Favorite piece of classic literature?

The Seamus Heaney version of Beowulf.

Jane Eyre, One book with Charlotte Bronte which I don’t remember the name and some others by Jane Eyre also.

Oh, if we’re getting that recent, I would say Pride and Prejudice. By “classic” I assumed the original poster meant “ancient”.

Hahaha, just spill out whatever.

edit:
Dicken’s A Christmas Carol.
The Odyssey by Homer.
Catcher in the Rye by Salinger.
Hamlet by Shakespeare.

War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells.

Ahh yeah! PRIDE AND PREJUDICE TOO:d

Siddhartha by Herman Hesse and The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. I have also thoroughly enjoyed every play I have ever read by Oscar Wilde.

The Odyssey

Ooh, fun!

The Decameron, by Giovanni Boccaccio.

The Faerie Queene, Sir Edmund Spencer

Le Morte d’Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory (though I have to giggle at the way he portrays women, and how little he knew of the process of procreation.)

Around the World in Eighty Days, Jules Verne

The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde.

Sorry but how old is Classic? Is Dante’s Inferno a classic? Or Orwell’s 1984? Or how about Thomas Moore’s Utopia. Is The Art of War by Sun Tzu, Classic?

Does The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo count?

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare; The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne; A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce; Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte.

There are more, but I will not go on. I’m assuming these all count??

Hermann Hesse’s “Siddhartha”, Mark Twain’s “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court”, Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables”, Malory’s “Mort d’Arthur”

In my mind, anything that’s too old to be copyright-protected is “classic”

If we’re in the ‘recent classics’ zone would have to say 1984 by George Orwell or On The Road by Kerouac.

Pride and Prejudice

Frankenstein
1984
The Awakening

The Republic by Plato
The Iliad by Homer
and for something closer to our time Middlemarch by George Eliot

I am a Pride and Prejudice lover. Feel free to call me Mrs. Darcy (my sister actually does sometimes..)

It’s not a classic, but I love the poem Richard Cory. I just think it has a lot to say, and some real meaning to it.

Another vote for P&P.

I do enjoy reading Jane Eyre (though it is not a favorite), but I have never been able to read P&P, for some reason I can’t stand it.

Wuthering Heights, Rebecca, Brave New World… and less known ones like The Scarlet Letter… Just to be controversial, I think the Time Traveller’s Wife could one day warrant being considered a classic, but that’s a different question!

The Divine Comedy, by Dante. There’s no cooler classic written before 1400 AD.

I love Macbeth, Les Miserables, Perfume: The Story of A Murderer. Also, Pride and Prejudice, of course.

Hamlet.

Pride and Prejudice
Catcher In The Rye
On The Road my favourite read to date

Phantom of the Opera. I was absolutely gripped, all the way through. Couldn;t put it down.

Wuthering Heights for me. It’s very screwed up, but that’s why I like it.

@Zaku Loved the Odyssey

. . .and on that note I’ll add my favorite to the list. . .
Kenneth Grahame’s ~ Wind in the Willows

Does Bram Stoker’s Dracula count?

If not, I’m totally going with Gone with the Wind.

Also, if Trainspotting isn’t classic literature, it sure as fuck should be.

The Scarlet Letter is “less known”? It’s common high school required reading…

Classical literature as in literature from the Classical Era?

The Odyssey

Classical literature as in “a classic?”

Paradise Lost is badass. I’m a big fan of Moby Dick too.

Beowulf
Sagas of Icelanders
Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger

I’m almost through reading Anna Karenina by Tolstoy and it’s definitely going to stay one of my favorites.

And of course, The Odyssey.

@MacBean That’s great to know; not the case in the UK

I particularly like Richard Henry Dana Jr’s “Two Years Before the Mast”. It was the first of its genre; first person sea story narrative from the common sailors perspective. Another great of this kind is Eric Newby’s “The Last Grain Race”.

Also, A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Ah, yes, I also loved A Clockwork Orange. :]

Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain

The Metamorphoses by Ovid. My copy is falling apart from the number of readings I’ve put it through. I highly recommend it to everyone who has even the mildest of interests in mythology.

I’m gonna have to say that my favorites are:
Demian
Romance of the Three Kingdoms
A Confederacy of Dunces
and I know this one’s been published too recently perhaps to be considered a classic, but Sophie’s World as well.