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Classic Books With Intense Yearning
16
items For the ones who crave the tension more than the kiss. These are the classics to read for yearning and poetic repression
Sections
4
Obsessive Yearning
Slow-Burn Yearning
Forbidden Yearning
Unrequited Yearning
Obsessive Yearning
Wuthering Heights is dark, passionate and obsessive. It has everlasting love, revenge, anger and more. Title recently was back in the spotlight after news about an upcoming motion film by Emerald Fennell.
Wuthering Heights (Barnes & Noble Collectible Editions)
Gone With the Wind is a great read full of drama, and longing. Storyline easily sticks with you long after finishing the book. We see how obsessive desires can drive destructive choices.
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Yearning but make it about yourself. It is a haunting tale about vanity.
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Bruges-la-Morte is about a man so consumed by the memory of his lost love that he can’t stop searching for her in someone else. Grief, obsession, and longing create a very haunting love story.
Bruges-la-Morte by Georges Rodenbach
Slow-Burn Yearning
A quote to convince you to read Jane Eyre: “He stood between me and every thought of religion, as an eclipse intervenes between man and the broad sun”
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
George Eliot's writing is considered very subtle in comparison to other classical writers. Characters seem average until you are already deep in the storyline, understanding their motives. Middlemarch tells a relative, sincere love story with insight...
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Every page of this og bad boy romance crackles with tension and desire that Elizabeth and Darcy can’t even fully understand.
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
This is a story of a really long burn with a fantastic, unexpected ending. Love in the Time of CHolera is considered to be one of Marquez's best works.
Love in the Time of Cholera by G. G. Marquez
Forbidden Yearning
If you are looking for a classic with vulnerable queer love, Maurice is your sign to read a love story way ahead of its time. This one filled the void in me after finishing Call Me by Your Name by Andre Aciman.
Maurice by E. M. Forster
Letters to Milena feels like reading someone’s heart in real time. It is written from Kafka to his forbidden lover he could never fully have.
Letters to Milena by Franz Kafka
Anna Karenina is one of those books filled with multiple flawed characters. Every forbidden romance, every heartbreak, every longing hit me straight in the heart. This classic is impossible to forget, and makes you understand the genius of Tolstoy. I...
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Main characters in Belle du Seigneur do their best to drive each other crazy with jealousy. Their desire for each other defies society and morality.
Her Lover (Belle du Seigneur) by Albert Cohen
Unrequited Yearning
If you want a book that captures the unbearable beauty of wanting someone you can never fully reach, choose this one.
Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali
White Nights is a tiny book about big feelings. I consider this to be one of the best stories about pure love.
White Nights by Fyodor Dostoyevski
Our Gatsby is obsessively trying to achieve something impossible, and it is beautiful to read about. There is also a long-standing debate that Zelda Fitzgerald (Scott Fitzgerald's wife) may have inspired several passages without receiving full credit...
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Although Murakami is known of his controversial writing style, Norwegian Wood is still a masterpiece that shows how yearning can be a part of a deep grieving process.
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami