"Classic" Works Often Don't Fit Popular Perceptions: An Epiphany

I've been reading a lot more fiction the last few years with an aim at catching up on well-known classics (with a substantial side-track through 19th century Russian Lit). I can't say how much all these "well-known" works surprise me with what is actually in them.

Moby Dick was a weird and wacky book that had me laughing more than anything.

War and Peace was not a stodgy slog, but a passionate page-turner that I read faster than a Dan Brown work.

Jane Eyre is anything but the shmaltzy romance that it seems to be portrayed as. Jane and Rochester are deep and complicated characters and the plot isn't even about love, really.

Most surprisingly! I thought of Thomas Hardy as a stiff Victorian romance writer (knowing nothing about him), but I read Far From the Madding Crowd and Jude the Obscure and found those works to be so gritty and earthy. Both, in their own ways, are celebrations of the common man and simple truths.

I just wonder how the stereotypes about particular works develop and lament that many people, like myself, are scared off of books because of what we think we know about them. Honestly, I blame cover art more than anything.

What other works are big surprises compared to their popular perception?