Before we whipped out our old high school syllabi and dug deep into our libraries to start selecting contenders for this list, we first had to answer the question, “How do we define a classic?” The answer isn’t as straightforward as you might guess, though there’s a lot to be said for the old adage, “You know it when you see it” (or, in this case, hear it). But as the history of great literature is vast and deep, we knew we needed some rules of the road.

We debated various points in history as cutoffs (Turn of the century? Old enough to be in public domain? The American bicentennial?) and finally settled on works that were originally conceived in print at least 50 years ago, which felt like a nice round number of years to allow great writing to marinate. Additionally, we wanted to only recognize works that have either particular historical importance or that still vividly resonate today. We believe all of these selections below meet that criteria. And, of course, most critically, each of our picks had to be fabulous in audio. So dust off your aspirational listening list—we have some amazing additions you don’t want to miss.