I've got to say that I'm really thrilled that Galsworthy made it on the list. I don't think he gets enough attention.
The books I'd add:
The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton (I think it's superior to Ethan Frome) The Twelve Chairs, Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov The Velvet Room, Zilpha Keatley Snyder (I don't think it's Literature, but it really resonates with me and has for years) Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston (I don't think you'd have Toni Morrison or Alice Walker, without Hurston) Beneath The Wheel, Herman Hesse (beautiful in it's precision bone-crushing-depressing)
I finally read The House of Mirth, and I was so agonized by the protagonist's needless demise by her own frivolity, I just wanted to reach through the pages and shake her every so often.
On the contemporary Victorian liturature front, I'm almost done with The Crimson Petal and the White, have you read that one? Other recomended depressing reads are The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold and White Oleander by Janet Fitch. Both popular fiction, but reasonably so.
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The books I'd add:
The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton (I think it's superior to Ethan Frome)
The Twelve Chairs, Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov
The Velvet Room, Zilpha Keatley Snyder (I don't think it's Literature, but it really resonates with me and has for years)
Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston (I don't think you'd have Toni Morrison or Alice Walker, without Hurston)
Beneath The Wheel, Herman Hesse (beautiful in it's precision bone-crushing-depressing)
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On the contemporary Victorian liturature front, I'm almost done with The Crimson Petal and the White, have you read that one? Other recomended depressing reads are The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold and White Oleander by Janet Fitch. Both popular fiction, but reasonably so.
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I've not read The Crimson Petal and the White. How is it? Who wrote it?
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