SEND THIS ARTICLE TO A FRIEND

Mark Twain defined a classic as, “Something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read”. What must be true to make a story a classic? Is a book a classic when it has a great number of printings? Or is it the number of languages into which it has been translated? Or perhaps a book is a classic if someone of importance says it is a classic? While these are interesting, even significant, they do not determine that a fiction book is a classic.