The Rec League: Classics with Happy Endings

This request is from Lara: I’m reading Jane Austen’s Bookshelf and it’s making me really curious about the classics. Something I haven’t felt in at least a decade. So it’s a really broad rec request. Which classics (especially women writers who aren’t necessarily ‘canon’) would the bitchery recommend? I have only one other requirement – that the book have a happy ending. Oh and preferably available as an ebook as my budget and location don’t stretch to collecting rare books. Sarah: I was an English major at a women’s college in the south so my ‘classics’ curriculum was a lot of Southern Gothic writers. Eudora Welty and Flannery O’Connor didn’t write romances, or books with what Lara would think are happy endings so I’m really pondering. The thing with classics in what is considered the literary canon, aka A Lot of Books by Dead White Guys, is that they don’t end happily in a way that corresponds with our understanding of romance. Two very different genres, in other words. So I’m playing a little loose with the idea of a ‘classic’ here. Would Anne of Green Gables ( A | BN ) be considered a classic? I think so, and it ends happily. The Blue Castle is even more romantic. Elyse: A Room...