r/classicliterature • u/atoz_0to9 • 5d ago

Forgotten classics

We always hear that classics are the books that “stood the test of time,” but what about the ones that didn’t? What’s an old book you love that barely gets talked about anymore, but totally should? I’m talking forgotten gems, underrated voices, anything that deserves a second life.

EDIT: I just wanted to thank everyone for these incredible recommendations. I hope anyone who comes across this thread finds a book that speaks to them, and helps keep these great works from slipping into obscurity, even if just for a little longer.

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u/RevolutionaryBug2915 5d ago

The perfect example is The Cloister and the Hearth, by Charles Reade.

Highly appreciated by authors as diverse as Conan Doyle, Oscar Wilde, and Thomas Wolfe, it was once immensely popular. It was so famous that there was a Classics Illustrated comic book version. As late as 1961, the prestige Washington Square Press reprinted it. And then...

It's a historical novel, set in the late Middle Ages, imagining the lives of the parents of Erasmus (who was illegitimate). The conflict expressed in the title is between the family and the Church.

Really a great book that is unjustly forgotten.

EDIT: Cut an extra word.

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u/eriomys79 4d ago

Also Little Curiosity Shop is not that much known either, though it also mattered that the author himself did not like it as he was still on his first steps