literary classics
Enduring great books
Literary classics are works of literature—novels, plays, poems—considered exemplary and enduring, typically taught in schools and universities as part of a cultural canon.
The designation implies both artistic merit and lasting influence: She spent the summer reading literary classics like Pride and Prejudice.
What counts as a classic shifts over time and varies by culture, though certain works appear on nearly every list.
- ancient manuscriptsVery old handwritten documents
- RenaissanceEuropean cultural reawakening
- rare editionsInfrequently printed versions
- first editionOriginal published version
- leather boundEncased in treated animal skin
Realism · folklore · Enlightenment · Romanticism · Postmodernism · canon · required reading · Dostoevsky · War and Peace · timeless tale · novels · bildungsroman · oral traditions · storytelling · Dickens · Shakespeare · dog-eared · shared history
- world literatureFrench novels, Russian novels, Japanese fiction, translated works, British novels
- book collectionscomplete works, box set, boxed set, collected works, volumes
- library itemsbookshelf, books, bookcase, bookshelves, shelves
- trivia topicsnational flags, famous landmarks, Olympic sports, famous paintings, famous speeches
- Public Domainpublic domain, royalty free, creative commons, open access, commons
- Italian LiteratureDante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Machiavelli, Dante Alighieri
literary classicspulp fiction
Sensational cheap literature
dime novels · penny dreadfuls · potboilers · airport novels · guilty pleasures