[Ditto]

And when I was in high school in the early 1960s, we were stuck with the likes of Silas Marner... which set in me a prejudice against female novelists that took years to shake.

Ugh! Deadly dull for a teenage boy. I hated every word of it.

[CatoRenasci]

I'm sure this is heresy, but, for the most part, I am not a fan of the 19th century English novel. Oh, I like some Scott and some Hardy, but I can't stand George Elliot or Dickens. Disraeli was a mediocre novelist and Trollope generally bores me after an hour or so. I much prefer American novelists like Twain and Cooper, Germans like Goethe, Fontane and Mann, or even Froggie Proust!