Hello and welcome to Read the Classics. I’m Henry Eliot, the author of The Penguin Classics Book.
I love reading and discussing classic literature. I am Classics Editor at Faber & Faber and for five years I was Creative Editor of the Penguin Classics series, where I hosted their podcast On the Road with Penguin Classics. I have been lucky enough to discuss literature and the classics around the world – up Scafell Pike in the Lake District, in the Argentine Embassy in London, at the Mumbai Literary Festival, outside a villa in Umbria and inside a haunted mansion in Vermont . . . and now I’m excited to be discussing literature on Substack.
Join me to discuss the best books ever written.
How does it work?
Subscribe to Read the Classics to receive:
Weekly classics recommendations. Each week I recommend a classic – it might address a topical issue or suit that time of year or there might be a significant anniversary that week. You can browse my previous recommendations here.
A new classics read-along each month, with opportunities to comment and discuss as we read along together. This is the heart of this Substack: we will read a wide range of texts and approach them in a variety of ways. All the read-alongs are gathered here.
Regular round-ups of newly published classics and other lists, which you can browse here.
Read the Classics is currently available completely free, but there is the option to support my work for £5/month (or on an annual basis), for which I’d be very grateful.
What is a classic?
My favourite definition is the one that Ezra Pound includes as a ‘warning’ at the beginning of his ABC of Reading:
‘A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness.’
It’s that quality of ‘irrepressible freshness’ that I like: a classic may be historically significant and highly renowned but fundamentally it needs to feel alive. When we read it, we need to feel a connection across time and space.
When do books become classics?
‘A book is never a masterpiece: it becomes one,’ wrote the inseparable Goncourt brothers.
In the eighteenth century, only the works of Greek and Latin authors were considered classics. In the nineteenth century, the definition was extended to include authors such as Dante, Shakespeare and Cervantes.
In the twentieth century, the term gradually became a marketing tool for publishers and since then the waiting period has become increasingly short, especially with the invention of categories such as the ‘modern classic’ and even the ‘instant classic’.
It’s tricky to assign a blanket rule, but I do believe that classics need to pass a test of time. For me, a classic should be roughly seventy-five years old or more, its first publication beyond most people’s living memory, and a modern classic should also belong to a previous generation, at least, say, twenty-five years old.
Why are they ‘classics’?
The word itself can be daunting. ‘Why, before long I shall become a classic!’ exclaims a novelist in one of Edith Wharton’s short stories. ‘Bound in sets and kept on the top book-shelf – brr, doesn’t that sound freezing?’
It goes back to Aulus Gellius, a second-century Roman author. Before him, the Latin word classici referred to a tax band: the wealthiest citizens of Rome, those who paid the most tax, were the classici, the aristocrats. Gellius spent his nights compiling a compendium of literary quotations and he used the term to distinguish the scriptores classici, those writers he considered particularly important.
Are the classics the same as the canon?
Classics have traditionally been associated with the idea of a canon – an exclusive, universally accepted list of great books – but this feels like an outdated way of thinking. I agree with Italo Calvino, who wrote in his brilliant 1981 essay Why Read the Classics? that ‘all that can be done is for each one of us to invent our own ideal library of classics.’ As the novelist A. S. Byatt said: ‘a culture’s canon is an evolving consensus of individual canons’.
For an interesting discussion of this issue and an inspiring reading list, take a look at This is the Canon, curated by Joan Anim-Addo, Deirdre Osborne and Kadija Sesay. The books we read here on Read the Classics are a mixture of personal choice and subscribers’ suggestions. The are not an attempt to create a canon.
More about me
I am the Classics Editor at the publishing house Faber & Faber, looking after their heritage list while the brilliant Ella Griffiths is on maternity leave.
The books I have written include The Penguin Classics Book, The Penguin Modern Classics Book, Eliot’s Book of Bookish Lists, Curiocity: An Alternative A to Z of London and Follow This Thread: A Maze Book to Get Lost In. You can find them and (almost) all the books we discuss here at the Read the Classics bookshop on Bookshop.org.
If you’re based in or near London, I host a monthly classics book club in person at Hatchards, the oldest bookshop in the United Kingdom. It would be lovely to meet you there!
All the books we discuss on Read the Classics are linked to Bookshop.org. If you follow the link to buy a copy through Bookshop.org, you will not only be supporting UK independent bookshops, Read the Classics will also earn a 10% commission from your purchase. Thank you very much in advance for your support!
