Classic book

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In the traditional sense, a classic book is one written in ancient Greece or ancient Rome (see classics). The word "classic" may, however, also be applied to literature and other art that is widely considered a model of its form.

Some authors who have written classics are Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Joseph Conrad, Lewis Carroll, Jonathan Swift, William Shakespeare, Geoffrey Chaucer, Miguel Cervantes, Voltaire, Denis Diderot, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Niccolò Machiavelli, Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg, Bolesław Prus, Ignacy Krasicki, Anton Chekhov, Leo Tolstoy, Cao Xueqin, Lao Zi (Lao Tzu), Confucius and Murasaki.

In this sense, classics comprise what some call a "canon" of world literature. A matter of much dispute is what belongs in the canon of Western literature and art.

Most "classics" are many years old, but the word is sometimes pressed into use to describe newer works. Many classic books are, because of their age, now out of copyright and in the public domain, and of these a large number are freely available on-line from sources such as Project Gutenberg or The Literature Network.

Mark Twain famously wrote that a "classic" was a "book which people praise and don't read."