I've been wanting to make this list and ask for any additions. I think we have a problem where some people are taught that classical literature MUST be taken in a completely SERIOUS/PHILOSOPHICAL sense without any breaks, but if you go into classics with this assumption, then you'll literally be reading them differently. So much so that you may just be completely put off by them. I think a great example is Shakespeare. In school, I was taught only about the serious side of Shakespeare and ultimately found him boring. When I decided to pick him up as an adult, I chose to read the Tempest and found it funny, so I then read Comedy of Errors and found myself laughing out loud at parts. I'm only trying to find and share famous classics which have great senses of humor.
BTW, I have not read even half of these, but I plan to. So most of the following list is just what I've seen other people recommend online. Comment something if you don't see it on the list!
The list will be alphabetical by author's last name:
Aristophanes
- Lysistrata
Austen, Jane
- Emma
- Northanger Abbey
- Pride and Prejudice
- (People recommend everything but the humor in Northanger Abbey is brought up most often)
Bronte, Emily
- Wuthering Heights
Bukowski, Charles
- Post Office
Cervantes, Miguel de
- Don Quixote
Chaucer, Geoffrey
- The Canterbury Tales
- The Miller's Tale
Dickens, Charles
- Great Expectations
- The Pickwick Papers
- (People say Dickens puts humor in everything, but I see, for its humor, Pickwick Papers is recommended most)
Dostoevsky, Fyodor
- The Idiot
- Notes from Underground
- (Maybe other stuff I haven't seen)
Dumas, Alexandre
- The Count of Monte Cristo
- The Three Musketeers
Fielding, Henry
- Tom Jones
Gogol, Nikolai
- Dead Souls
- The Nose
Goldman, William
- The Princess Bride
Heller, Joseph
- Catch-22
Homer
- The Odyssey
Joyce, James
- Dubliners
- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- Ulysses
Kafka, Franz
- Amerika
- The Castle
- The Metamorphosis
- The Trial
Melville, Herman
- Moby-Dick
Petronius
- The Satyricon
Proust, Marcel
- Swann's Way
- (I think the rest of In Search of Lost Time, too)
Shakespeare, William
- The Comedy of Errors
- Macbeth
- Much Ado About Nothing
- The Taming of the Shrew
- The Tempest
- (I know there are many others that I'm forgetting)
Sterne, Laurence
- The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
Stoker, Bram
- Dracula
Swift, Jonathan
- Gulliver's Travels
Thackeray, William Makepeace
- Vanity Fair
Tolkien, J.R.R.
- The Hobbit
- The Lord of the Rings
- Leaf by Niggle
Tolstoy, Leo
- Anna Karenina
- The Death of Ivan Ilyich
- War and Peace
Twain, Mark
- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
- Adventures of Tom Sawyer
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
- The Prince and the Pauper
- (I think literally everything else, too)
Voltaire
- Candide
Vonnegut, Kurt
- Breakfast of Champions
- Slaughterhouse-Five
Wells, H.G.
- The Invisible Man
Wilde, Oscar
- The Picture of Dorian Gray
by DeemedUnfit