The Ultimate List of Autumnal Literature
What Makes Literature Autumnal - and the Classics That Make the Cut
With the advent of the orange season, we talk about autumnal books - those tomes which are best read with a hot cup of tea and a cool breeze, watching leaves drift lazily to the ground, scattered first by the wind and then brushed into happy piles by the watchers.
But what makes literature autumnal? Surely it has to do with more than just the setting we read it in.
A number of themes come to mind. Autumnal literature is about coming-of-age, about growing older, about transformation and decay. Often it is beset by a deep sense of melancholy or nostalgia, wistfulness or loneliness. Autumnal literature is rich and emotive. It demands what is deepest and most difficult in life. In the autumnal piece we are reminded of our impermanence, our mortality, our finality. Even as we are reminded of our youth through themes of scholarship and development, and of the bounty of life by the presence of the harvest, so too are we reminded that things come to an end, that everything has its place and every season its time - here today and gone tomorrow. Autumnal literature is introspective; it seeks out out end in the two meanings of the word - our purpose, and our conclusion. In some senses, autumnal literature is the most human literature of all.
And so, as we open our chapters and dance and cry there, on ancient edifices, and as we return to our roots in the Greek and in the fantastical realms of childhood, as we feel the cooling, the rain and storm of early winter, and as the sun sets on summer and the days become evenings, let us bless this blazing, dying landscape and thank God that a world awaits us, of which there will be no end.
A List of Books for Autumn
Russian Classics
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Memoirs from the House of the Dead by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Double by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Childhood, Boyhood, Youth by Leo Tolstoy
The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
A Nervous Breakdown by Anton Chekhov
Modern British Classics
The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil by J.R.R. Tolkien
Joseph Andrews and Shamela by Henry Fielding
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Little Minister by J.M. Barrie
Ulysses by James Joyce
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe
The Italian by Ann Radcliffe
Hard Times by Charles Dickens
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy
Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The Professor by Charlotte Bronte
Villette by Charlotte Bronte
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Don Quixote by Cervantes
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis
The Chronicles of Narnia (Series) by C.S. Lewis
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Dracula by Bram Stoker
A Study in Scarlett by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Complete Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells
The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells
The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan
The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne
The World of Christopher Robin by A.A. Milne
Rebecca by Daphne de Maurier
American Literature
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving
The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
Modern European Literature
The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
The Plague by Albert Camus
The Fall by Albert Camus
The Diary of a Young Girl (Het Achterhuis) by Anne Frank
Modern Canadian Literature
Anne of Green Gables (Series) by L.M. Montgomery
Classic Plays
Faust (Parts I & II) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Ancient Literature
Metamorphoses by Ovid
The Last Days of Socrates by Plato
Fall of the Roman Republic by Plutarch
The Histories by Herodotus
Medieval Literature
Confessions by St. Augustine
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius
Modern Poetry
The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot
Paradise Lost by John Milton
Ancient Poetry
The Aeneid by Virgil
The Iliad by Homer
The Odyssey by Homer
Non-fiction
Fear and Trembling by Soren Kierkegaard
The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
The American Scholar by Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Literary Lives of the Inklings by Philip and Carol Zaleski
Mythology by Edith Hamilton
Surprised by Oxford by Carolyn Weber
On Stories by C.S. Lewis
The Death of Adam by Marilynne Robinson
Surprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis
Thank you for the great list of books for Autumn! I enjoy your content both on this platform and youtube!