How old does a book need to be before it’s considered a classic?
How old does a book need to be before it’s considered a classic?
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I’m not sure age is the central issue. I think as recent a book as Exit West, for instance, is established as a classic already.
Cool , so age isn’t always a requisite for a classic. I should maybe have been more Specific about authors. Are Agatha Christie’s books and Philip k dicks work considered classic lit? They are kind of middle ranged in terms of age.
@Sean That’s harder to say, not because of age but because literary types tend to look down on “genre” literature (I think such judgments tell us more about the people making them than they do about the books judged). I’m a Christie fan (I wrote her a fan letter when I was a kid and she wrote me back a lovely handwritten letter) and I like what little I know of Dick’s work.
@Don that’s so cool about the letter , tell me you still have it ?
@Sean I do. I asked her about her “process” (though I didn’t use that word) and she said she worked pretty typically for mystery writers–starting with knowing who “dunnit” and how it happened and working backwards from there. She did interestingly (to me) say that only after working out the shape of the plot did she decide whether it would be a stand-alone book or would be a mystery using one of her recurring characters as the crime solver.
The Harry Potter books – at least the initial one – have to be considered classics, I would suggest. And isn’t there at least one Stephen King novel that should be considered a classic?
@Don that’s cool , great that she took the time to write you back. ?
@Chris which king ? The stand ?
Maybe. Salems’ Lot or Pet Sematary maybe? I think I have even seen Carrie on some list.
@Chris cool thanks! I was just curious, it wouldn’t surprise me , his fan base is ridiculously big ?
@Chris cool thanks! I was just curious, it wouldn’t surprise me , his fan base is ridiculously big ?
Agatha Christie’s books are not classics…
Marie, To Kill a Mockingbird is considered a classic, and it was published more than 20 years after And Then There Were None.
Young ones just become ‘modern classics’, I think
How about when a classic is new and they KNOW it’s a classic. Like A Christmas Carol or From Here to Eternity. Would they be considered classics from the Get Go?
20 years. Think of the name of the rose by umberto eco
That’s a good question actually. I think such books need to defy time, still be popular, and widely read, so not just in a particular region. Books that are only 30 years old or less are perhaps only modern novels/books. If they remain as popular many years later, they become classics. Just my own theory though?
I think they need to be old enough to have influenced the body of work of future authors. Old enough to where they’re points of reference for literature moving forward and not just commended as being a good novel or book at the time of its release.
I like that position, but I think it would automatically eliminate many of what we consider classics for other reasons.
Nice response ? I think that’s a good way of defining a classic
Wonderful question and I will venture to say all of us will have great reasoning for our responses.
For me a classic must withstand the test of time. And I have always given a 100 year benchmark. Anything under that might be a “modern” or “contemporary” classic such as To Kill a Mockingbird.
I used to say staying in print after 100 years was a criteria for a classic but with advent of Gutenberg and many other online libraries, that’s no longer mandatory.
I think if people are still reading a book 100 years or more after publication, it’s a classic.
Today I sat in SpeedeeOil getting my oil changed on my car. While in the waiting room I was reading Emma by Jane Austen published in 1815. Did Jane ever ponder her books would be read 200 years in the future?
So…for me it’s time and love = a classic.
i am not sure age is the test.
Funny, I’ve never considered classics from the POV of age. For me classics are about popularity and quality. Like, Harry Potter books are modern classics, because of the sheer number of books sold and the superb content of most of the series.
Its not about age
It looks like age isn’t a defining factor for a classic then ? I always associate classics with age, my thinking being that To be considered a classic that your book would be read and hopefully loved over a substantial period of time. There is several modem day books I love and when I read them I always wonder if they will have the longevity of authors like dickens etc.
The literary classics frequently.taught in many of the elite colleges and universities of the US are those , which have been in circulation , in.many cases for centuries upon centuries.
Additionally, I doubt that what truly defines “classic” is popularity among the general.population , no matter the length.of time or the specific period..
For instance, an example of a true classic , which will.always be taught and evaluated by academics as well as scholars is Oedipus Rex, which has not in.general , been overly.popular with.the general reading population as a function of time. As to age, this play by Sophocles was first performed in 429 BC in classical Greek.
Likewise, poetry considered to be classic by scholars can date back to periods as early as 5 BC or even much earlier. Examples of such classic poems, both of which are among my favorites are: The Cloud of Fate and The High Immortal Gods Are Free., both composed by Bacchylides 5 BC.
It may have changed (as I read this certainly more than a decade ago) but when I was a college English professor, I read a survey which had asked college professors what works of American literature they taught and the survey tallied the results. The novel most frequently taught was Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Now, I love that novel and I taught it repeatedly for decades, but I thought the most frequently taught novel in American lit courses would be Huck Finn or Scarlet Letter or To Kill a Mockingbird or Great Gatsby.
Don Lawson:
Big on tbe reading.lists.today, of many.US Universities , some elite, others not elite, are Afro American, Asian American and Latina/Latino American .literature.
Also, .novels that deal.with.migration or immigration are being read/ taught in the UG English curriculum of several US Universities.
Still , other Universities have inserted subjects for study in the BA English curriculum that are concerned with various aspects of human sexuality.
As far as the question of Huck Finn, the University of Chicago does have this novel listed as a requirement for the UG English requirement. . However. , The University of Chicago seems to ignore The Jungle, So Big and as far as I can see A Raisin in.the Sun. To me, this seems strange, since both the books and the play concern the Southside of the City of Chicago.
Also.interesting is the requirement by some Universities, for students to take a course in Biblical.Literature for the BA in English, and this is a requirement made interestingly even by.nonreligious Universities.
Also, I was.pleased and impressed to note, that.Universities are teaching (at least some of them) certain aspects of Biblical Poetry contained within the Hebrew Bible as part of the English undergraduate BA requirement.
I’ve had the same thought, @Sean. I sometimes read modern novels and think, “This has to be a classic one day.” Cult classics like Harry Potter aside, I believe novels like The Help, Stardust by Neil Gaiman or one of my other favorites The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah surely have to become classics one day because they’re beautiful stories and so marvelously written. But they’re all less than 20 so I doubt they’ll be categorized as “classics” for some time. I think I also often just naturally assume, “if the book is old enough that I could have read it in school” then it’s a classic. lol.
I think a book has to pass the test of time before it can be called a classic. Books that were wildly popular a century ago are out of print or unknown today. Other books that were not immediately bestsellers have risen in both critical estimation and popularity over time.
I’d say if a book is still being read and talked about 50 years–that’s two generations–after publication, then it probably has legs.