The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford

Depending on the version you get, this classic is at around 220 pages, slightly on the higher end of our list of books, however still a short enough modern-period classic that you’ll be sure to feel accomplished reading!

Synopsis: When John Dowell and his wife befriend Edward and Leonora Ashburnham, they appear to be the perfect couple. He is a distinguished soldier and she is beautiful and intelligent. However, what lies beneath the surface of their marriage is far more sinister and their influence leads John into a tragic drama that threatens to destroy everything he cares about.

The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoevsky

More known for his tomes The Idiot and Crime and Punishment, this small classic is much shorter at around 170 pages, which is much less daunting than a 650+ page behemoth of a book. After battling this Dostoevsky classic, you’ll surely be pleased with yourself and can totally claim that you read Dostoevsky!

Synopsis: In this dark and compelling short novel, Fyodor Dostoevsky tells the story of Alexey Ivanovitch, a young tutor working in the household of an imperious Russian general. Alexey tries to break through the wall of the established order in Russia, but instead becomes mired in the endless downward spiral of betting and loss. His intense and inescapable addiction is accentuated by his affair with the General’s cruel yet seductively adept niece, Polina. In The Gambler, Dostoevsky reaches the heights of drama with this stunning psychological portrait.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald

A book that is pretty well known, yet surprisingly short! Fitzgerald is well-known for short books, such as The Great Gatbsy. At 200 pages, this modern classic is rewarding, and I’m sure you’ll go treat yourself after conquering this one too!

Synopsis: In 1860 Benjamin Button is born an old man and mysteriously begins aging backward. At the beginning of his life he is withered and worn, but as he continues to grow younger he embraces life — he goes to war, runs a business, falls in love, has children, goes to college and prep school, and, as his mind begins to devolve, he attends kindergarten and eventually returns to the care of his nurse.

Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Who doesn’t know Tarzan? Who knew the book was short enough that it wasn’t so daunting? Who knows, maybe you’ll think the original classic is better than the movie!

Synopsis: In 1888 Lord and Lady Clayton sail from England but to West Africa and perish on a remote island. When their infant son is adopted by fanged, great anthropoid apes, he is Tarzan of the Apes. His intelligence and caring mother raise him to be king. Self-educated by his parents’ library, Tarzan rescues genteel Jane Porter from the perils of his jungle.

Lady Susan, The Watsons, Sanditon by Jane Austen

We all know of Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, but did you know that this 211 page collection of short stories exists? This book is perfect for those too scared to go actually read Pride and Prejudice, or those looking for short stories written in Austen’s time!

Synopsis: Lady Susan, with its wicked, beautiful, intelligent and energetic heroine, is a sparkling melodrama which takes its tone from the outspoken and robust eighteen century. Written later, and probably abandoned after her father’s death, The Watsons is a tantalizing and highly delightful story whose vitality and optimism centre on the marital prospects of the Watson sisters in a small provincial town. Sanditon, Jane Austen’s last fiction, is set in a seaside town and its themes concern the new speculative consumer society and foreshadow the great social upheavals of the Industrial Revolution.

Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë

Ah yes, a mention of one of the Brontë sisters! This list would be not right without a mention of this short 240 page classic. This one is the smaller of two books written by Anne, and it surely doesn’t disappoint and it is one of my all-time favourites!

Synopsis: Drawing directly on her own unhappy experiences, Anne Brontë‘s first-person narrative describes the almost unbelievable pressures endured by nineteenth-century governesses – the isolation, the frustration, and the insensitive and sometimes cruel treatment meted out by employers and their families.

A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

A short book from a popular modern classic author, what more could you want?! This one is more an essay than a work of fiction and only 112 pages! This modern is bound to make you think, and also touches on feminism.

Synopsis: A Room of One’s Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf. First published on the 24th of October, 1929, the essay was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women’s colleges at Cambridge University in October 1928. While this extended essay in fact employs a fictional narrator and narrative to explore women both as writers of and characters in fiction, the manuscript for the delivery of the series of lectures, titled Women and Fiction, and hence the essay, are considered nonfiction. The essay is seen as a feminist text, and is noted in its argument for both a literal and figural space for women writers within a literary tradition dominated by patriarchy.

Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay

Who doesn’t love a good mystery? I certainly do, and this short 189 page classic is bound to hit the spot, and surely better than the movie. This book leaves you essentially hanging, and is definitely a great short post-modern classic to dive into!

Synopsis: It was a cloudless summer day in the year nineteen hundred. Everyone at Appleyard College for Young Ladies agreed it was just right for a picnic at Hanging Rock. After lunch, a group of three of the girls climbed into the blaze of the afternoon sun, pressing on through the scrub into the shadows of Hanging Rock. Further, higher, till at last they disappeared. They never returned.

The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan

Another modern classic, but with a twist: this one is known for being a staple spy and adventure story! Coming at a short 148 pages, it is fast-paced, so you’re sure to be done with this one quicker than you can say supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

Synopsis: Richard Hannay has just returned to England after years in South Africa and is thoroughly bored with his life in London. But then a murder is committed in his flat, just days after a chance encounter with an American who had told him about an assassination plot which could have dire international consequences. An obvious suspect for the police and an easy target for the killers, Hannay goes on the run in his native Scotland where he will need all his courage and ingenuity to stay one step ahead of his pursuers.

Shakespeare’s Sonnets by William Shakespeare

We’ve all heard of Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and Hamlet, but this short collection of sonnets is bound to tide you over if you’re terrified of the bigger plays such as Othello and Richard III. At 154 pages, and with short sonnets, you’ll feel super accomplished flying through this one!

Synopsis: William Shakespeare’s sonnets are a beautiful expression of a range of human emotions – from love to grief, anger, jealousy and lust. Including the instantly recognisable ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’ as well as a range of other equally moving works, this compilation brings together the complete collection of all 154 of Shakespeare’s sonnets.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote

At 157 pages, this post-modern classic novella is one not to miss! It’s short and sweet, just how we like to keep a lot of things. Heck, they even turned it into a movie a couple of years after the novella was published, and that’s pretty cool, if you’re asking me!

Synopsis: Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s is a brilliant glimmer of the excitement of 40’s New York. Holly Golightly – brashly beautiful with a slim black dress, a mysterious past and dark glasses over varicoloured eyes – entrances all the men she meets, including the young writer living above her, though her recklessness may yet catch up with her. Also containing three short stories, this edition shows the elegance and warmth of Capote’s writing at its most flawless.

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Another post-modernistic feminist book that is short and is shocking realistic! Some say that this is the female version of The Catcher in the Rye, but we’ll let you decide on that once you power through this short book that doesn’t skimp on detail!

Synopsis: I was supposed to be having the time of my life. When Esther Greenwood wins an internship on a New York fashion magazine in 1953, she is elated, believing she will finally realise her dream to become a writer. But in between the cocktail parties and piles of manuscripts, Esther’s life begins to slide out of control. She finds herself spiralling into depression and eventually a suicide attempt, as she grapples with difficult relationships and a society which refuses to take women’s aspirations seriously. The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath’s only novel, was originally published in 1963 under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. The novel is partially based on Plath’s own life and descent into mental illness, and has become a modern classic. The Bell Jar has been celebrated for its darkly funny and razor sharp portrait of 1950s society and has sold millions of copies worldwide.

Do you have any other recommendations? Tell us in the comments below!

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Jane Eyre from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Plot (from Goodreads): “Orphaned as a child, Jane has felt an outcast her whole young life. Her courage is tested once again when she arrives at Thornfield Hall, where she has been hired by the brooding, proud Edward Rochester to care for his ward Adèle. Jane finds herself drawn to his troubled yet kind spirit. She falls in love. Hard. But there is a terrifying secret inside the gloomy, forbidding Thornfield Hall. Is Rochester hiding from Jane? Will Jane be left heartbroken and exiled once again?”

Jane Eyre is quite the independent young woman, which is very unheard of for Victorian woman. She inherits her own money and becomes financially independent before she even considers marrying Rochester. Jane shows her independence throughout the novel which inspires many young women around the world.

Jo March from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Plot (from Goodreads): “Generations of readers young and old, male and female, have fallen in love with the March sisters of Louisa May Alcott’s most popular and enduring novel, Little Women. Here are talented tomboy and author-to-be Jo, tragically frail Beth, beautiful Meg, and romantic, spoiled Amy, united in their devotion to each other and their struggles to survive in New England during the Civil War. It is no secret that Alcott based Little Women on her own early life. While her father, the freethinking reformer and abolitionist Bronson Alcott, hobnobbed with such eminent male authors as Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne, Louisa supported herself and her sisters with woman’s work,” including sewing, doing laundry, and acting as a domestic servant. But she soon discovered she could make more money writing. Little Women brought her lasting fame and fortune, and far from being the girl’s book” her publisher requested, it explores such timeless themes as love and death, war and peace, the conflict between personal ambition and family responsibilities, and the clash of cultures between Europe and America.”

Jo March is a very strong young woman and often her personality gets her into trouble because she is more of a tomboy than a lady. She would rather be a professional writer and live with her sisters than ever get married and leave them. She wants her marriage to have them as equals and be wholly her choice, unlike many girls at that time who married into money or by someone their parents picked for them.

Scarlett O’Hara from Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Plot (from Goodreads): “Gone with the Wind is a novel written by Margaret Mitchell, first published in 1936. The story is set in Clayton County, Georgia, and Atlanta during the American Civil War and Reconstruction era. It depicts the struggles of young Scarlett O’Hara, the spoiled daughter of a well-to-do plantation owner, who must use every means at her disposal to claw her way out of the poverty she finds herself in after Sherman’s March to the Sea. A historical novel, the story is a Bildungsroman or coming-of-age story, with the title taken from a poem written by Ernest Dowson.”

Gone with the Wind is set during the American Civil War and Scarlett herself had to fight to survive. Scarlett was married and pregnant by the time she was 16 and was widowed shortly after due to the War. Despite her hardships, she stayed an independent thinker the whole time and refused to follow traditional customs. She is often considered a feminist by readers which I think fits perfectly to her character.

Elizabeth Bennett from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Plot (from Goodreads): “’It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.’ Thus memorably begins Jane Austen‘s Pride and Prejudice, one of the world’s most popular novels. Pride and Prejudice–Austen’s own ‘darling child’–tells the story of fiercely independent Elizabeth Bennett, one of five sisters who must marry rich, as she confounds the arrogant, wealthy Mr. Darcy. What ensues is one of the most delightful and engrossingly readable courtships known to literature, written by a precocious Austen when she was just twenty-one years old. Humorous and profound, and filled with highly entertaining dialogue, this witty comedy of manners dips and turns through drawing-rooms and plots to reach an immensely satisfying finale. In the words of Eudora Welty, Pride and Prejudice is as ‘irresistible and as nearly flawless as any fiction could be.’”

Elizabeth Bennett is one of five sisters and she is very stubborn and independent. She isn’t interested at all in getting married and instead, she’s a lot more interested in reading her books or conversing with her sisters. Everyone knows the story of Elizabeth and Darcy and knows that they do not get along for most of the book, which is partly due to Elizabeth’s strong opinions, and desire to do whatever she pleases.

Marguerite St. Just from The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy

Plot (from Goodreads): “Armed with only his wits and his cunning, one man recklessly defies the French revolutionaries and rescues scores of innocent men, women, and children from the deadly guillotine. His friends and foes know him only as the Scarlet Pimpernel. But the ruthless French agent Chauvelin is sworn to discover his identity and to hunt him down.”

Marguerite isn’t considered the main character in this novel, but she is very important to the story. Marguerite is very determined to help her husband and heads off with her husband’s friend to do just that. She stands up to many villains, alone, and comes out of the confrontations a lot stronger than she was before. She is very inspiring and a strong character overall.

Have you read any of these novels? What do you think of these strong females? Are there any others that you would like to add to our list? Tell us in the comments below!

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