Portuguese, and fell in love with her poetry all over again. I read the same copy I had read when I was younger but found a completely different meaning in the work than I had before. As a teenager enamored with the idea of being in love, I remember how much Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poems about love meant to me. I wanted to feel the way she felt. But rereading them as an adult and having lived through much more than my sixteen-year-old self, I found the poems to be so much more rich in meaning. Sure, there’s plenty about love, but in this collection that she wrote for her husband, Elizabeth Barrett Browning also speaks of loneliness, her struggles with low self-esteem, and how she questioned the validity of her relationship with her husband, Robert Browning. There were so many more layers to the poetry than I had first observed as a younger reader, in a way that meant so much to me now.
Louisa May Alcott
Here’s the second author that I’m allowing myself to include in this list, even though I’ve only read one of her books: Little Women. And, like Mary Shelley’s case, I’m doing so because, through Little Women, Louisa May Alcott shaped the kind of writer I want to be. Yet another book I tend to return to year after year, this book feels like home. I could justinclude Louisa May Alcott in this list because I’m so thankful to her for writing this story! I know the characters in this book so well, they could be my family members. They certainly feel that way, after all. When I write my characters, I think about Jo March and how she grew up in Little Women. Her strength of character, her spunk, her courage, her flaws. They’re wonderfully balanced and make her four-dimensional and completely human. When I read that book, it’s as if the characters are living and breathing beside me. These are the characters and the stories, I aspire to write.
If this were a list of ten…
Here are five more authors that would make the list of ten, but are honorable mentions for my list of five!
John Keats
William Wordsworth
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Virgina Woolf
William Blake
Projections for future favorites…
There are several authors who I have on my shelves that, if I were to write this list again in ten years, might make the list. I haven’t read any of their books yet, but I just have a feeling about them…
James Baldwin
Herman Melville
Thomas Hardy
That’s it for today! What is your list of top five favorite classic authors? I would love to hear, leave them in the comments if you want to share!
i also love frankenstein! but i haven't read it in maybe 12 years which i must rectify. you're so right about the character. i also LOVE the descriptions of landscapes and nature. there is such a strong sense of setting!