Compare Revisions

Comparing revisions for Reading Check Lists for Major Series: Great Books of the Western World. View full history.

Revision: 29
Title: Reading Check Lists for Major Series: Great Books of the Western World
Author: MJ. Smith
Date: 2016 Jun 11 at 01:01

Reading Check Lists for Major Series: Great Books of the Western World

Reading List

Great Books of the Western World

These books are listed in the sequence they appear in the series; links will be added when available. The idea is simply for one to be able to check off a book as read rather than to supply dates or sequence. In some cases the original language addition or alternative translations may also be given.

Ancient Greece

Homer

  • The Iliad (Richmond Lattimore)
  • The Odyssey (Richmond Lattimore)

Aeschylus

  • The Suppliant Maidens (Seth G. Benardete)
  • The Persians (Seth G. Benardete)
  • Seven Against Thebes (David Grene)
  • Prometheus Bound (David Grene)
The Oresteia
  • Agamemnon (Richmond Lattimore)
  • The Libation Bearers (Richmond Lattimore)
  • The Eumenides (Richmond Lattimore)

Sophocles

The Oedipus Cycle
  • Oedipus the King (David Grene)
  • Oedipus at Colonus (Robert Fitzgerald)
  • Antigone (Elizabeth Wyckoff)
  • Ajax (John Moore
  • Electra (David Grene)
  • The Women of Trachis (Michael Jameson)
  • Philoctetes (David Grene)

Euripides

  • Rhesus (Richmond Lattimore)
  • The Medea (Rex Warner)
  • Hippolytus (David Grene)
  • Alcestis (Richmond Lattimore)
  • The Heracleiadae (Ralph Gladstone)
  • The Suppliant Women (Frank William Jones)
  • The Trojan Women (Richmond Lattimore)
  • Ion (Ronald Frederick Willetts)
  • Helen (Richmond Lattimore
  • Andromache (John Frederick Nims)
  • Electra ( Emily Townsend Vermeule)
  • The Bacchae (William Arrowsmith)
  • Hecuba (William Arrowsmith)
  • Heracles (William Arrowsmith)
  • The Phoenician Women (Elizabeth Wyckoff)
  • Orestes (William Arrowsmith)
  • Iphigenia in Tauris (Witter Bynner)
  • Iphigenia in Aulis (Charles R. Walker)
  • The Cyclops (William Arrowsmith)

Aristophanes

  • The Acharnians (Alan H. Sommerstein)
  • The Knights (Alan H. Sommerstein)
  • The Clouds (Alan H. Sommerstein)
  • The Wasps (David Barrett)
  • Peace (Alan H. Sommerstein)
  • The Birds (David Barrett)
  • The Frogs (David Barrett)
  • Lysistrata (Alan H. Sommerstein)
  • The Poet and the Women (David Barrett)
  • The Assemblywomen (David Barrett)
  • Wealth (Alan H. Sommerstein)

Herodotus

  • The History (George Rawlinson)

Thucydides

  • The History of the Peloponnesian War (Richard Rawley)

Plato

The Dialogues (translated by Benjamin Jowett)
  • Charmides
  • Lysis
  • Laches
  • Protagoras
  • Euthydemus
  • Cratylus
  • Phaedrus
  • Ion
  • Symposium
  • Meno
  • Euthyphro
  • Apology
  • Crito
  • Phaedo
  • Gorgias
  • The Republic
  • Timaeus
  • Critias
  • Parmenides
  • Theaetetus
  • Sophist
  • Statesman
  • Philebus
  • Laws
  • The Seventh Letter (translated by J. Harward)

Aristotle

  • Categories (E.M. Edghill)
  • On Interpretation (E.M. Edghill)
  • Prior Analytics (A.J. Jenkinson)
  • Posterior Analytics (G.R.G. Mure)
  • Topics (W.A. Pickard-Cambridge)
  • On Sophistical Refutations (W.A. Pickard-Cambridge)
  • Physics (R.P. Hardie, and R.K. Gaye)
  • On the Heavens (J.L. Stocks)
  • On Generation and Corruption (H.H. Joachim)
  • Meteorology (E.W. Webster)
  • Metaphysiscs (W.D. Ross)
  • On the Soul (J.A. Smith)
  • On Sense and the Sensible (J.I. Beare)
  • On Memory and Reminiscence (J.I. Beare)
  • On Sleep and Sleeplessness (J.I. Beare)
  • On Dreams, (J.I. Beare)
  • On Prophesying by Dreams (J.I. Beare)
  • On Longevity and Shortness of Life (G.R.T. Ross)
  • On Youth and Old Age, On Life and Death, On Breathing (G.R.T. Ross)
  • History of Animals (D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson)
  • On the Parts of Animals (William Ogle)
  • On the Motion of Animals (A.S.L. Farquharson)
  • On the Gait of Animals (A.S.L. Farquharson)
  • On the Generation of Animals (Arthur Platt)
  • Nicomachean Ethics (W.D. Ross)
  • Politics (Benjamin Jowett)
  • The Athenian Constitution (Sir Frederic G. Kenyon)
  • Rhetoric (W. Rhys Roberts)
  • On Poetics (Ingram Bywater)

Hippocrates

Hippocratic Writings (Francis Adams)
  • On Airs, Waters, And Places
  • Aphorisms
  • On The Articulations
  • Of The Epidemics
  • On Fistulae
  • On Fractures
  • On Injuries Of The Head
  • On Hemorrhoids
  • The Law
  • On Ancient Medicine
  • The Oath
  • The Book Of Prognostics
  • Instruments Of Reduction
  • On Regimen In Acute Diseases
  • On The Sacred Disease
  • On The Surgery
  • On Ulcers

Galen

  • On the Natural Faculties (Arthur John Brock)

Euclid

  • Euclid’s Elements (Sir Thomas L. Heath)

Archimedes

The Works of Archimedes, Including The Method (Sir Thomas L. Heath)
  • On the Sphere and Cylinder
  • Measurement of a Circle
  • On Conoids and Spheroids
  • On Spirals
  • On the Equilibrium of Planes
  • The Sand-Reckoner
  • The Quadrature of the Parabola
  • On Floating Bodies
  • Book of Lemmas
  • The Method Treating of Mechanical Problems

Apollonius of Perga

  • Treatise on Conic Sections

Nicomachus of Gerasa

  • The Introduction to Arithmetic of Nicomachus (Martin L. D’Ooge)

Ancient Rome

Lucretius

  • The Way Things Are (Rolfe Humphries)

Epictetus

  • Discourses (George Long)

Marcus Aurelius

  • Meditations (George Long)

Plotinus

  • The Six Enneads (Stephen MacKenna and B.S. Page)

Virgil

  • Eclogues (C. Day Lewis)
  • Georgics (C. Day Lewis)
  • The Aeneid (C. Day Lewis)

Plutarch

  • The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (John Dryden)

Cornelius Tacitus

  • The Annals (Alfred John Church, and William Jackson Brodribb)
  • The Histories (Alfred John Church, and William Jackson Brodribb)

Ptolemy

  • The Almagest (R. Catesby Taliaferro)

Nicolaus Copernicus (Renaissance)

  • On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (Charles Glenn Wallis)

Johannes Kepler (Renaissance)

  • Epitome of Copernican Astronomy: IV-V (Charles Glenn Wallis)
  • The Harmonies of the World: V (Charles Glenn Wallis)

Augustine of Hippo

  • The Confessions (R.S. Pine-Coffin)
  • The City of God (Marcus Dods)
  • On Christian Doctrine (J.F. Shaw)

Late Medieval Period (to 1450)

Thomas Aquinas

  • Summa Theologica (Father Laurence Shapcote)

Dante

  • The Divine Comedy (Charles S. Singleton)

The Renaissance

Geoffrey Chaucer

  • Troilus and Criseyde (Nevill Coghill)
  • The Canterbury Tales (Nevill Coghill)

John Calvin

  • Institutes of the Christian Religion (Henry Beveridge)

Nicolò Machiavelli

  • The Prince (W.K. Marriott)

Thomas Hobbes

  • Leviathan (Nelle Fuller)

François Rabelais

  • Gargantua and Pantagruel (Sir Thomas Urquhart and Peter Motteux)

Desiderius Erasmus

  • Praise of Folly (Betty Radice)

Michel de Montaigne

  • Essays (Donald M. Frame)

William Shakespeare

  • The First Part of King Henry the Sixth
  • The Second Part of King Henry the Sixth
  • The Third part of King Henry the Sixth
  • The Life and Death of Richard the Third
  • The Comedy of errors
  • Titus Andronicus
  • The Taming of the Shrew
  • The Two Gentlemen of Verona
  • Love’s Labour ‘s Lost
  • Romeo and Juliet
  • The Life and Death of Richard the Second
  • A Midsummer Night’s Dream
  • The Life and Death of King John
  • The Merchant of Venice
  • The first part of King Henry the Fourth
  • The second part of King Henry the Fourth
  • Much Ado About Nothing
  • The Life of King Henry the Fifth
  • The Life and Death of Julius Ceasar
  • As you like it
  • Twelfth Night; or, what you will
  • The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
  • The Merry Wives of Windsor
  • The History of Troilus and Cressida
  • All’s Well that Ends Well
  • Measure for Measure
  • Othello, the Moore of Venice
  • King Lear
  • Macbeth
  • Antony and Cleopatra
  • The Tragedy of Coriolanus
  • The Life of Timon of Athens
  • Pericles, Prince of Tyre
  • Cymbeline
  • The Winter’s Tale
  • The Tempest
  • The Life of King Henry the Eighth
  • The Sonnets

William Gilbert

  • On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies (P. Fleury Mottelay)

Galileo Galilei

  • Concerning the Two New Sciences (Henry Crew and Alfonso de Salvio)

William Harvey

  • On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals (Robert Willis)
  • On the Circulation of the Blood (Robert Willis)
  • On the Generation of Animals (Robert Willis)

Miguel de Cervantes

  • The History of Don Quixote de la Mancha (Samuel Putnam)

Seventeenth Century

Francis Bacon

  • Advancement of Learning
  • Novum Organum
  • New Atlantis

René Descartes

  • Rules for the Direction of the Mind (Elizabeth S. Haldane, and G.R.T. Ross)
  • Discourse on the Method (Elizabeth S. Haldane, and G.R.T. Ross)
  • Meditations on First Philosophy (Elizabeth S. Haldane, and G.R.T. Ross)
  • Objections Against the Meditations and Replies (Elizabeth S. Haldane, and G.R.T. Ross)
  • The Geometry (David Eugene Smith, and Marcia L. Latham)

Benedict de Spinoza

  • Ethics (W.H. White)

John Milton

  • English Minor Poems
  • Paradise Lost
  • Samson Agonistes
  • Areopagitica

Blaise Pascal

  • The Provincial Letters
  • Pensées
  • Scientific Treatises

Molière

  • The School for Wives (Morris Bishop)
  • The Critique of the School for Wives (Morris Bishop)
  • Tartuffe (Morris Bishop)
  • Don Juan (John Wood)
  • The Miser (Wallace Fowlie)
  • The Would-Be Gentleman (Morris Bishop)
  • The Would-Be Invalid (Morris Bishop)

Jean Racine

  • Berenice (Samuel Solomon)
  • Phaedra (Samuel Solomon)

Sir Isaac Newton

  • Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (Andrew Mott)
  • Optics

Christiaan Huygens

  • Treatise on Light (Silvanus P. Thompson)

John Locke

  • A Letter Concerning Toleration (William Popple)
  • Second Essay on Civil Government
  • An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Eighteenth Century

George Berkeley

  • The Principles of Human Knowledge

David Hume

  • An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Jonathan Swift

  • Gulliver’s Travels

Voltaire

  • Candide (Peter Gay)

Denis Diderot

  • Rameau’s Nephew (Jacques Brazu)

Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu

  • The Spirit of Laws (Thomas Nugent)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  • A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (G.D.H. Cole)
  • A Discourse on Political Economy (G.D.H. Cole)
  • The Social Contract (G.D.H. Cole)

Adam Smith

  • An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

Edward Gibbon

  • The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Immanuel Kant

  • The Critique of Pure Reason (J.M.D. Meiklejohn)
  • Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals (Thomas Kingsmill Abbott)
  • The Critique of Practical Reason (Thomas Kingsmill Abbott)
  • Preface and Introduction to the Metaphysical Elements of Ethics, With a Note on Conscience (Thomas Kingsmill Abbott)
  • General Introduction to the Metaphysic of Morals (W. Hastie)
  • The Science of Right (W. Hastie)
  • The Critique of Judgement (James Creed Meredith)

American State Papers

  • Declaration of Independence
  • Articles of Confederation
  • The Constitution

Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay

  • The Federalist

Nineteenth Century

John Stuart Mill

*On Liberty
*Representative Government
*Utilitarianism

James Boswell

  • The Life of Samuel Johnson

Antoine Laurent Lavoisier

  • Elements of Chemistry (Robert Kerr)

Michael Faraday

  • Experimental Researches in Electricity

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  • The Philosophy of Right (T.M. Knox)
  • The Philosophy of History (J. Sibree)

Søren Kierkegaard

  • Fear and Trembling (Walter Lowrie)

Friedrich Nietzsche

  • Beyond Good and Evil (Walter Lowrie)

Alexis de Tocqueville

  • Democracy in America (George Lawrence)

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  • Faust (Philip Wayne)

Honoré de Balzac

  • Cousin Bette (Marion Ayton Crawford)

Jane Austen

  • Emma

George Eliot

  • Middlemarch

Charles Dickens

  • Little Dorrit

Herman Melville

  • Moby Dick; or, The Whale

Mark Twain

  • Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Charles Darwin

  • The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
  • The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex

Karl Marx

  • Capital (Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling)

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

  • Manifesto of the Communist Party (Samuel Moore)

Leo Tolstoy

  • War and Peace (Louise Maude and Aylmer Maude)

Fyodor Dostoevsky

  • The Brothers Karamazov (Constance Garnett)

Henrik Ibsen

  • A Doll’s House (James W. McFarlane)
  • The Wild Duck (James W. McFarlane)
  • Hedda Gabler (Jens Arup)
  • The Master Builder (James W. McFarlane)

William James

  • The Principles of Psychology

Twentieth Century

Sigmund Freud

  • The Origin and Development of Psycho-analysis (1910) (Harry W. Chase)
  • Selected Papers on Hysteria (chapters 1–10) (1893–1908) (A.A. Brill)
  • The Future Prospects of Psycho-analytic Therapy (1910) (Joan Riviere)
  • Observations on “Wild” Psycho-analysis (1910) (Joan Riviere)
  • The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) (A.A. Brill)
  • On Narcissism (1914) (Cecil M. Baines)
  • Instincts and Their Vicissitudes (1915) (Cecil M. Baines)
  • Repression (1915) (Cecil M. Baines)
  • The Unconscious (1915), (Cecil M. Baines)
  • A General Introduction to Psycho-analysis (1915–17) (Joan Riviere)
  • Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) (C.J.M. Hubback)
  • Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921) (James Strachey)
  • The Ego and the Id (1923) (Joan Riviere)
  • Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety (1926) (Alix Strachey)
  • Thoughts for the Times on War and Death (1915) (E. Colburn Mayne)
  • Civilization and Its Discontents (1929) (Joan Riviere)
  • New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis (1932) (W.J.H. Sprott)

Philosophy and Religion

William James
  • Pragmatism
Henri Bergson
  • An Introduction to Metaphysics (T.E. Hulme)
John Dewey
  • Experience and Education
Alfred North Whitehead (also see below)
  • Science and the Modern World
Bertrand Russell
  • The Problems of Philosophy
Martin Heidegger
  • What Is Metaphysics? (R.F.C. Hull and Alan Crick)
Ludwig Wittgenstein
  • Philosophical Investigations (G.E.M. Anscombe)
Karl Barth
  • The Word of God and the Word of Man (Douglas Horton)

Natural Science

Henri Poincaré
  • Science and Hypothesis (William John Greenstreet)
Max Plank
  • Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers (Frank Gaynor)
Alfred North Whitehead (also see above)
  • An Introduction to Mathematics
Albert Einstein
  • Relativity: The Special and the General Theory (Robert W. Lawson)
Arthur Eddington
  • The Expanding Universe
Niels Bohr
  • Selections from Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature
  • Discussion with Einstein on Epistemological Problems in Atomic Physics
G. H. Hardy
  • A Mathematician’s Apology
Werner Heisenberg
  • Physics and Philosophy
Erwin Schrödinger
  • What Is Life?
Theodosius Dobzhansky
  • Genetics and the Origin of Species
C. H. Waddington
  • The Nature of Life

Social Science

Thorstein Veblen
  • The Theory of the Leisure Class
R. H. Tawney
  • The Acquisitive Society
John Maynard Keynes
  • The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
James George Frazer
  • Selections from The Golden Bough
Max Weber
  • Selections from Essays in Sociology (H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills)
Johan Huizinga
  • The Waning of the Middle Ages (Frederik Jan Hopman)
Claude Lévi-Strauss
  • Selections from Structural Anthropology, (Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf)

Imaginative Literature

Henry James
  • The Beast in the Jungle
George Bernard Shaw
  • Saint Joan
Joseph Conrad
  • Heart of Darkness
Anton Chekhov
  • Uncle Vania (Elisaveta Fen)
Luigi Pirandello
  • Six Characters in Search of an Author (Edward Storer)
Marcel Proust
  • Swann in Love (from Remembrance of Things Past) (C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin)
Willa Cather
  • A Lost Lady
Thomas Mann
  • Death in Venice (H.T. Lowe-Porter)
James Joyce
  • A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Virginia Woolf
  • To the Lighthouse
Franz Kafka
  • The Metamorphosis (Willa Muir and Edwin Muir)
D. H. Lawrence
  • The Prussian Officer
T. S. Eliot
  • The Waste Land
Eugene O’Neill
  • Mourning Becomes Electra
F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • The Great Gatsby
William Faulkner
  • A Rose for Emily
Bertolt Brecht
  • Mother Courage and Her Children (Ralph Manheim)
Ernest Hemingway
  • The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber
George Orwell
  • Animal Farm
Samuel Beckett
  • Waiting for Godot

Gateway to the Great Books

  • A Letter to the Reader
  • Introduction

Imaginative Literature

Daniel DEFOE (1660-1731)

  • Robinson Crusoe

Rudyard KIPLING (1865-1936)

  • “Mowgli’s Brothers” from The Jungle Book

Victor HUGO (1802-1885)

  • “The Battle with the Cannon” from Ninety-three

Guy De MAUPASSANT (1850-1893)

  • “Two Friends”

Ernest HEMINGWAY (1899-1961)

  • “The Killers” from Men without Women

Sir Walter SCOTT (1771-1832)

  • “The Two Drovers” from Chronicles of the Canongate

Joseph CONRAD (1857-1924)

  • “Youth”

VOLTAIRE (1694-1778)

  • Micromegas

Oscar WILDE (1854- 1900)

  • “The Happy Prince” from The Happy Prince and Other Tales

Edgar Allan POE (1809-1849)

  • “The Tell-Tale Heart”
  • “The Masque of the Red Death”

Robert Louis STEVENSON (1850-1894)

  • The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Mark TWAIN (Samuel Clemens 1835-1910)

  • The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg

Charles DICKENS (1812-1870)

  • “A Full and Faithful Report of the Memorable Trial of Bardell against Pickwick” from The Pickwick Papers

Nikolai GOGOL (1809-1852)

  • “The Overcoat”

Samuel BUTLER (1835-1902)

  • “Customs and Opinions of the Erewhonians” from Erewhon

Sherwood ANDERSON (1876-1941)

  • “I’m a Fool”

ANONYMOUS (c. early 13th Century)

  • Aucassin and Nicolette

Stephen CRANE (1871-1900)

  • “The Open Boat”

Herman MELVILLE (1819-1891)

  • “Billy Budd” from Billy Budd, Sailor

Ivan BUNIN (1870-1953)

  • “The Gentleman from San Francisco”

Nathaniel HAWTHORNE (1804-1864)

  • “Rappaccini’s Daughter” from Mosses from an Old Manse

George ELIOT (1819-1880)

  • “The Lifted Veil”

Lucius APULEIUS (fl. 2nd Century)

  • “Cupid and Psyche” from The Golden Ass

Ivan TURGENEV (1818-1883)

  • “First Love”

Fyodor DOSTOEVSKY (1828-1910)

  • “White Nights”

John GALSWORTHY (1867-1933)

  • “The Apple-Tree”

Gustave FLAUBERT (1821-1880)

  • “The Legend of St. Julian the Hospitaller” from Three Tales

F. Scott FITZGERALD (1869-1940)

  • “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz” from Tales of the Jazz Age

Honore De BALZAC (1799-1850)

  • “A Passion in the Desert”

Anton CHEKHOV (1860-1904)

  • “The Darling”

Isaac SINGER (b. 1904)

  • “The Spinoza of Market Street”

Alexander PUSHKIN (1799-1837)

  • “The Queen of Spades”

D. H. LAWRENCE (1885-1930)

  • “The Rocking-Horse Winner” from The Lovely Lady

Henry JAMES (1843-1916)

  • “The Pupil”

Thomas MANN (1875-1955)

  • “Mario and the Magician” from Stories of Three Decades

Isak DINESEN (1885-1962)

  • “Sorrow-Acre” from Winter’s Tales

Leo TOLSTOY (1828-1910)

  • “The Death of Ivan Ilyitch”
  • “The Three Hermits”
  • “What Men Live By”

MOLIERE (1622-1673)

  • The Misanthrope
  • The Doctor in Spite of Himself

Richard SHERIDAN (1751-1816)

  • The School for Scandal

Henrik IBSEN (1828-1906)

  • An Enemy of the People

Anton CHEKHOV (1860-1904)

  • The Cherry Orchard

George Bernard SHAW (1856-1950)

  • The Man of Destiny

John M. SYNGE (1871-1909)

  • Riders to the Sea

Eugene O’NEILL (1888-1953)

  • The Emperor Jones

Critical Essays

Virginia WOOLF (1882-1941)

  • “How Should One Read a Book?” from The Second Common Reader

Matthew ARNOLD (1822-1888)

  • “The Study of Poetry” from The English Poets, T. H. Ward, Ed.
  • “Sweetness and Light” from Culture and Anarchy

Charles Augustin SAINTE-BEUVE (1804-1869)

  • “What Is a Classic?”
  • “Montaigne”

Sir Francis BACON (1561-1626)

  • “Of Beauty” from Essays, Civil and Moral
  • “Of Discourse” from Essays, Civil and Moral
  • “Of Studies” from Essays, Civil and Moral

David HUME (1711-1776)

  • “Of the Standard of Taste” from Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary

Arthur SCHOPENHAUER (1788-1860)

  • “On Style” from Essays in Ethics and Politics
  • “On Some Forms of Literature” from Essays in Ethics and Politics
  • “On the Comparative Place of Interest and Beauty in Works of Art”

Friedrich SCHILLER (1759-1805)

  • “On Simple and Sentimental Poetry” from Essays Aesthetical and Philosophical

Percy Bysshe SHELLEY (1792-1822)

  • “A Defence of Poetry”

Walt WHITMAN (1819-1892)

  • Preface to Leaves of Grass

William HAZLITT (1778-1830)

  • “My First Acquaintance with Poets”
  • “On Swift”
  • “Of Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen”

Charles LAMB (1775-1834)

  • “My First Play”
  • “Dream Children, a Reverie”
  • “Sanity of True Genius”

Samuel JOHNSON (1709-1784)

  • Preface to Shakespeare

Thomas DE QUINCEY (1785-1859)

  • “Literature of Knowledge and Literature of Power”
  • “On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth”

Thomas Stearns ELIOT (1888-1965)

  • “Dante”
  • “Tradition and the Individual Talent” from Selected Essays (New Ed.)

Man and Society

John Stuart MILL (1806-1873)

  • “Childhood and Youth” from Autobiography

Mark TWAIN (Samuel Clemens 1835-1910)

  • “Learning the River” from Life an the Mississippi

Jean De LA BRUYERE (1645-1696)

  • “Characters” from A Book of Characters

Thomas CARLYLE (1795-1881)

  • “The Hero as King” from On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History

Ralph Waldo EMERSON (1803-1882)

  • “Thoreau”

Nathaniel HAWTHORNE (1804-1864)

  • “Sketch of Abraham Lincoln”

Walt WHITMAN (1819-1892)

  • “Death of Abraham Lincoln”

Virginia WOOLF (1882-1941)

  • “The Art of Biography” from The Death of the Moth

XENOPHON (c. 430 B.C.-c. 355 B.C.)

  • “The March to the Sea” from The Persian Expedition
  • “The Character of Socrates” from Memorabilia

William H. PRESCOTT (1796-1859)

  • “The Land of Montezuma” from The Conquest of Mexico

Haniel LONG (1888-1956)

  • “The Power within Us”

PLINY the Younger (c. 61-c. 113)

  • “The Eruption of Vesuvius” from Letters

Cornelius TACITUS (c. 55-c. 120)

  • “The Life of Gnaeus Julius Agricola”

Francois GUIZOT (1787-1874)

  • “Civilization” from History of Civilization in Europe

Henry ADAMS (1838-1918)

  • “The United States in 1800” from History of the United States of America

John Bagnell BURY (1861-1927)

  • “Herodotus” from The Ancient Greek Historians

LUCIAN (c. 125-c. 190)

  • “The Way to Write History”

Great Documents

  • The English Bill of Rights (1689)
  • Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789)
  • The Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776)
  • The Declaration of Independence (1776)
  • Charter of the United Nations (1945)
  • Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)

Thomas PAINE (1737-1809)

  • “A Call to Patriots – December 23, 1776” from The Crisis

George WASHINGTON (1732-1799)

  • “Circular Letter to the Governors of All the States on Disbanding the Army”
  • “The Farewell Address”

Thomas JEFFERSON (1743-1826)

  • “The Virginia Constitution” from Notes on Virginia
  • “First Inaugural Address”
  • “Biographical Sketches”

Benjamin FRANKLIN (1706-1790)

  • “A Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge among the British Plantations in America”
  • “Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania”

Jean De CREVECOEUR (1735-1813)

  • “The Making of Americans” from Letters from an American Farmer

Alexis De TOCQUEVILLE (1805-1859)

  • “Observations on American Life and Government” from Democracy in America

Henry David THOREAU (1817-1862)

  • “Civil Disobedience”
  • “A Plea for Captain John Brown”

Abraham LINCOLN (1809-1865)

  • “Address at Cooper Institute”
  • “First Inaugural Address”
  • “Letter to Horace Greeley”
  • “Meditation on the Divine Will”
  • “The Gettysburg Address”
  • “Second Inaugural Address”
  • “Last Public Address”

Sir Francis BACON (1561-1626)

  • “Of Youth and Age” from Essays, Civil and Moral
  • “Of Parents and Children” from Essays, Civil and Moral
  • “Of Marriage and Single Life” from Essays, Civil and Moral
  • “Of Great Place” from Essays, Civil and Moral
  • “Of Seditions and Troubles” from Essays, Civil and Moral
  • “Of Custom and Education” from Essays, Civil and Moral
  • “Of Followers and Friends” from Essays, Civil and Moral
  • “Of Usury” from Essays, Civil and Moral
  • “Of Riches” from Essays, Civil and Moral

Jonathan SWIFT (1667-1745)

  • “Resolutions when I Come to Be Old”
  • “An Essay on Modern Education”
  • “A Meditation upon a Broomstick”
  • “A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country”

David HUME (1711-1776)

  • “Of Refinement in the Arts” from Essays, Moral, Political and Literary
  • “Of Money” from Essays, Moral, Political and Literary
  • “Of the Balance of Trade” from Essays, Moral, Political and Literary
  • “Of Taxes”from Essays, Moral, Political and Literary
  • “Of the Study of History” from Essays, Moral, Political and Literary

PLUTARCH (c. 46-120)

  • “Of Bashfulness” from Moralia

Robert Louis STEVENSON (1850-1894)

  • “The Lantern-Bearers” from Across the Plains

John RUSKIN (1819-1900)

  • “An Idealist’s Arraignment of the Age” from Four Clavigera

William JAMES (1842-1910)

  • “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings”
  • “The Energies of Men”
  • “Great Men and Their Environment”

Arthur SCHOPENHAUER (1788-1860)

  • “On Education” from Studies in Pessimism

Michael FARADAY

  • “Observations on Mental Education” from Lectures on Education

Edmund BURKE (1729-1797)

  • “Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol”

John C. CALHOUN (1782-1850)

  • “The Concurrent Majority” from A Disquisition on Government

Thomas Babington MACAULAY

  • “Machiavelli” from Critical and Historical Essays

VOLTAIRE (1694-1778)

  • “English Men and Ideas” from Letters on the English

DANTE Aligheri (1265-1321)

  • “On World Government” from De Monarchia

Jean Jacques ROUSSEAU (1712-1778)

  • “A Lasting Peace through the Federation of Europe” from A Lasting Peace through the Federation of Europe and the State of War

Immanuel KANT (1724-1804)

  • “Perpetual Peace”

Karl Von CLAUSEWITZ (1780-1831)

  • “What Is War?” from On War

Thomas Robert MALTHUS (1766-1834)

  • “The Principle of Population” from Population: The First Essay

Revision: 30
Title: Reading Check Lists for Major Series: Great Books of the Western World
Author: MJ. Smith
Date: 2016 Jun 11 at 01:16

Reading Check Lists for Major Series: Great Books of the Western World

Reading List

Great Books of the Western World

These books are listed in the sequence they appear in the series; links will be added when available. The idea is simply for one to be able to check off a book as read rather than to supply dates or sequence. In some cases the original language addition or alternative translations may also be given.

Ancient Greece

Homer

  • The Iliad (Richmond Lattimore)
  • The Odyssey (Richmond Lattimore)

Aeschylus

  • The Suppliant Maidens (Seth G. Benardete)
  • The Persians (Seth G. Benardete)
  • Seven Against Thebes (David Grene)
  • Prometheus Bound (David Grene)
The Oresteia
  • Agamemnon (Richmond Lattimore)
  • The Libation Bearers (Richmond Lattimore)
  • The Eumenides (Richmond Lattimore)

Sophocles

The Oedipus Cycle
  • Oedipus the King (David Grene)
  • Oedipus at Colonus (Robert Fitzgerald)
  • Antigone (Elizabeth Wyckoff)
  • Ajax (John Moore
  • Electra (David Grene)
  • The Women of Trachis (Michael Jameson)
  • Philoctetes (David Grene)

Euripides

  • Rhesus (Richmond Lattimore)
  • The Medea (Rex Warner)
  • Hippolytus (David Grene)
  • Alcestis (Richmond Lattimore)
  • The Heracleiadae (Ralph Gladstone)
  • The Suppliant Women (Frank William Jones)
  • The Trojan Women (Richmond Lattimore)
  • Ion (Ronald Frederick Willetts)
  • Helen (Richmond Lattimore
  • Andromache (John Frederick Nims)
  • Electra ( Emily Townsend Vermeule)
  • The Bacchae (William Arrowsmith)
  • Hecuba (William Arrowsmith)
  • Heracles (William Arrowsmith)
  • The Phoenician Women (Elizabeth Wyckoff)
  • Orestes (William Arrowsmith)
  • Iphigenia in Tauris (Witter Bynner)
  • Iphigenia in Aulis (Charles R. Walker)
  • The Cyclops (William Arrowsmith)

Aristophanes

  • The Acharnians (Alan H. Sommerstein)
  • The Knights (Alan H. Sommerstein)
  • The Clouds (Alan H. Sommerstein)
  • The Wasps (David Barrett)
  • Peace (Alan H. Sommerstein)
  • The Birds (David Barrett)
  • The Frogs (David Barrett)
  • Lysistrata (Alan H. Sommerstein)
  • The Poet and the Women (David Barrett)
  • The Assemblywomen (David Barrett)
  • Wealth (Alan H. Sommerstein)

Herodotus

  • The History (George Rawlinson)

Thucydides

  • The History of the Peloponnesian War (Richard Rawley)

Plato

The Dialogues (translated by Benjamin Jowett)
  • Charmides
  • Lysis
  • Laches
  • Protagoras
  • Euthydemus
  • Cratylus
  • Phaedrus
  • Ion
  • Symposium
  • Meno
  • Euthyphro
  • Apology
  • Crito
  • Phaedo
  • Gorgias
  • The Republic
  • Timaeus
  • Critias
  • Parmenides
  • Theaetetus
  • Sophist
  • Statesman
  • Philebus
  • Laws
  • The Seventh Letter (translated by J. Harward)

Aristotle

  • Categories (E.M. Edghill)
  • On Interpretation (E.M. Edghill)
  • Prior Analytics (A.J. Jenkinson)
  • Posterior Analytics (G.R.G. Mure)
  • Topics (W.A. Pickard-Cambridge)
  • On Sophistical Refutations (W.A. Pickard-Cambridge)
  • Physics (R.P. Hardie, and R.K. Gaye)
  • On the Heavens (J.L. Stocks)
  • On Generation and Corruption (H.H. Joachim)
  • Meteorology (E.W. Webster)
  • Metaphysiscs (W.D. Ross)
  • On the Soul (J.A. Smith)
  • On Sense and the Sensible (J.I. Beare)
  • On Memory and Reminiscence (J.I. Beare)
  • On Sleep and Sleeplessness (J.I. Beare)
  • On Dreams, (J.I. Beare)
  • On Prophesying by Dreams (J.I. Beare)
  • On Longevity and Shortness of Life (G.R.T. Ross)
  • On Youth and Old Age, On Life and Death, On Breathing (G.R.T. Ross)
  • History of Animals (D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson)
  • On the Parts of Animals (William Ogle)
  • On the Motion of Animals (A.S.L. Farquharson)
  • On the Gait of Animals (A.S.L. Farquharson)
  • On the Generation of Animals (Arthur Platt)
  • Nicomachean Ethics (W.D. Ross)
  • Politics (Benjamin Jowett)
  • The Athenian Constitution (Sir Frederic G. Kenyon)
  • Rhetoric (W. Rhys Roberts)
  • On Poetics (Ingram Bywater)

Hippocrates

Hippocratic Writings (Francis Adams)
  • On Airs, Waters, And Places
  • Aphorisms
  • On The Articulations
  • Of The Epidemics
  • On Fistulae
  • On Fractures
  • On Injuries Of The Head
  • On Hemorrhoids
  • The Law
  • On Ancient Medicine
  • The Oath
  • The Book Of Prognostics
  • Instruments Of Reduction
  • On Regimen In Acute Diseases
  • On The Sacred Disease
  • On The Surgery
  • On Ulcers

Galen

  • On the Natural Faculties (Arthur John Brock)

Euclid

  • Euclid’s Elements (Sir Thomas L. Heath)

Archimedes

The Works of Archimedes, Including The Method (Sir Thomas L. Heath)
  • On the Sphere and Cylinder
  • Measurement of a Circle
  • On Conoids and Spheroids
  • On Spirals
  • On the Equilibrium of Planes
  • The Sand-Reckoner
  • The Quadrature of the Parabola
  • On Floating Bodies
  • Book of Lemmas
  • The Method Treating of Mechanical Problems

Apollonius of Perga

  • Treatise on Conic Sections

Nicomachus of Gerasa

  • The Introduction to Arithmetic of Nicomachus (Martin L. D’Ooge)

Ancient Rome

Lucretius

  • The Way Things Are (Rolfe Humphries)

Epictetus

  • Discourses (George Long)

Marcus Aurelius

  • Meditations (George Long)

Plotinus

  • The Six Enneads (Stephen MacKenna and B.S. Page)

Virgil

  • Eclogues (C. Day Lewis)
  • Georgics (C. Day Lewis)
  • The Aeneid (C. Day Lewis)

Plutarch

  • The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (John Dryden)

Cornelius Tacitus

  • The Annals (Alfred John Church, and William Jackson Brodribb)
  • The Histories (Alfred John Church, and William Jackson Brodribb)

Ptolemy

  • The Almagest (R. Catesby Taliaferro)

Nicolaus Copernicus (Renaissance)

  • On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (Charles Glenn Wallis)

Johannes Kepler (Renaissance)

  • Epitome of Copernican Astronomy: IV-V (Charles Glenn Wallis)
  • The Harmonies of the World: V (Charles Glenn Wallis)

Augustine of Hippo

  • The Confessions (R.S. Pine-Coffin)
  • The City of God (Marcus Dods)
  • On Christian Doctrine (J.F. Shaw)

Late Medieval Period (to 1450)

Thomas Aquinas

  • Summa Theologica (Father Laurence Shapcote)

Dante

  • The Divine Comedy (Charles S. Singleton)

The Renaissance

Geoffrey Chaucer

  • Troilus and Criseyde (Nevill Coghill)
  • The Canterbury Tales (Nevill Coghill)

John Calvin

  • Institutes of the Christian Religion (Henry Beveridge)

Nicolò Machiavelli

  • The Prince (W.K. Marriott)

Thomas Hobbes

  • Leviathan (Nelle Fuller)

François Rabelais

  • Gargantua and Pantagruel (Sir Thomas Urquhart and Peter Motteux)

Desiderius Erasmus

  • Praise of Folly (Betty Radice)

Michel de Montaigne

  • Essays (Donald M. Frame)

William Shakespeare

  • The First Part of King Henry the Sixth
  • The Second Part of King Henry the Sixth
  • The Third part of King Henry the Sixth
  • The Life and Death of Richard the Third
  • The Comedy of errors
  • Titus Andronicus
  • The Taming of the Shrew
  • The Two Gentlemen of Verona
  • Love’s Labour ‘s Lost
  • Romeo and Juliet
  • The Life and Death of Richard the Second
  • A Midsummer Night’s Dream
  • The Life and Death of King John
  • The Merchant of Venice
  • The first part of King Henry the Fourth
  • The second part of King Henry the Fourth
  • Much Ado About Nothing
  • The Life of King Henry the Fifth
  • The Life and Death of Julius Ceasar
  • As you like it
  • Twelfth Night; or, what you will
  • The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
  • The Merry Wives of Windsor
  • The History of Troilus and Cressida
  • All’s Well that Ends Well
  • Measure for Measure
  • Othello, the Moore of Venice
  • King Lear
  • Macbeth
  • Antony and Cleopatra
  • The Tragedy of Coriolanus
  • The Life of Timon of Athens
  • Pericles, Prince of Tyre
  • Cymbeline
  • The Winter’s Tale
  • The Tempest
  • The Life of King Henry the Eighth
  • The Sonnets

William Gilbert

  • On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies (P. Fleury Mottelay)

Galileo Galilei

  • Concerning the Two New Sciences (Henry Crew and Alfonso de Salvio)

William Harvey

  • On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals (Robert Willis)
  • On the Circulation of the Blood (Robert Willis)
  • On the Generation of Animals (Robert Willis)

Miguel de Cervantes

  • The History of Don Quixote de la Mancha (Samuel Putnam)

Seventeenth Century

Francis Bacon

  • Advancement of Learning
  • Novum Organum
  • New Atlantis

René Descartes

  • Rules for the Direction of the Mind (Elizabeth S. Haldane, and G.R.T. Ross)
  • Discourse on the Method (Elizabeth S. Haldane, and G.R.T. Ross)
  • Meditations on First Philosophy (Elizabeth S. Haldane, and G.R.T. Ross)
  • Objections Against the Meditations and Replies (Elizabeth S. Haldane, and G.R.T. Ross)
  • The Geometry (David Eugene Smith, and Marcia L. Latham)

Benedict de Spinoza

  • Ethics (W.H. White)

John Milton

  • English Minor Poems
  • Paradise Lost
  • Samson Agonistes
  • Areopagitica

Blaise Pascal

  • The Provincial Letters
  • Pensées
  • Scientific Treatises

Molière

  • The School for Wives (Morris Bishop)
  • The Critique of the School for Wives (Morris Bishop)
  • Tartuffe (Morris Bishop)
  • Don Juan (John Wood)
  • The Miser (Wallace Fowlie)
  • The Would-Be Gentleman (Morris Bishop)
  • The Would-Be Invalid (Morris Bishop)

Jean Racine

  • Berenice (Samuel Solomon)
  • Phaedra (Samuel Solomon)

Sir Isaac Newton

  • Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (Andrew Mott)
  • Optics

Christiaan Huygens

  • Treatise on Light (Silvanus P. Thompson)

John Locke

  • A Letter Concerning Toleration (William Popple)
  • Second Essay on Civil Government
  • An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Eighteenth Century

George Berkeley

  • The Principles of Human Knowledge

David Hume

  • An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Jonathan Swift

  • Gulliver’s Travels

Voltaire

  • Candide (Peter Gay)

Denis Diderot

  • Rameau’s Nephew (Jacques Brazu)

Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu

  • The Spirit of Laws (Thomas Nugent)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  • A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (G.D.H. Cole)
  • A Discourse on Political Economy (G.D.H. Cole)
  • The Social Contract (G.D.H. Cole)

Adam Smith

  • An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

Edward Gibbon

  • The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Immanuel Kant

  • The Critique of Pure Reason (J.M.D. Meiklejohn)
  • Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals (Thomas Kingsmill Abbott)
  • The Critique of Practical Reason (Thomas Kingsmill Abbott)
  • Preface and Introduction to the Metaphysical Elements of Ethics, With a Note on Conscience (Thomas Kingsmill Abbott)
  • General Introduction to the Metaphysic of Morals (W. Hastie)
  • The Science of Right (W. Hastie)
  • The Critique of Judgement (James Creed Meredith)

American State Papers

  • Declaration of Independence
  • Articles of Confederation
  • The Constitution

Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay

  • The Federalist

Nineteenth Century

John Stuart Mill

*On Liberty
*Representative Government
*Utilitarianism

James Boswell

  • The Life of Samuel Johnson

Antoine Laurent Lavoisier

  • Elements of Chemistry (Robert Kerr)

Michael Faraday

  • Experimental Researches in Electricity

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  • The Philosophy of Right (T.M. Knox)
  • The Philosophy of History (J. Sibree)

Søren Kierkegaard

  • Fear and Trembling (Walter Lowrie)

Friedrich Nietzsche

  • Beyond Good and Evil (Walter Lowrie)

Alexis de Tocqueville

  • Democracy in America (George Lawrence)

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  • Faust (Philip Wayne)

Honoré de Balzac

  • Cousin Bette (Marion Ayton Crawford)

Jane Austen

  • Emma

George Eliot

  • Middlemarch

Charles Dickens

  • Little Dorrit

Herman Melville

  • Moby Dick; or, The Whale

Mark Twain

  • Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Charles Darwin

  • The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
  • The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex

Karl Marx

  • Capital (Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling)

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

  • Manifesto of the Communist Party (Samuel Moore)

Leo Tolstoy

  • War and Peace (Louise Maude and Aylmer Maude)

Fyodor Dostoevsky

  • The Brothers Karamazov (Constance Garnett)

Henrik Ibsen

  • A Doll’s House (James W. McFarlane)
  • The Wild Duck (James W. McFarlane)
  • Hedda Gabler (Jens Arup)
  • The Master Builder (James W. McFarlane)

William James

  • The Principles of Psychology

Twentieth Century

Sigmund Freud

  • The Origin and Development of Psycho-analysis (1910) (Harry W. Chase)
  • Selected Papers on Hysteria (chapters 1–10) (1893–1908) (A.A. Brill)
  • The Future Prospects of Psycho-analytic Therapy (1910) (Joan Riviere)
  • Observations on “Wild” Psycho-analysis (1910) (Joan Riviere)
  • The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) (A.A. Brill)
  • On Narcissism (1914) (Cecil M. Baines)
  • Instincts and Their Vicissitudes (1915) (Cecil M. Baines)
  • Repression (1915) (Cecil M. Baines)
  • The Unconscious (1915), (Cecil M. Baines)
  • A General Introduction to Psycho-analysis (1915–17) (Joan Riviere)
  • Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) (C.J.M. Hubback)
  • Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921) (James Strachey)
  • The Ego and the Id (1923) (Joan Riviere)
  • Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety (1926) (Alix Strachey)
  • Thoughts for the Times on War and Death (1915) (E. Colburn Mayne)
  • Civilization and Its Discontents (1929) (Joan Riviere)
  • New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis (1932) (W.J.H. Sprott)

Philosophy and Religion

William James
  • Pragmatism
Henri Bergson
  • An Introduction to Metaphysics (T.E. Hulme)
John Dewey
  • Experience and Education
Alfred North Whitehead (also see below)
  • Science and the Modern World
Bertrand Russell
  • The Problems of Philosophy
Martin Heidegger
  • What Is Metaphysics? (R.F.C. Hull and Alan Crick)
Ludwig Wittgenstein
  • Philosophical Investigations (G.E.M. Anscombe)
Karl Barth
  • The Word of God and the Word of Man (Douglas Horton)

Natural Science

Henri Poincaré
  • Science and Hypothesis (William John Greenstreet)
Max Plank
  • Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers (Frank Gaynor)
Alfred North Whitehead (also see above)
  • An Introduction to Mathematics
Albert Einstein
  • Relativity: The Special and the General Theory (Robert W. Lawson)
Arthur Eddington
  • The Expanding Universe
Niels Bohr
  • Selections from Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature
  • Discussion with Einstein on Epistemological Problems in Atomic Physics
G. H. Hardy
  • A Mathematician’s Apology
Werner Heisenberg
  • Physics and Philosophy
Erwin Schrödinger
  • What Is Life?
Theodosius Dobzhansky
  • Genetics and the Origin of Species
C. H. Waddington
  • The Nature of Life

Social Science

Thorstein Veblen
  • The Theory of the Leisure Class
R. H. Tawney
  • The Acquisitive Society
John Maynard Keynes
  • The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
James George Frazer
  • Selections from The Golden Bough
Max Weber
  • Selections from Essays in Sociology (H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills)
Johan Huizinga
  • The Waning of the Middle Ages (Frederik Jan Hopman)
Claude Lévi-Strauss
  • Selections from Structural Anthropology, (Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf)

Imaginative Literature

Henry James
  • The Beast in the Jungle
George Bernard Shaw
  • Saint Joan
Joseph Conrad
  • Heart of Darkness
Anton Chekhov
  • Uncle Vania (Elisaveta Fen)
Luigi Pirandello
  • Six Characters in Search of an Author (Edward Storer)
Marcel Proust
  • Swann in Love (from Remembrance of Things Past) (C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin)
Willa Cather
  • A Lost Lady
Thomas Mann
  • Death in Venice (H.T. Lowe-Porter)
James Joyce
  • A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Virginia Woolf
  • To the Lighthouse
Franz Kafka
  • The Metamorphosis (Willa Muir and Edwin Muir)
D. H. Lawrence
  • The Prussian Officer
T. S. Eliot
  • The Waste Land
Eugene O’Neill
  • Mourning Becomes Electra
F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • The Great Gatsby
William Faulkner
  • A Rose for Emily
Bertolt Brecht
  • Mother Courage and Her Children (Ralph Manheim)
Ernest Hemingway
  • The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber
George Orwell
  • Animal Farm
Samuel Beckett
  • Waiting for Godot

Gateway to the Great Books

  • A Letter to the Reader
  • Introduction

Imaginative Literature

Daniel DEFOE (1660-1731)

  • Robinson Crusoe

Rudyard KIPLING (1865-1936)

  • “Mowgli’s Brothers” from The Jungle Book

Victor HUGO (1802-1885)

  • “The Battle with the Cannon” from Ninety-three

Guy De MAUPASSANT (1850-1893)

  • “Two Friends”

Ernest HEMINGWAY (1899-1961)

  • “The Killers” from Men without Women

Sir Walter SCOTT (1771-1832)

  • “The Two Drovers” from Chronicles of the Canongate

Joseph CONRAD (1857-1924)

  • “Youth”

VOLTAIRE (1694-1778)

  • Micromegas

Oscar WILDE (1854- 1900)

  • “The Happy Prince” from The Happy Prince and Other Tales

Edgar Allan POE (1809-1849)

  • “The Tell-Tale Heart”
  • “The Masque of the Red Death”

Robert Louis STEVENSON (1850-1894)

  • The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Mark TWAIN (Samuel Clemens 1835-1910)

  • The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg

Charles DICKENS (1812-1870)

  • “A Full and Faithful Report of the Memorable Trial of Bardell against Pickwick” from The Pickwick Papers

Nikolai GOGOL (1809-1852)

  • “The Overcoat”

Samuel BUTLER (1835-1902)

  • “Customs and Opinions of the Erewhonians” from Erewhon

Sherwood ANDERSON (1876-1941)

  • “I’m a Fool”

ANONYMOUS (c. early 13th Century)

  • Aucassin and Nicolette

Stephen CRANE (1871-1900)

  • “The Open Boat”

Herman MELVILLE (1819-1891)

  • “Billy Budd” from Billy Budd, Sailor

Ivan BUNIN (1870-1953)

  • “The Gentleman from San Francisco”

Nathaniel HAWTHORNE (1804-1864)

  • “Rappaccini’s Daughter” from Mosses from an Old Manse

George ELIOT (1819-1880)

  • “The Lifted Veil”

Lucius APULEIUS (fl. 2nd Century)

  • “Cupid and Psyche” from The Golden Ass

Ivan TURGENEV (1818-1883)

  • “First Love”

Fyodor DOSTOEVSKY (1828-1910)

  • “White Nights”

John GALSWORTHY (1867-1933)

  • “The Apple-Tree”

Gustave FLAUBERT (1821-1880)

  • “The Legend of St. Julian the Hospitaller” from Three Tales

F. Scott FITZGERALD (1869-1940)

  • “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz” from Tales of the Jazz Age

Honore De BALZAC (1799-1850)

  • “A Passion in the Desert”

Anton CHEKHOV (1860-1904)

  • “The Darling”

Isaac SINGER (b. 1904)

  • “The Spinoza of Market Street”

Alexander PUSHKIN (1799-1837)

  • “The Queen of Spades”

D. H. LAWRENCE (1885-1930)

  • “The Rocking-Horse Winner” from The Lovely Lady

Henry JAMES (1843-1916)

  • “The Pupil”

Thomas MANN (1875-1955)

  • “Mario and the Magician” from Stories of Three Decades

Isak DINESEN (1885-1962)

  • “Sorrow-Acre” from Winter’s Tales

Leo TOLSTOY (1828-1910)

  • “The Death of Ivan Ilyitch”
  • “The Three Hermits”
  • “What Men Live By”

MOLIERE (1622-1673)

  • The Misanthrope
  • The Doctor in Spite of Himself

Richard SHERIDAN (1751-1816)

  • The School for Scandal

Henrik IBSEN (1828-1906)

  • An Enemy of the People

Anton CHEKHOV (1860-1904)

  • The Cherry Orchard

George Bernard SHAW (1856-1950)

  • The Man of Destiny

John M. SYNGE (1871-1909)

  • Riders to the Sea

Eugene O’NEILL (1888-1953)

  • The Emperor Jones

Critical Essays

Virginia WOOLF (1882-1941)

  • “How Should One Read a Book?” from The Second Common Reader

Matthew ARNOLD (1822-1888)

  • “The Study of Poetry” from The English Poets, T. H. Ward, Ed.
  • “Sweetness and Light” from Culture and Anarchy

Charles Augustin SAINTE-BEUVE (1804-1869)

  • “What Is a Classic?”
  • “Montaigne”

Sir Francis BACON (1561-1626)

  • “Of Beauty” from Essays, Civil and Moral
  • “Of Discourse” from Essays, Civil and Moral
  • “Of Studies” from Essays, Civil and Moral

David HUME (1711-1776)

  • “Of the Standard of Taste” from Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary

Arthur SCHOPENHAUER (1788-1860)

  • “On Style” from Essays in Ethics and Politics
  • “On Some Forms of Literature” from Essays in Ethics and Politics
  • “On the Comparative Place of Interest and Beauty in Works of Art”

Friedrich SCHILLER (1759-1805)

  • “On Simple and Sentimental Poetry” from Essays Aesthetical and Philosophical

Percy Bysshe SHELLEY (1792-1822)

  • “A Defence of Poetry”

Walt WHITMAN (1819-1892)

  • Preface to Leaves of Grass

William HAZLITT (1778-1830)

  • “My First Acquaintance with Poets”
  • “On Swift”
  • “Of Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen”

Charles LAMB (1775-1834)

  • “My First Play”
  • “Dream Children, a Reverie”
  • “Sanity of True Genius”

Samuel JOHNSON (1709-1784)

  • Preface to Shakespeare

Thomas DE QUINCEY (1785-1859)

  • “Literature of Knowledge and Literature of Power”
  • “On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth”

Thomas Stearns ELIOT (1888-1965)

  • “Dante”
  • “Tradition and the Individual Talent” from Selected Essays (New Ed.)

Man and Society

John Stuart MILL (1806-1873)

  • “Childhood and Youth” from Autobiography

Mark TWAIN (Samuel Clemens 1835-1910)

  • “Learning the River” from Life an the Mississippi

Jean De LA BRUYERE (1645-1696)

  • “Characters” from A Book of Characters

Thomas CARLYLE (1795-1881)

  • “The Hero as King” from On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History

Ralph Waldo EMERSON (1803-1882)

  • “Thoreau”

Nathaniel HAWTHORNE (1804-1864)

  • “Sketch of Abraham Lincoln”

Walt WHITMAN (1819-1892)

  • “Death of Abraham Lincoln”

Virginia WOOLF (1882-1941)

  • “The Art of Biography” from The Death of the Moth

XENOPHON (c. 430 B.C.-c. 355 B.C.)

  • “The March to the Sea” from The Persian Expedition
  • “The Character of Socrates” from Memorabilia

William H. PRESCOTT (1796-1859)

  • “The Land of Montezuma” from The Conquest of Mexico

Haniel LONG (1888-1956)

  • “The Power within Us”

PLINY the Younger (c. 61-c. 113)

  • “The Eruption of Vesuvius” from Letters

Cornelius TACITUS (c. 55-c. 120)

  • “The Life of Gnaeus Julius Agricola”

Francois GUIZOT (1787-1874)

  • “Civilization” from History of Civilization in Europe

Henry ADAMS (1838-1918)

  • “The United States in 1800” from History of the United States of America

John Bagnell BURY (1861-1927)

  • “Herodotus” from The Ancient Greek Historians

LUCIAN (c. 125-c. 190)

  • “The Way to Write History”

Great Documents

  • The English Bill of Rights (1689)
  • Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789)
  • The Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776)
  • The Declaration of Independence (1776)
  • Charter of the United Nations (1945)
  • Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)

Thomas PAINE (1737-1809)

  • “A Call to Patriots – December 23, 1776” from The Crisis

George WASHINGTON (1732-1799)

  • “Circular Letter to the Governors of All the States on Disbanding the Army”
  • “The Farewell Address”

Thomas JEFFERSON (1743-1826)

  • “The Virginia Constitution” from Notes on Virginia
  • “First Inaugural Address”
  • “Biographical Sketches”

Benjamin FRANKLIN (1706-1790)

  • “A Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge among the British Plantations in America”
  • “Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania”

Jean De CREVECOEUR (1735-1813)

  • “The Making of Americans” from Letters from an American Farmer

Alexis De TOCQUEVILLE (1805-1859)

  • “Observations on American Life and Government” from Democracy in America

Henry David THOREAU (1817-1862)

  • “Civil Disobedience”
  • “A Plea for Captain John Brown”

Abraham LINCOLN (1809-1865)

  • “Address at Cooper Institute”
  • “First Inaugural Address”
  • “Letter to Horace Greeley”
  • “Meditation on the Divine Will”
  • “The Gettysburg Address”
  • “Second Inaugural Address”
  • “Last Public Address”

Sir Francis BACON (1561-1626)

  • “Of Youth and Age” from Essays, Civil and Moral
  • “Of Parents and Children” from Essays, Civil and Moral
  • “Of Marriage and Single Life” from Essays, Civil and Moral
  • “Of Great Place” from Essays, Civil and Moral
  • “Of Seditions and Troubles” from Essays, Civil and Moral
  • “Of Custom and Education” from Essays, Civil and Moral
  • “Of Followers and Friends” from Essays, Civil and Moral
  • “Of Usury” from Essays, Civil and Moral
  • “Of Riches” from Essays, Civil and Moral

Jonathan SWIFT (1667-1745)

  • “Resolutions when I Come to Be Old”
  • “An Essay on Modern Education”
  • “A Meditation upon a Broomstick”
  • “A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country”

David HUME (1711-1776)

  • “Of Refinement in the Arts” from Essays, Moral, Political and Literary
  • “Of Money” from Essays, Moral, Political and Literary
  • “Of the Balance of Trade” from Essays, Moral, Political and Literary
  • “Of Taxes”from Essays, Moral, Political and Literary
  • “Of the Study of History” from Essays, Moral, Political and Literary

PLUTARCH (c. 46-120)

  • “Of Bashfulness” from Moralia

Robert Louis STEVENSON (1850-1894)

  • “The Lantern-Bearers” from Across the Plains

John RUSKIN (1819-1900)

  • “An Idealist’s Arraignment of the Age” from Four Clavigera

William JAMES (1842-1910)

  • “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings”
  • “The Energies of Men”
  • “Great Men and Their Environment”

Arthur SCHOPENHAUER (1788-1860)

  • “On Education” from Studies in Pessimism

Michael FARADAY

  • “Observations on Mental Education” from Lectures on Education

Edmund BURKE (1729-1797)

  • “Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol”

John C. CALHOUN (1782-1850)

  • “The Concurrent Majority” from A Disquisition on Government

Thomas Babington MACAULAY

  • “Machiavelli” from Critical and Historical Essays

VOLTAIRE (1694-1778)

  • “English Men and Ideas” from Letters on the English

DANTE Aligheri (1265-1321)

  • “On World Government” from De Monarchia

Jean Jacques ROUSSEAU (1712-1778)

  • “A Lasting Peace through the Federation of Europe” from A Lasting Peace through the Federation of Europe and the State of War

Immanuel KANT (1724-1804)

  • “Perpetual Peace”

Karl Von CLAUSEWITZ (1780-1831)

  • “What Is War?” from On War

Thomas Robert MALTHUS (1766-1834)

  • “The Principle of Population” from Population: The First Essay

Natural Science

Francis BACON (1561-1626)

  • “The Sphinx” from The Wisdom of the Ancients: A Series of Mythological Fables

John TYNDALL (1820-1893)

  • “Michael Faraday” from Faraday as a Discoverer

Eve CURIE (b. 1904)

  • “The Discovery of Radium” from Madame Curie

Charles Robert DARWIN (1809-1882)

  • “Autobiography” from Charles Darwin’s Autobiography

Jean Henri FABRE (1823-1915)

  • “A Laboratory of the Open Fields” from The Life of the Fly
  • “The Sacred Beetle” from The Sacred Beetle and Others

Loren EISELEY (b. 1907)

  • “On Time” from The Immense Journey

Rachel L. CARSON (1907-1964)

  • “The Sunless Sea” from The Sea Around Us

J. B. S. HALDANE (1892-1964)

  • “On Being the Right Size” from Possible Worlds

Thomas Henry HUXLEY (1825-1895)

  • “On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals” from Man’s Place in Nature and Other Anthropological Essays
  • “On a Piece of Chalk”

Sir Francis GALTON (1822-1911)

  • “The Classification of Human Ability” from Hereditary Genius

Claude BERNARD (1813-1878)

  • “Experimental Considerations Common to Living Things and Inorganic Bodies” from An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine

Ivan Petrovich PAVLOV (1849-1936)

  • “Scientific Study of the So-called Psychical Processes in the Higher Animals” from Lectures on Conditioned Reflexes

Friedrich WOHLER (1800-1882)

  • “On the Artificial Production of Urea”

Sir Charles LYELL (1797-1875)

  • “Geological Evolution” from The Principles of Geology

GALILEO Galilei (1564-1642)

  • “The Starry Messenger”

Tommaso CAMPANELLA (1568-1639)

  • “Arguments for and against Galileo” from The Defense of Galileo

Michael FARADAY (1791-1867)

  • The Chemical History of a Candle

Dmitri MENDELEEV (1834-1907)

  • “The Genesis of a Law of Nature” from The Periodic Law of the Chemical Elements

H. L. F. Von HELMHOLTZ (1821-1894)

  • “On the Conservation of Force”

Albert EINSTEIN (1879-1955) & Leopold INFELD (1898-1968)

  • “The Rise and Decline of Classical Physics” from The Evolution of Physics

Sir Arthur EDDINGTON (1882-1944)

  • “The Running-Down of the Universe” from Nature and the Physical World

Sir James JEANS (1877-1946)

  • “Beginnings and Endings” from The Universe Around Us

Kees BOEKE (b. 1884)

  • “Cosmic View”

Lancelot HOGBEN (b. 1895)

  • “Mathematics, the Mirror of Civilization” from Mathematics for the Million

Andrew Russell FORSYTH (1858-1942)

  • “Mathematics, in Life and Thought”

Alfred North WHITEHEAD (1861-1947)

  • “On Mathematical Method” from An Introduction to Mathematics
  • “On the Nature of a Calculus” from A Treatise on Universal Algebra

Bertrand RUSSELL (1872-1970)

  • “The Study of Mathematics” from Mysticism and Logic
  • “Mathematics and the Metaphysicians” from Mysticism and Logic
  • “Definition of Number” from Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy

Edward KASNER (1878-1955) and James R. NEWMAN (1907-1966)

  • “New Names for Old” from Mathematics and the Imagination
  • “Beyond the Googol” from Mathematics and the Imagination

Tobias DANTZIG (1884-1956)

  • “Fingerprints” from Number: the Language of Science
  • “The Empty Column” from Number: the Language of Science

Leonhard EULER (1707-1783)

  • “The Seven Bridges of Konigsberg”

Norman Robert CAMPBELL (1880-1949)

  • “Measurement” from What Is Science?
  • “Numerical Laws and the Use of Mathematics in Science” from What Is Science?

William Kingdon CLIFFORD (1845-1879)

  • “The Postulates of the Science of Space” from The Common Sense of the Exact Sciences

Henri POINCARE

  • “Space” from Science and Hypothesis
  • “Mathematical Creation”
  • “Chance” from Science and Method

Pierre Simon De LAPLACE (1749-1827)

  • “Probability” from A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities

Charles Sanders PEIRCE (1839-1914)

  • “The Red and the Black”


Logos Topics

Welcome, Guest! (sign in)