In drawing up a list of this kind, the greatest difficulty always arises with respect to the relatively contemporary items. The closer an author is to our own time, the harder it is to exercise a detached judgment about him. It is all very well to say that time will tell, but we may not want to wait. Thus, with regard to the more recent writers and books, there is much room for differences of opinion, and we would not claim for the later items on our list the degree of authority that we can claim for the earlier ones.
p. 349 There may be differences of opinion about some of the earlier items too, and we may be charged with being prejudiced against some authors that we have not listed at all. We are willing to admit that this may be true, in some cases. This is our list, and it may differ in some respects from lists drawn up by others. But it will not differ very significantly if everyone concurs seriously in the aim of making up a reading program that is worth spending a lifetime on. Ultimately, of course, you should make up your own list, and then go to work on it. It is wise, however, to read a fair number of the books that have been unanimously acclaimed before you branch off on your own. This list is a place to begin.
We want to mention one omission that may strike some readers as unfortunate. The list contains only Western authors and books; there are no Chinese, Japanese, or Indian works. There are several reasons for this. One is that we are not particularly knowledgeable outside of the Western literary tradition, and our recommendations would carry little weight. Another is that there is in the East no single tradition, as there is in the West, and we would have to be learned in all Eastern traditions in order to do the job well. There are very few scholars who have this kind of acquaintance with all the works of the East. Third, there is something to be said for knowing your own tradition before trying to understand that of other parts of the world. Many persons who today attempt to read such books as the I Ching or the Bhagavad-Gita are baffled, not only because of the inherent difficulty of such works, but also because they have not learned to read well by practicing on the more accessible works—more accessible to them—of their own culture. And finally, the list is long enough as it is.
One other omission requires comment. The list, being one of books, includes the names of few persons known primarily as lyric poets. Some of the writers on the list wrote lyric poems, of course, but they are best known for other, longer works. This fact is not to be taken as reflecting a prejudice on our part against lyric poetry. But we would recommend starting with a good anthology of poetry rather than with the collected works of a single author. Palgrave’s The Golden Treasury and p. 350 The Oxford Book of English Verse are excellent places to start. These older anthologies should be supplemented by more modern ones—for example, Selden Rodman’s One Hundred Modern Poems, a collection widely available in paperback that extends the notion of a lyric poem in interesting ways. Since reading lyric poetry requires special skill, we would also recommend any of several available handbooks on the subject—for example, Mark Van Doren’s Introduction to Poetry, an anthology that also contains short discussions of how to read many famous lyrics.
We have listed the books by author and title, but we have not attempted to indicate a publisher or a particular edition. Almost every work on the list is available in some form, and many are available in several editions, both paperback and hard cover. However, we have indicated which authors and titles are included in two sets that we ourselves have edited. Titles included in Great Books of the Western World are identified by a single asterisk; authors represented in Gateway to the Great Books are identified by a double asterisk.
1. Homer (9th century B.C.?)
*Iliad
*Odyssey
2. The Old Testament
3. Aeschylus (c. 525–456 B.C.)
*Tragedies
4. Sophocles (c. 495–406 B.C.)
*Tragedies
5. Herodotus (c. 484–425 B.C.)
*History (of the Persian Wars)
6. Euripides (c. 485–406 B.C.)
*Tragedies
(esp. Medea, Hippolytus, The Bacchae)
7. Thucydides (c. 460–400 B.C.)
*History of the Peloponnesian War
p. 351 8. Hippocrates (c. 460–377? B.C.)
*Medical writings
9. Aristophanes (c. 448–380 B.C.)
*Comedies
(esp. The Clouds, The Birds, The Frogs)
10. Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)
*Dialogues
(esp. The Republic, Symposium, Phaedo, Meno, Apology, Phaedrus, Protagoras, Gorgias, Sophist, Theaetetus)
11. Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)
*Works
(esp. Organon, Physics, Metaphysics, On the Soul, The Nichomachean Ethics, Politics, Rhetoric, Poetics)
12. ** Epicurus (c. 341–270 B.C.)
Letter to Herodotus
Letter to Menoeceus
13. Euclid (fl.c. 300 B.C.)
*Elements (of Geometry)
14. Archimedes (c. 287–212 B.C.)
*Works
(esp. On the Equilibrium of Planes, On Floating Bodies, The Sand-Reckoner)
15. Apollonius of Perga (fl.c. 240 B.C.)
*On Conic Sections
16. **Cicero (106–43 B.C.)
Works
(esp. Orations, On Friendship, On Old Age)
17. Lucretius (c. 95–55 B.C.)
*On the Nature of Things
18. Virgil (70–19 B.C.)
*Works
19. Horace (65–8 B.C.)
Works
(esp. Odes and Epodes, The Art of Poetry)
20. Livy (59 B.C.–A.D. 17)
History of Rome
p. 352 21. Ovid (43 B.C.–A.D. 17)
Works
(esp. Metamorphoses)
22. **Plutarch (c. 45–120)
*Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans
Moralia
23. **Tacitus (c. 55–117)
*Histories
*Annals
Agricola
Germania
24. Nicomachus of Gerasa (fl.c. 100 A.D.)
*Introduction to Arithmetic
25. **Epictetus (c. 60–120)
*Discourses
Encheiridion (Handbook)
26. Ptolemy (c. 100–178; fl. 127–151)
*Almagest
27. **Lucian (c. 120–c. 190)
Works
(esp. The Way to Write History, The True History, The Sale of Creeds)
28. Marcus Aurelius (121–180)
*Meditations
29. Galen (c. 130–200)
*On the Natural Faculties
30. The New Testament
31. Plotinus (205–270)
*The Enneads
32. St. Augustine (354–430)
Works
(esp. On the Teacher, *Confessions, *The City of God, *Christian Doctrine)
33. The Song of Roland (12th century?)
34. The Nibelungenlied (13th century)
(The Völsunga Saga is the Scandinavian version of the same legend.)
p. 353 35. The Saga of Burnt Njal
36. St. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274)
*Summa Theologica
37. **Dante Alighieri (1265–1321)
Works
(esp. The New Life, On Monarchy, *The Divine Comedy)
38. Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340–1400)
Works
(esp. *Troilus and Criseyde, *Canterbury Tales)
39. Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519)
Notebooks
40. Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527)
*The Prince
Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy
41. Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1469–1536)
The Praise of Folly
42. Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543)
*On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
43. Sir Thomas More (c. 1478–1535)
Utopia
44. Martin Luther (1483–1546)
Three Treatises
Table-Tal
k
45. Francois Rabelais (c. 1495–1553)
*Gargantua and Pantagruel
46. John Calvin (1509–1564)
Institutes of the Christian Religion
47. Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
*Essays
48. William Gilbert (1540–1603)
*On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies
49. Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616)
*Don Quixote
50. Edmund Spenser (c. 1552–1599)
Prothalamion
The Faerie Queene
p. 354 51. **Francis Bacon (1561–1626)
Essays
*Advancement of Learning
*Novum Organum
*New Atlantis
52. William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
*Works
53. *Galileo Galilei (1564–1642)
The Starry Messenger
*Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences
54. Johannes Kepler (1571–1630)
*Epitome of Copernican Astronomy
*Concerning the Harmonies of the World
55. William Harvey (1578–1657)
*On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals
*On the Circulation of the Blood
*On the Generation of Animals
56. Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679)
*The Leviathan
57. René Descartes (1596–1650)
*Rules for the Direction of the Mind
*Discourse on Method
*Geometry
*Meditations on First Philosophy
58. John Milton (1608–1674)
Works
(esp. *the minor poems, *Areopagitica, *Paradise Lost, Samson Agonistes)
59. ** Molière (1622–1673)
Comedies
(esp. The Miser, The School for Wives, The Misanthrope, The Doctor in Spite of Himself, Tartuffe)
60. Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
*The Provincial Letters
*Pensées
*Scientific treatises
p. 355 61. Christiaan Huygens (1629–1695)
*Treatise on Light
62. Benedict de Spinoza (1632–1677)
*Ethics
63. John Locke (1632–1704)
*Letter Concerning Toleration
* “Of Civil Government” (second treatise in Two Treatises on Government)
*Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Thoughts Concerning Education
64. Jean Baptiste Racine (1639–1699)
Tragedies
(esp. Andromache, Phaedra)
65. Isaac Newton (1642–1727)
*Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
*Optics
66. Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646–1716)
Discourse on Metaphysics
New Essays Concerning Human Understanding
Monadology
67. **Daniel Defoe (1660–1731)
Robinson Crusoe
68. **Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
A Tale of a Tub
Journal to Stella
*Gulliver’s Travels
A Modest Proposal
69. William Congreve (1670–1729)
The Way of the World
70. George Berkeley (1685–1753)
*Principles of Human Knowledge
71. Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
Essay on Criticism
Rape of the Lock
Essay on Man
72. Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689–1755)
Persian Letters
p. 356 *Spirit of Laws
73. *Voltaire (1694–1778)
Letters on the English
Candide
Philosophical Dictionary
74. Henry Fielding (1707–1754)
Joseph Andrews
*Tom Jones
75. **Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
The Vanity of Human Wishes
Dictionary
Rasselas
The Lives of the Poets
(esp. the essays on Milton and Pope)
76. **David Hume (1711–1776)
Treatise of Human Nature
Essays Moral and Political
*An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding
77. **Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778)
*On the Origin of Inequality
*On Political Economy
Emile
*The Social Contract
78. Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
*Tristram Shandy
A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy
79. Adam Smith (1723–1790)
The Theory of the Moral Sentiments
*Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
80. ** Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)
*Critique of Pure Reason
*Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals
*Critique of Practical Reason
*The Science of Right
*Critique of Judgment
p. 357 Perpetual Peace
81. Edward Gibbon (1737–1794)
*The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Autobiography
82. James Boswell (1740–1795)
Journal
(esp. London Journal)
*Life of Samuel Johnson Ll.D.
83. Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743–1794)
*Elements of Chemistry
84. John Jay (1745–1829), James Madison (1751–1836), and Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804)
*Federalist Papers
(together with the *Articles of Confederation, the *Constitution of the United States, and the *Declaration of Independence)
85. Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832)
Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
Theory of Fictions
86. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832)
*Faust
Poetry and Truth
87. Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier (1768–1830)
*Analytical Theory of Heat
88. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
Phenomenology of Spirit
*Philosophy of Right
*Lectures on the Philosophy of History
89. William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
Poems
(esp. Lyrical Ballads, Lucy poems, sonnets; The Prelude)
90. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
Poems
(esp. “Kubla Khan,” Rime of the Ancient Mariner)
p. 358 Biographia Literaria
91. Jane Austen (1775–1817)
Pride and Prejudice
Emma
92. **Karl von Clausewitz (1780–1831)
On War
93. Stendhal (1783–1842)
The Red and the Black
The Charterhouse of Parma
On Love
94. George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788–1824)
Don Juan
95. **Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860)
Studies in Pessimism
96. ** Michael Faraday (1791–1867)
Chemical History of a Candle
*Experimental Researches in Electricity
97. ** Charles Lyell (1797–1875)
Principles of Geology
98. Auguste Comte (1798–1857)
The Positive Philosophy
99. ** Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850)
Père Goriot
Eugénie Grandet
100. **Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
Representative Men
Essays
Journal
101. *Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864)
The Scarlet Letter
102. **Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
Democracy in America
103. **John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)
A System of Logic
*On Liberty
*Representative Government
*Utilitarianism
p. 359 The Subjection of Women
Autobiography
104. ** Charles Darwin (1809–1882)
*The Origin of Species
*The Descent of Man
Autobiography
105. **Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
Works
(esp. Pickwick Papers, David Copperfield, Hard Times)
106. **Claude Bernard (1813–1878)
Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine
107. **Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
Civil Disobedience
Walden
108. Karl Marx (1818–1883)
*Capital
(together with the *Communist Manifesto)
109. George Eliot (1819–1880)
Adam Bede
Middlemarch
110. **Herman Melville (1819–1891)
*Moby Dick
Billy Budd
111. *Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881)
Crime and Punishment
The Idiot
*The Brothers Karamazov
112. *Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880)
Madame Bovary
Three Stories
113. **Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906)
Plays
(esp. Hedda Gabler, A Doll’s House, The Wild Duck)
p. 360 114. **Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910)
*War and Peace
Anna Karenina
What Is Art?
Twenty-three Tales
115. *Mark Twain (1835–1910)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Mysterious Stranger
116. ** William James (1842–1910)
*The Principles of Psychology
The Varieties of Religious Experience
Pragmatism
Essays in Radical Empiricism
117. *Henry James (1843–1916)
The American
The Ambassadors
118. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844–1900)
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Beyond Good and Evil
The Genealogy of Morals
The Will to Power
119. Jules Henri Poincaré (1854–1912)
Science and Hypothesis
Science and Method
120. Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
*The Interpretation of Dreams
*Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
*Civilization and Its Discontents
*New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
121. **George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
Plays (and Prefaces)
(esp. Man and Superman, Major Barbara, Caesar and Cleopatra, Pygmalion, Saint Joan)
122. *Max Planck (1858–1947)
Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory
Where Is Science Going?
Scientific Autobiography
p. 361 123. Henri Bergson (1859–1941)
Time and Free Will
Matter and Memory
Creative Evolution
The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
124. **John Dewey (1859–1952)
How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading Page 36
