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Suggested readings for Read the Classics

Want to go beyond the titles from the Read the Classics book discussion series? Below are suggested readings recommended by the professors and librarians involved in the development of this series. Sources for annotations.

Greece and Rome book discussion programs

Gresham Library
2nd Sundays of November, January, March and May, 2–4 p.m.

Classic literature of ancient Greece and Rome

Novels

Petronius
The Satyricon
(66 A.D.)
"One of the first examples of the novel form, The Satyricon gives a vivid, sardonic and extremely realistic picture of the luxuries, vices, and social manners of the imperial age of ancient Rome." Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia.
Apuleius, Lucius
The Golden Ass
(150–180 A.D.?)
Apuleius' The Golden Ass is one of the so-called “ancient novel.” Apuleius, an inhabitant of the Roman provinces of North Africa, adapted a popular Greek story about a man who is magically transformed into a donkey; his novel celebrates the pleasure of stories and storytelling while also depicting social and religious life in the provinces under Roman rule. The novel is humorous and often bawdy, but it also compels its readers to reflect seriously on the nature of knowledge, social problems and religious truth. Among the many interpolated tales that are woven into the master plot of Lucius, a noble whose curiosity for magic has dire consequences, is the famous story of Cupid and Psyche, a favorite subject of Renaissance artists. The Golden Ass is remembered for its influence on authors like Cervantes and Boccaccio. Annotation by Professor Sonia Sabnis. This is a Read the Classics discussion title - May 9, 2010
Lucian of Samosata
Trips to the Moon (includes “A True History”)
(125–180 A.D.)
Lucian of Samosata was a Syrian-Greek satirical writer responsible for the first fictional accounts of extraterrestrial life. This volume includes the highly imaginative A True History, which is often called the first science fiction. The way that the ship is lifted up by a giant waterspout and deposited on the moon is likely to have inspired Swift's account of the island of Laputa in Gulliver's Travel. Cyrano de Bergerac's A Voyage to the Moon was perhaps suggested by Lucian's work. Voltaire's El Dorado in Candide may have come from the golden Island of the Blessed. Showing his purpose in writing this fiction Lucien says in his preface: "I give my readers warning, therefore, not to believe me." His real purpose is shown in the Instructions for Writing History, also in this volume, where he calls for the writing of real history based on evidence, not the flights of fancy that he satirizes so well in A True History. Finally also in this very short volume is the Icaro-Menippus: A Dialogue that has another trip to the moon but is really a satire against the philosophers.
Longus
Daphnis and Chloe
(mid-3rd Century A.D.)
The most famous and arguably most artistic (hence the illustrations by Marc Chagall) of all the Greek romances, Daphnis and Chloe combines elements of the pastoral tradition with the plot of star-crossed lovers. Annotation by Professor Sonia Sabnis.

Epics & mythology

Homer
The Iliad
( ca. 800 B.C.)
”The Iliad is a stunning and powerful poem. Set in the final year of the Trojan War, it tells the story of the wrath of the great Greek hero Achilles and its terrible consequences for the Greeks and Trojans. It features the great heroes of Greek myth, including King Agamemnon, Odysseus and Ajax on the Greek side, and Hector, King Priam, Queen Hecuba, Paris, and Helen of Troy on the Trojan side. The story begins with an argument between Achilles and King Agamemnon that results in Achilles withdrawing in anger from the fighting, and then follows the terrible outcome of this decision through the violence and deaths of warriors on both sides. Played out against the background of the tragic fall of Troy and Achilles' own imminent death, it raises issues of honor, courage, rage, the nature of forgiveness, and ultimately, the meaning of life in the face of death. It is an unforgettable poem.” Annotation by Professor Sonia Sabnis. This is a Read the Classics discussion title - November 8, 2009
Homer
The Odyssey
( ca. 800 B.C.)
“The Odyssey is the tale of what happens to a great hero, Odysseus, after the apocalypse of Troy. The poem opens 10 years after the end of the war, when Odysseus is still trying to find his way home to Ithaca. The story shifts back and forth between Odysseus being cast adrift at sea, facing mythic dangers beyond measure, and the efforts of his wife Penelope and son Telemachus to ward off violent suitors and keep their home together until Odysseus' return. Eventually Odysseus returns home in the guise of a beggar, and plots the deaths of the suitors who are destroying his house. While complementary to The Iliad, The Odyssey presents a different kind of hero and explores different social and cultural values, such as cunning intelligence, justice, endurance, home and family.” Annotation by Professor Sonia Sabnis. This is a Read the Classics discussion title - January 10, 2010
Hesiod
Theogony, Works and Days
(around 700 B.C.)
"Hesiod describes himself as a Boeotian shepherd who heard the Muses call upon him to sing about the gods. He is considered a younger contemporary of Homer. In Theogony Hesiod charts the history of the divine world, narrating the origin of the universe and the rise of the gods, from first beginnings to the triumph of Zeus, and reporting on the progeny of Zeus and of goddesses in union with mortal men. In Works and Days Hesiod shifts his attention to the world of men, delivering moral precepts and practical advice regarding agriculture, navigation, and many other matters."
Virgil
The Aeneid
(29?–19 B.C.)
The Aeneid tells the story of the Trojan hero Aeneas, who escaped from Troy as it fell to the Greeks, led a group of Trojans to the Italian peninsula, and with them founded a city that would, centuries later, lead to the founding of Rome. Virgil, writing in Latin, adapted Homeric Greek epic to explore crucial issues facing Romans of his time. He uses the figure of Aeneas to explore a conception of heroism different than Homer's, and to explore the themes of civilization, violence, and humanitas, a word coined by the Romans of Virgil's time to capture the qualities most essential to being deeply human and humane. He also uses the epic to help his readers reflect on what it means to be Roman. Annotation by Professor Sonia Sabnis. This is a Read the Classics discussion title - March 14, 2010
Ovid
The Metamorphoses
(8 AD)
The Metamorphoses or "Transformations" is an epic that is truly "epic" in scope, beginning with the creation of the universe and ending with the world of contemporary Rome. It is composed of a series of stories, Greek and Roman myths that Ovid shapes and weaves together into a continuous history of gods and humans. As the title announces, the central theme is one of constant change, and we see gods and humans amazingly transformed from one shape to another. The poem recasts and preserves most of the major Greek and Roman myths that are familiar to us, often in surprising ways. Ovid was known for his wit and cleverness, and in the poem he explores the nature of love, power, change, deception, the nature of art, and personal identity. He, like Virgil, also explores what it means to be Roman, but in a much more subversive way. Ovid's poetry was seen as so subversive, in fact, that the emperor Augustus exiled him to the town of Tomis on the Black Sea, where he continued to write, never to return to his beloved Rome. Annotation by Professor Wally Englert. (This is a previous year's Read the Classics discussion title).
Apollonius, Rhodius
The Argonautika: the Story of Jason and the Quest for the Golden Fleece
(3rd century B.C.)
In the 8th century B.C., Homer mentions Jason and the Argonauts, assuming that his audience all knew the story. Meet the fathers of the men you read about in The Iliad, as well as Jason and Hercules. Jason sails the mythic first sea-going ship, the "Argo," in search of the Golden Fleece and encounters possibly even more amazing things than Odysseus does in The Odyssey. Jason also meets and marries one of the strongest female characters of later Greek plays, Medea. Apollonius wrote the story down in epic form, that reads like a novel, many centuries after the oral story had established itself. Apollonius was the librarian at the Library in Alexandria.
Apollodorus
The Library of Greek Mythology
(1st or 2nd century AD)
Possibly the first encyclopedic summary of Greek mythology, attributed to the ancient Greek author Apollodorus. It is our best single source for many myths, including Hercules' (Herakles) famous 12 labors.

Plays

Aeschylus
(525 – 456 B.C.)
Oresteia translated by Robert Fagles

Oresteia other translations
Discover the first of the great Greek tragedians and the only surviving ancient Greek trilogy, The Oresteia. It tells the story of the aftermath of the Trojan War and the terrible intergenerational curse on the House of Atreus (Agamemnon's family): Agamemnon, Cassandra, Clytaemestra, Electra, and Orestes. Here are the timeless themes of irreconcilable moral duties, blood guilt, sex roles in society, and justice. In Aeschylus's hands, the myth of the House of Atreus becomes a means to discuss methods of justice and the value of a court system.
The other four extant works:
The Persians The Persians lament the disaster of their crushing defeat at Salamis. At the hands of the united and determined Greeks, King Xerxes is literally reduced to rags. The ghost of Darius, Xerxes' father, condemns his son's hubris and rebukes his decision to cross the Hellespont.
Seven Against Thebes Polynices, son of Oedipus, wages war on his brother to claim the crown of Thebes.
The Suppliants pays tribute to democracy; King Pelasgus listens to the people of Argos.
Prometheus Bound Since the end of the 19th century, scholarship does not attribute authorship of Prometheus Bound to Aeschylus. This understanding developed after Mary Shelley penned Frankenstein: A Modern Prometheus. Prometheus is bound to a boulder and made to suffer for giving the gift of fire to humans.
Annotation by Mike Blackledge.
Sophocles
(c. 496 B.C. - 406 B.C.)
Seven plays written by the second and most-awarded of the ancient Greek tragedians have survived:
Antigone , Oedipus the King (Oedipus Rex), and Oedipus at Colonus . These three Theban plays relate the story of the doomed Oedipus, who unknowingly killed his father and married his mother. If you want to select one Sophocles to read try either Antigone or Oedipus the King.
The Complete Plays of Sophocles includes:
Ajax When Achilles' armor is awarded to Odysseus, pride, treachery and death befall the great hero. Over 2,000 years later Shakespeare would recreate Ajax in Troilus and Cressida.
The Trachiniae (Women of Trachis) recounts the death of Heracles at the hands of Deianeira.
Electra, a subject common to all three tragedians, questions the concepts of duty and honor while detailing the murder of Clytmenestra and Aegisthus at the hands of Clytmenestra's children, Electra and Orestes.
Philoctetes tells the story of an abandoned Greek archer whose bow is required to defeat Troy. First, Odysseus and, then, Heracles' deus ex machina make the case to Philoctetes for war.
Annotation by Mike Blackledge.
Euripides
Medea The Trojan Women  Electra  The Bacchae The Complete Plays. (includes Orestes and Hippolytus)
(Euripides, 484–425 B.C.)
Euripides
Iphigenia at Aulis
(409-406 B.C.)
Also spelled Iphigeneia. In this play Agamemnon is told by the oracle to put his daughter, Iphigenia, to death as a sacrifice so that the winds would take his Greek army to Troy. This terribly poignant story ranges from the depths of human fragility to the heights of honor. There is an excellent film version of Iphigeneia by Michael Cacoyannis, in modern Greek with English subtitles. Irene Papas as Clytemnestra and Tatiana Papamoschou as Iphigenia will rip your soul apart!
Aristophanes
Lysistrata The Clouds The Birds The Complete Plays
(Aristophanes, 448–388 B.C.)

Histories

Herodotus
The Histories
(440 B.C.)
"Cicero called Herodotus the father of history. Compelled by his desire to 'prevent the traces of human events from being erased by time,' Herotodus recounts the incidents preceding and following the Persian Wars. He gives us much more than military history, though, providing the fullest portrait of the classical world of the 5th and 6th centuries." We recommend particularly The Landmark Herodotus: the Histories for its maps, photographs of sites, annotations and index.
Thucydides
History of the Peloponnesian War
(431–411 B.C.)
“This detailed contemporary account of the conflicts between the two empires over shipping, trade, and colonial expansion came to a head in 431 B.C. in Northern Greece, and the entire Greek world was plunged into 27 years of war. Thucydides applied a passion for accuracy and a contempt for myth and romance in compiling this exhaustively factual record of the disastrous conflict that eventually ended the Athenian empire.” We recommend particularly The Landmark Thucydides: a Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War for its maps, photographs of sites, annotations and index.
Livy
The History of Rome
(17 A.D.?)
Also called the Rise of Rome. “Livy's only extant work is part of his history of Rome from the foundation of the city to 9 BC. In splendid style Livy, a man of wide sympathies and proud of Rome's past, presented an uncritical but clear and living narrative of the rise of Rome to greatness.” We particularly recommend this edition: The Early History of Rome
Tacitus, Cornelius
The Annals of Imperial Rome
(109 A.D.?)
“One of the most important historical records from classical antiquity, The Annals of Imperial Rome chronicles the history of the Roman Empire from the reign of Tiberius beginning in 14 A.D. to the reign of Nero ending in 66 A.D. Written by Cornelius Tacitus, Roman Senator during the second century A.D., it is a detailed first-hand account of the early Roman Empire.”
Plutarch
Plutarch's Lives
(Plutarch, 46–120 A.D.)
Plutarch compared the lives of a series of Greek and Roman leaders with the purpose of contrasting moral character. It is a mixture of legendary and real history which also tells many stories and shows elements of ancient Greek and Roman political life, culture and religious beliefs. There are many editions with various titles. We particularly recommend Fall of the Roman Republic

Poetry

Sappho
If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho
(630 B.C.?–570 B.C.?)
"In this miraculous new translation, acclaimed poet and classicist Anne Carson presents all of Sappho's fragments, in Greek and in English, as if on the ragged scraps of papyrus that preserve them, inviting a thrill of discovery and conjecture that can be described only as electric or, to use Sappho's words, as 'thin fire racing under skin.' "
Virgil
The Eclogues
(Virgil, 70–19 B.C.)
"These songs made a world; it is a world all the more beautiful for being vulnerab1e to the intrusions of power and of natural calamity and loss. The Eclogues of Virgil gave definitive form to the pastoral mode, and these magically beautiful poems, so influential in so much subsequent literature, perhaps best exemplify what pastoral can do."
Virgil
Georgics
(Virgil, 70–19 B.C.)
"The Georgics celebrates crops, trees, and animals and, above all, the human beings who care for them. It takes the form of teaching about this care: the tilling of fields, the tending of vines, the raising of cattle and bees. There's joy in the detail of Virgil's descriptions of work well done, and ecstatic joy in his praise of the very life of things, and passionate commiseration too, because of the vulnerability of men and all other creatures to what they have to contend with: storms, and plagues, and wars, and all mischance." And all this is with a touch of mythology.
Horace
Complete Odes and Epodes
(Horace 65-8 B.C.)
”Horace is one of the most important and brilliant poets of the Augustan Age of Latin literature whose influence on European literature is unparalleled. Steeped in allusion to contemporary affairs, Horace's verse is best read in terms of his changing relationship to the publicsphere. While the Odes are subtle and allusive, the Epodes are robust and coarse in their celebrations of sex and tirades against political leaders. This edition also includes the Secular Hymn and Suetonius's Life of Horace."
Ovid
The Art of Love
(1 B.C.–1 A.D.)
"Ovid, the author of the groundbreaking epic poem Metamorphoses, came under severe criticism for The Art of Love, which playfully instructed women in the art of seduction and men in the skills essential for mastering the art of romantic conquest."
Ovid
The Erotic Poems
(1 B.C.–1 A.D.)
Includes The Amores, The Art of Love, Cures for Love & Facial Treatment for Ladies.

Miscellaneous

Aesop
Aesop's Fables
(Aesop, 620–560 B.C.)
“Aesop was probably a prisoner of war, sold into slavery in the early sixth century BC, who represented his masters in court and negotiations and relied on animal stories to put across his key points. Such fables vividly reveal the strange superstitions of ordinary ancient Greeks, how they treated their pets, how they spoilt their sons and even what they kept in their larders.”
Lucretius
On the Nature of Things
(First century B.C.)
As an Epicurean, Lucretius argues with philosophic clarity and poetic power "against fear of the gods by demonstrating through observations and logical argument that the operations of the world can be accounted for entirely in terms of natural phenomena, the regular but purposeless motions and interactions of tiny atoms in empty space, instead of in terms of the will of the gods." (wikipedia) Translated by Professor Walter Englert, the leader of the Read the Classics: Greece and Rome discussions 2008-2009.
Aurelius, Marcus
Meditations
(Emperor of Rome, 121–180 A.D.)
“The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus embodied in his person that deeply cherished, ideal figure of antiquity, the philosopher-king. His Meditations are not only one of the most important expressions of the Stoic philosophy of his time but also an enduringly inspiring guide to living a good and just life. Written in moments snatched from military campaigns and the rigors of politics, these ethical and spiritual reflections reveal a mind of exceptional clarity and originality, and a spirit attuned to both the particulars of human destiny and the vast patterns that underlie it.”
Hansen, William F
Anthology of Ancient Greek Popular Literature
(1998)
"We tend to think of the Classics as defined almost purely by venerable authors like Homer, Virgil, and Plato; this anthology provides fascinating and entertaining antidotes to this tradition, revealing a more humorous, fantastic, and superstitious side to the Greeks." Annotation by Professor Sonia Sabnis.

Middle Ages book discussion programs

Hillsdale Library
3rd Saturdays of November, January, March and May 2–4 p.m.

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Further reading about the literature of the Middle Ages

Classic literature of the Middle Ages:

Beowulf
(ca. 7th and 11th centuries)
The oldest and arguably the greatest English epic, Beowulf stands at the dawn of the British literary tradition at a crucial historical threshold, straddling both the pagan world of the Germanic Anglo-Saxons and the Christian world of medieval Europe. The poem focuses on the exploits of the warrior Beowulf, who embodies all the positive traits of Anglo-Saxon culture: courage, steadfastness, loyalty, and a stoic acceptance of one's own death. Beowulf also presents to us three very problematic monsters: Grendel, who both hates and longs for the society of humans; Grendel's fearsome Mother, whose desire for vengeance throws light upon some of the weaknesses of Anglo-Saxon culture; and the ominous dragon, whose inhuman lust for gold mirrors a very human desire for treasure and honor. Annotation by Michael Faletra. This is a Read the Classics discussion title - November 21, 2009
Benjamin Bagby
Beowulf DVD
(2007)
Benjamin Bagby performs/sings Beowulf in Old English with modern English subtitles while playing the Anglo-Saxon harp. This stunning performance of the first 1062 lines of Beowulf shows how powerful and vastly entertaining the poem is. There is no better way to "get" Beowulf as the early Anglo-Saxons experienced it, sung and enacted by a "scop" or bard.
Boethius
The Consolation of Philosophy
(524?)
"It was written under a death sentence. Boethius, an Imperial official under Theodoric, Ostrogoth ruler of Rome, found himself, in a time of political paranoia, denounced, arrested, and then executed two years later without a trial. Composed while its author was imprisoned, cut off from family and friends, it remains one of Western literature's most eloquent meditations on the transitory nature of earthly belongings, and the superiority of things of the mind."
Venerable Bede
Ecclesiastical History of the English People
(731)
"Bede's account of Anglo-Saxon England begins with Julius Caesar's invasion in the first century B.C. and goes on to tell of the kings and bishops, monks and nuns who helped to develop government and convert the people to Christianity during these crucial formative years."
The Song of Roland
(mid-11th century)
"The Song of Roland, is as canonical and significant as the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf. It extols the chivalric ideals in the France of Charlemagne through the exploits of Charlemagne's nephew, the warrior Roland, who fights bravely to his death in a legendary battle. Against the bloody backdrop of the struggle between Christianity and Islam, The Song of Roland remains a vivid portrayal of medieval life, knightly adventure, and feudal politics. The first great literary works of a culture are its epic chronicles, those that create simple hero-figures about whom the imagination of a nation can crystallize." Benet's Readers Encyclopedia.
Geoffrey, of Monmouth
The History of the Kings of Britain
(ca. 1136)
“Geoffrey's History, which was one of the most popular and widely–read books throughout Europe during the High Middle Ages, covers the nearly 2000 year–long history of the ancient Britons, the Celtic people who had populated the island before the Anglo–Saxon invasions of the fifth and sixth centuries; these Britons were the ancestors of the modern Welsh and Cornish. As Geoffrey narrates their legendary history, from the founding of Britain by exiles from Troy through the glorious reign of King Arthur and up to the fall of native rule in the face of encroaching Saxon forces, we are introduced to many familiar characters, some of them for the first time: King Arthur and Queen Guinevere, the prophet and magician Merlin, the bold Sir Gawain, the tragic King Lear, and even the original Old King Cole! Over a fifth of Geoffrey's book is occupied with the life and career of Britain's most famous king, Arthur.” Annotation by Professor Michael Faletra. (This was a 2008-2009 Read the Classics discussion title). This includes some of the many historical and fictional chivalrous characters mentioned in Don Quixote.

El Cid
(1140?)
Also called Poem of the Cid or Poem of my Cid. "Few works have shaped a national literature as thoroughly as the Poem of the Cid has shaped the Spanish literary tradition. Tracing the life of the eleventh-century military commander Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, called the Cid (from the Arabic Sayyidi, "My Lord"), this medieval epic describes a series of events surrounding his exile. Today almost every theme that characterizes Spanish literature - honor, justice, loyalty, treachery, and jealousy - derives from the Poem of the Cid." This is one of the many historical and fictional chivalrous characters mentioned in Don Quixote.
Crossley-Holland, Kevin
The Anglo-Saxon World: an Anthology
(1984. Works from 450–1066.)
"Crossley-Holland--the widely acclaimed translator of Old English texts--introduces the Anglo-Saxons through their chronicles, laws, letters, charters, and poetry, with many of the greatest surviving poems printed in their entirety."
Walter of Chatillon
The Alexandreis
(Second half of the 1100's)
"Walter of Chatillon's Latin epic of the life of Alexander the Great was a 12th and 13th century bestseller; scribes produced over two hundred manuscripts. The poem follows Alexander from his first successes in Asia Minor, through his conquest of Persia and India and his progressive moral degeneration, to his death by poisoning at the hands of a disaffected lieutenant."
Chrétien, de Troyes
The Complete Romances of Chrétien de Troyes

Yvain, the Knight of the Lion
(1170–1190)
Chrétien de Troyes was a French poet who wrote the earliest literary version of the Grail in the Arthurian cycle of stories. He also invented the character of Lancelot in the story Knight of the Cart. This includes some of the many historical and fictional chivalrous characters mentioned in Don Quixote.
Gerald of Wales
The Journey Through Wales and The Description of Wales
(Gerald of Wales ca. 1146–1223)
"Gerald of Wales was one of the most dynamic and colorful churchmen of the 12th century. His Journey Through Wales describes a mission to Wales undertaken in 1188 by Baldwin, Archbishop of Canterbury, with Gerald as his companion. The Description of Wales provides a picture of the day-to-day existence of ordinary Welshmen of the time. Both offer a wealth of fascinating first-hand historical detail."

The Nibelungenlied
The Nibelungenlied: Prose Translation.
(ca. 1190–1200)
"The Nibelungenlied, translated as The Song of the Nibelungs, is an epic poem in Middle High German. It tells the story of dragon-slayer Siegfried at the court of the Burgundians, his murder, and of his wife Kriemhild's revenge."
Marie de France
The Lais of Marie de France
(ca. 1200)
"Marie de Franc is the earliest known French woman poet, and her lais are among the finest examples of the genre. Lais are short stories in verse based on Breton tales, depicting a moment of crisis in a love relationship."
Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun
The Romance of the Rose
(Guillaume de Lorris 1230 & Jean de Meun 1275)
"An allegorical account of the progress of a courtly love affair which became the most popular and influential of all medieval romances. In the hands of Jean de Meun, who continued de Lorris's work, it assumed vast proportions and embraced almost every aspect of medieval life from predestination and optics, to the Franciscan controversy and the right way to deal with premature hair-loss."

The Saga of the Volsungs
(late 1200's )
Also known as the Völsunga Saga or retold as The Story of Sigurd the Volsung it is the Icelandic prose rendition of the origin and decline of the Volsung clan (including the story of Sigurd and Brynhild and destruction of the Burgundians). It is largely based on earlier epic poetry and is loosely based on real events in Central Europe during the 5th century and the 6th century. The saga's characters and overall plot recurs in The Nibelungenlied.
Polo, Marco
The Travels of Marco Polo
(1299?)
"Marco Polo's famous voyages began in 1271 with a visit to China, after which he served the Kubilai Khan on numerous diplomatic missions. On his return to the West he was made a prisoner of war and met Rustichello of Pisa, with whom he collaborated on this book. The accounts of his travels provide a fascinating glimpse of the different societies he encountered: of their religions, customs, ceremonies and way of life; of the spices and silks of the East; of precious gems, exotic vegetation and wild beasts. He tells the story of the holy shoemaker, the wicked caliph and the three kings, among a great many others, evoking a remote and fascinating world with colour and immediacy."
Dante Alighieri
Divine Comedy
(1321)
"T. S. Eliot once said that 'Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them – there is no third.' The Divine Comedy narrates Dante's fictional journey through the afterlife, where he witnesses the eternal torments of the damned souls in Hell, the patient endurance of the restless Christian spirits in Purgatory, and the ineffable delights of the blessed in Paradise. As guides through the next world, Dante provides for us the pagan poet Virgil (author of the epic Aeneid), who leads him through Hell and Purgatory, and finally Beatrice herself, through whose grace he experiences Heaven and proves able to glimpse a vision of the eternal glories of God. Annotation by Professor Michael Faletra. This is a Read the Classics discussion title - January 16 & March 20, 2010

The Mabinogion
(ca. 1350–1410)
"The 11 stories of The Mabinogion reach far back into the earlier oral traditions of Celtic storytelling. Closely linked to the Arthurian legends -- King Arthur himself is a character -- they summon up a world of mystery and magic that is still evoked by the Welsh and Irish landscapes they so vividly describe. Mingling fantasy with tales of chivalry, these stories not only prefigure the later medieval romances but also stand on their own as magnificent evocations of a golden age of Celtic civilization."
Boccaccio, Giovanni
Decameron
(ca. 1353)
"The Decameron is an entertaining series of one hundred stories written in the wake of the Black Death. The stories are told in a country villa outside the city of Florence by ten young noble men and women who are seeking to escape the ravages of the plague. Boccaccio's skill as a dramatist is masterfully displayed in these vivid portraits of people from all stations in life, with plots that revel in a bewildering variety of human reactions." Some of his stories were first told by Lucius Apuleius in The Golden Ass in 180.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
(ca. 1360–1380)
"The anonymous 14th century English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is almost universally considered the finest and most complex of all the Arthurian romances. Its hero, Gawain, was the most beloved of all of Arthur's knights among medieval English audiences. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight we see the lofty ideals of the Arthurian court clash with the mystery of the Celtic Otherworld as Gawain struggles to maintain his honor — and his very identity — in the illusory Castle Hautdesert and the uncanny Green Chapel." Annotation by Professor Michael Faletra. (This was a 2008-2009 Read the Classics discussion title).

Poems of the Pearl Manuscript: Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, Gawain and the Green Knight
(circa 1360–1380)
Gower, John
Confessio Amantis
(late 1300's)
Confessio Amantis ("The Lover's Confession") uses the confession to frame a collection of shorter narrative poems. Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Confessio have several stories in common.
Chaucer, Geoffrey
The Canterbury Tales
(ca. 1387 - 1400)
”Chaucer's Canterbury Tales,is the most modern (and even post–modern!) work of the Middle Ages. 29 pilgrims engage in a storytelling contest while on the road to the shrine of St. Thomas in Canterbury; the winner getting a free meal and all he or she can drink. Although the game seems straightforward, the stories the pilgrims tell as they try to out–narrate and outwit one another open up a myriad of perspectives on medieval English society, challenging the accepted social mores of the day and raising many profound questions about the oppressive English medieval class system, about the status of women, and about the power of stories to change our lives.” Annotation by Professor Michael Faletra. This is a Read the Classics discussion title - May 15, 2010
Chaucer, Geoffrey
Troilus and Criseyde
(Chaucer, ca.1343–1400?)
"The tragedy of Troilus and Criseyde is one of the greatest narrative poems in English literature. Set during the siege of Troy, it tells how the young knight Troilus, son of King Priam, falls in love with Criseyde, a beautiful widow. Brought together by Criseydes uncle, Pandarus, the lovers are then forced apart by the events of war, which test their oaths of fidelity and trust to the limits. Described as Chaucer's most ambitious single achievement Troilus and Criseyde is the first work in English to depict human passion with such sympathy and understanding."
Langland, William
Piers Plowman
(Langland, 1330?–1400?)
"Piers Plowman is one of the most significant works of medieval literature. Astonishing in its cultural and theological scope, William Langland's iconoclastic masterpiece is at once a historical relic and a deeply spiritual vision, probing not only the social and religious aristocracy but also the day-to-day realities of a largely voiceless proletariat class."
The Alliterative Morte Arthure
(Early 1300's)
This is a different and earlier work than Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. "One of the finest narrative poems of the Middle Ages, it is an important chapter in the evolution of the Arthurian legend. It is marked as an epic poem by its celebration of battle and conquest and its unsentimental depiction of combat and death."
Malory, Sir Thomas
Le Morte d'Arthur
(1485)
Le Morte d'Arthur (the death of Arthur) is the first grand telling of the entire Arthurian cycle of stories up to that point in English. Malory took much of the material from the French Vulgate Cycle and put it into a single coherent set of stories. He invented some stories himself, like Gareth. His telling of King Arthur, Merlin, Lancelot, Gawain, and the Holy Grail have become part of the cultural tradition of the English-speaking world. It was also one of the first printed books, published in 1485 by William Caxton. The text is in late Middle English but there is a glossary and it is generally quite readable. Malory's use of language is highly enjoyable.
Malory, Thomas
King Arthur and His Knights: Selected Tales
(1485)
"A thoroughly readable, accurate rendering of Malory's famous stories of King Arthur, Merlin, Lancelot, Gawain, and the Holy Grail. It includes the familiar exploits that have become part of the cultural tradition of the English-speaking world."
Kempe, Margery
The Book of Margery Kempe
(Kempe, ca. 1373–ca. 1440)
"The Book of Margery Kempe was discovered in a library in 1934 where it had lain hidden for four hundred years. It is the first known autobiography in the English language, and it was written by a woman. Far from being the typical holy woman of the time, Margery Kempe was married and mother of fourteen children. She was a woman of substance, even running a large brewery for a time. After turning to religion, she traveled thousands of miles around the known world on pilgrimages to distant lands. But her account of her spiritual awakening, far from being blissful is instead full of conflict and recrimination."
Martorell, Joanot
Tirant lo Blanc
(1490)
”First published in the Catalan language in Valencia in 1490, Tirant lo Blanc ("The White Tyrant") is a sweeping epic of chivalry and high adventure. With great precision and verve, Martorell narrates land and sea battles, duels, hunts, banquets, political maneuverings, and romantic conquests.” This is one of the many historical and fictional chivalrous characters mentioned in Don Quixote.
Rodriguez de Montalvo, Garci.
Amadis of Gaul
(early 1300's, compiled by Rodriguez de Montalvo 1508 )
"The romance incorporates many details from the Breton Lais of the Arthurian legend. Amadis of Gaul exemplifies the chivalric ideals of valor, purity and fidelity. The barber and priest in Cervantes's Don Quixote called it 'the best of all the books of its kind,' a verdict with which later generations concurred." Benet's Readers Encyclopedia. This is one of the many historical and fictional chivalrous characters mentioned in Don Quixote.

More, Thomas
Utopia
(1516)
Utopia, by Sir Thomas More, depicts a fictional island whose people have developed the ideal social, cultural and political system with no private property. Thomas More invented the word “utopia,” which means “no place.” It is heavily influenced by Plato's Republic, and became a source for much utopian and communist thinking since. It is also one of the inspirations for the last book of Gulliver's Travels.
Ariosto, Lodovico
Orlando Furioso
(1532)
"I sing of knights and ladies, of love and arms, of courtly chivalry, of courageous deeds.' So begins Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (1532), the culmination of the chivalric legends of Charlemagne and the Saracen invasion of France. It is a brilliantly witty parody of the medieval romances, and a fitting monument to the court society of the Italian Renaissance which gave them birth." This a translation of the Spanish version of the Roland tradition. Orlando is often mentioned in Don Quixote. This is one of the many historical and fictional chivalrous characters mentioned in Don Quixote.
Rabelais, Francois
Gargantua and Pantagruel
(1532 - 1564)
"Rabelais's robust scatalogical comedy parodying everyone from classic authors to his own contemporaries. The dazzling and exuberant stories expose human follies with mischievous and often obscene humor. "Gargantua" depicts a young giant who becomes a cultured Christian knight. "Pantagruel" portrays Gargantua's bookish son who becomes a Renaissance Socrates, divinely guided by wisdom and by his idiotic, self-loving companion, Panurge."
Marguerite, Queen, consort of Henry II, King of Navarre
The Heptameron
(1558)
"In the early 1500s five men and five women find themselves trapped by floods and compelled to take refuge in an abbey high in the Pyrenees. When told they must wait days for the bridge to be repaired, they are inspired to pass the time in a cultured manner by each telling a story every day." It was inspired by the Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio, with many of the stories dealing with love, lust, infidelity and other matters romantic and sexual."
Camões, Luís de
The Lusíads
(1572)
The Lusiads is an Homeric style epic poem about the real history of Vasco da Gama's voyage via southern Africa to India, and the subsequent formation of coastal colonies all the way to China. It was written by Portugal's supreme poet Luís Vas de Camões, who was the first major European artist to cross the equator. The descriptions of places are based on his personal observations. Mixed in with real history is the appearance of Roman gods and goddess. Camões also creates fresh mythological characters that rival those of the Greeks. It is one of the greatest poems of the Renaissance and is one of the true over-looked treasures of literature. Landeg White's translation of this stupendous, vivid poem reads like a novel!
Spenser, Edmund
Faerie Queene
(1590)
"The Faerie Queene was one of the most influential poems in the English language. Dedicating his work to Elizabeth I, Spenser brilliantly united Arthurian romance and Italian renaissance epic to celebrate the glory of the Virgin Queen. Each book of the poem recounts the quest of a knight to achieve a virtue. Although composed as a moral and political allegory, The Faerie Queene's magical atmosphere captivated the imaginations of later poets from Milton to the Victorians."
Marlowe, Christopher
Doctor Faustus
(Marlowe, 1564–1593)
"One of the glories of Elizabethan drama: Marlowe's powerful retelling of the story of the learned German doctor who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge and power."

1600s & 1700s book discussion programs

Central Library
3rd Sundays, 2–4 p.m.

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Further reading about the literature of the 1600s–1700s

Classic literature of the 1600s–1700s

Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de
Don Quixote
(1605 & 1615)
”Cervantes published The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha in two parts, the first in 1605, the second in 1615. With its picaresque adventure and serio-comic mockery of chivalric romance Don Quixote has become an enduring emblem of the powers of idealism and the impossibility of effecting justice in the real world. It has been more widely translated and is more extensively influential than any book other than the Bible.” Annotation by Professor Robert S. Knapp. This is a Read the Classics discussion title - October 18 & November 15, 2009
Some of the books of chivalry that drove Don Quixote crazy:
El Cid, Tirant lo Blanc, Amadis of Gaul, Orlando Furioso, History of the Kings of Britain (Arthur), The Romances of Chrétien de Troyes (Lancelot).
Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de
Exemplary Novels
(1613)
Cervantes' wonderful short novellas that are very much like the separate novels that are told as part of Don Quixote.
Shakespeare, William
King Lear
(1606?)
Shakespeare, who died within a few days of Cervantes' death, is the great bard and source of literary tradition in English, the way Cervantes is in Spanish. All of his plays and poetry are worth exploring. We mention King Lear here because Shakespeare indirectly got the character of King Lear from another book in the Read the Classics: Middle Ages series, The History of the Kings of Britain. Also, if you have seen King Lear in the theatre but have not read it, you are in for a treat! You may find it easier to follow which character is speaking when reading it. The clarity of the language really comes through!
Cyrano de Bergerac
Voyages to the Moon and the Sun
(1657)
”Cyrano's (the real guy) greatest work, model for much of Gulliver's Travels, Munchausen and so many other fantasy books. First published in the 17th Century (Paris, of course), this elegant satire takes its hero into the solar system, where he then can freely speak on matters of sex, religion and humanity. Join the big guy as he wanders about the solar system, meeting up with Beast-Men, the Solen people, and a rep from the Kingdom of Love.”
Milton, John
Paradise Lost
(1667)
"As a young student, John Milton fantasized about bringing the poetic elocution of Homer and Virgil to the English language. Milton realized this dream with his graceful, sonorous Paradise Lost, now considered the most influential epic poem in English literature. A retelling of the biblical story of mankind's fall from grace, Milton's epic opens shortly after the dramatic expulsion of Satan and his army of angels from Heaven. What follows is a cosmic battle between good and evil that ranges across vast, splendid tracts of time and space, from the wild abyss of Chaos and the fiery lake of Hell to the Gate of Heaven and God' s newly created paradise, the Garden of Eden." Annotation by Professor Robert S. Knapp. This is a Read the Classics discussion title - January 17 & February 21, 2010
Molière
Tartuffe
(1669 )
One of Molière's most masterful and popular plays. "Condemned and banned for five years in Moliere's day, Tartuffe is a satire on religious hypocrisy. Tartuffe worms his way into Orgon's household, blinding the master of the house with his religious "devotion," and almost succeeds in his attempts to seduce his wife and disinherit his children before the final unmasking."
Bunyan, John
The Pilgrim's Progress
(1678, 1684)
"Bunyan wrote the first part of his allegory while in prison for his faith, and this experience adds extra urgency and depth to his story of Christian pursuing his pilgrimage through Vanity Fair, the Slough of Despond and Delectable Mountains towards the Celestial City. The influence of The Pilgrim's Progress, both indirectly on the English consciousness and directly on the literature that followed, has been immeasurable. Rich, inventive, profoundly challenging, it is a work of imaginative intensity that has rarely been matched."
Defoe, Daniel
Robinson Crusoe
(1719)
As the full title puts it: "The life and strange surprizing adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, mariner : who lived eight and twenty years, all alone in an uninhabited island on the coast of America, near the mouth of the great river of Oroonoque, having been cast on shore by shipwreck, wherein all the men perished but himself : with an account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by pyrates, written by himself." Robinson Crusoe is sometimes viewed as a book for youth, and indeed it is a fast moving adventure, but you also see Crusoe deal with moral dilemmas such as cultural relativism in the question of what to do about the cannibals he finds on the island. As an examination of the self–reliant man, it makes an interesting study of human nature. Find out why this early novel has been so widely and repeatedly published and accepted as classic literature. (This is a previous year's Read the Classics discussion title)
Defoe, Daniel
The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
(1719)
The full title reads: "The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe; Being the Second and Last Part of his Life, And of the Strange Surprizing Accounts of his Travels Round three Parts of the Globe. Written by Himself. To which is added a Map of the World, in which is Delineated the Voyages of Robinson Crusoe.” Also: Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (text from Google Books) Defoe's 1720 philosophical ruminations on Robinson Crusoe.
Swift, Jonathan
Gulliver's Travels
(1726)
We all know what is thought of as the children's story of Gulliver's travels to Lilliput where he is a giant compared to the Lilliputians and to Brobdingnag where he is the tiny one. Children's editions of the book stop there, omitting the deep satire of the rest of Jonathan Swift's classic book. He hooks the reader with the first two phenomenally imaginative stories and then continues on to the biting commentary on human nature, morals, government, mortality/immortality and science that is his real purpose. After Brobdingnag, Gulliver encounters further amazing peoples, situations and inventions in four more imaginary countries, followed by Japan, as Swift's satire sharpens its edge. After returning to England, where he hoped to stay for the rest of his life, he takes one more trip, and ends up in the country of the Houyhnhnms, where the horses are the sentient beings. There you will meet the Yahoos. You may never think of that word or human nature in same light again! (This is a previous year's Read the Classics discussion title)
Fielding, Henry
Tom Jones
(1749)
Tom Jones is a vivid panorama of 18th-century life, spiced with danger and intrigue, bawdy exuberance and good-natured authorial interjections. The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling, is a kind of hybrid of comic romance, epic (and mock-epic) scope, self-proclaimed "history," and continuing direction for the reader. With obvious and loving debts to Don Quixote, and persistent if indirect reference to Paradise Lost, Tom Jones has a plot that some have described as nearly perfect, a comic energy that most readers find irresistible, and yet it also provokes serious moral reflection about justice in the world and in our representations of that world. Annotation by Professor Robert S. Knapp. This is a Read the Classics discussion title - April 18 & May 16, 2010
Voltaire
Candide
(1759)
Candide has been called a "philosophical romance." Do we live in the "best of all possible worlds" as Leibniz asserted? Voltaire pokes fun at Leibniz by personifying his philosophy of optimism in the character of Dr. Pangloss, Candide's philosophy tutor and sometime traveling companion. The Oxford English Dictionary confirms that Leibniz coined the word "l'Optimisme," and that the word optimism "owes its general diffusion to the satirical attack upon the doctrine by Voltaire in Candide ou l'Optimisme." Voltaire, who was considered the greatest intellectual of the Age of Enlightenment, treats us to the most witty excursion through the philosophical world as well as the loves, adventures and misadventures of Candide through Europe, South America and the Ottoman Empire. How many terrible things can happen with Candide still asking if this is the best of all possible worlds? Along the way Voltaire takes on governments, theologians, war and so many other aspects of his world that he had to publish Candide secretly in several countries simultaneously to avoid having it banned and having all the copies confiscated. This brief, delightful and highly influential book will make you laugh and think at the same time. (This is a previous year's Read the Classics discussion title)
Sterne, Laurence
Tristram Shandy
(1759–1767)
"Sterne's great comic novel is the fictional autobiography of Tristram Shandy, a hero who fails even to get born in the first two volumes. It contains some of the best-known and best-loved characters in English literature, including Uncle Toby, Corporal Trim, Parson Yorick, Dr Slop and the Widow Wadman. Beginning with Tristram's conception, the novel recounts his progress in 'this scurvy and disasterous world of ours', including his misnaming during baptism and his accidental circumcision by afalling sash-window at the age of five; unsurprisingly, Tristram declares that he has been 'the continual sport of what the world calls Fortune'. Tristram Shandy also offers the narrator's 'opinions', at once facetious and highly serious, on books and learning in an age of rapidly expanding print culture, and on the changing understanding of the roles of writers and readers alike."
Defoe, Daniel
Moll Flanders
(1772)
"Moll Flanders details the life of the irresistible Moll and her struggles through poverty and sin in search of property and power. Born in Newgate Prison to a picaresque mother, Moll propels herself through marriages, periods of success and destitution, and a trip to the New World and back, only to return to the place of her birth as a popular prostitute and brilliant thief."
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von
The Sorrows of Young Werther
(1774–1787)
"This tragic masterpiece explores the mind of an artist in alternately joyful and despairing letters recounting an unhappy romance. Goethe addresses issues of love, death, and redemption in an influential portrayal of a character who struggles to reconcile his artistic sensibilities with the demands of the objective world."
Gibbon, Edward
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
(1776–1788)
"Gripping, powerfully intelligent, and wonderfully entertaining, Gibbon's classic account of Rome ranks as one of the literary masterpieces of its age. Famously skeptical about Christianity, unexpectedly sympathetic to the barbarian invaders and the Byzantine Empire, constantly aware of how political leaders often achieve the exact opposite of what they intend, Gibbon captured both the broad pattern of events and the significant revealing detail."
Franklin, Benjamin
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
(1771–1790?)
"Printer and publisher, author and educator, scientist and inventor, statesman and philanthropist, Benjamin Franklin was the very embodiment of the American self-made man. In 1771, at the age of 65, he sat down to write his autobiography, "having emerged from the poverty and obscurity in which I was born and bred, to a state of affluence and some degree of reputation in the world, and having gone so far through life with a considerable share of felicity." The result is a classic of American literature."
Boswell, James
The Life of Samuel Johnson
(1791)
"Poet, lexicographer, critic and moralist, Dr. Johnson had in his friend Boswell the ideal biographer. Notoriously and self-confessedly intemperate, Boswell shared with Johnson a huge appetite for life and threw equal energy into recording its every aspect in minute but telling detail. This irrepressible Scotsman was 'always studying human nature and making experiments', and the marvelously vivacious journals he wrote daily furnished him with first-rate material when he came to write his biography. The result is a masterpiece that brims over with wit, anecdote and originality."

1800s Novels book discussion programs

Woodstock Library
2nd Sunday, October, December, February and April, 2–4 p.m.

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Further reading about 1800's literature

Classic 1800s novels:

Alcott, Louisa May
Little Women
(1869)
"In picturesque 19th-century New England, tomboyish Jo, beautiful Meg, fragile Beth, and romantic Amy come of age. Times are hard for the March sisters - their father is away at war and the family is short of money - but these girls don't dwell on such matters and always look on the bright side. Whether it's performing a play or getting on with day-to-day chores, the sisters can find the fun in any situation - but what fate holds in store for the girls, only time will tell."
Austen, Jane
Pride and Prejudice
(1813)
"'It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.' So begins "Pride and Prejudice,” Jane Austen's witty comedy of manners, one of the most popular novels of all times, that features splendidly civilized sparring between the proud Mr. Darcy and the prejudiced Elizabeth Bennet as they play out their spirited courtship in a series of eighteenth-century drawing-room intrigues. Initially titled "First Impressions", Pride and Prejudice is the most famous of Austen's works."
Austen, Jane
Jane Austen: the Complete Novels
"Jane Austen is one of the most widely read and best-loved writers in British literature. Her novels are humorous and sardonically descriptive of the social mores of the times and she delights in poking fun at society, all the social classes, men and women." This volume contains "Sense and Sensibility," "Pride and Prejudice," "Mansfield Park," "Emma," "Northanger Abbey," "Persuasion" and "Lady Susan."
Balzac, Honoré de
Lost Illusions
(1837–1843)
"The story of Lucien Chardon, a young poet from Angoulême who tries desperately to make a name for himself in Paris, is a brilliantly realistic and boldly satirical portrait of provincial manners and aristocratic life. Handsome and ambitious but naïve, Lucien is patronized by the beau monde as represented by Madame de Bargeton and her cousin, the formidable Marquise d'Espard, only to be duped by them. Denied the social rank he thought would be his, Lucien discards his poetic aspirations and turns to hack journalism; his descent into Parisian low life ultimately leads to his own death. "
Balzac, Honoré de
Pere Goriot
(1835)
Nobody writes about money like Balzac, and his classic chronicle of a young man from the provinces clawing his way to success in 19th century Paris, even as an older man is victimized by the same milieu, shrewdly captures the financial dimension of so much that goes on between people. The boarding house in which the two protagonists live is a microcosm of their world, and Goriot's treatment by his daughters would make Lear blanch
Bronte, Charlotte
Jane Eyre
(1847)
"This literary masterpiece is a quintessential love story where a bright, lonely, and steadfast young woman finds mystery, sorrow, and true love. Widely regarded as a revolutionary novel at the time of its publication, Bronte's masterpiece introduced the world to a radical new type of heroine, one whose defiant virtue and moral courage departed sharply from the more acquiescent and malleable female characters of the day. Passionate, dramatic, and surprisingly modern, Jane Eyre endures as one of the world's most beloved novels."
Bronte, Emily
Wuthering Heights
(1847)
"Published a year before her death at the age of thirty, Emily Bronte's only novel is set in the wild, bleak Yorkshire Moors. Depicting the passionate love story of stubborn Cathy and wild-as-the-wind Heathcliff, Wuthering Heights creates a world of its own, conceived with an instinct for poetry and for the dark depths of human psychology."
Dickens, Charles
Great Expectations
(1860–61)
”With the possible exception of only Jane Austen, Charles Dickens is often considered the most quintessentially English of all great novelists. This novel, one of his best loved, amply displays why. A quintessential Bildungsroman, or novel of development, Great Expectations tells the story of how the young orphan Philip Pirrip (commonly known as "Pip") comes into enough money from a mysterious source so that he can leave his seaside village in pursuit of more fortune and of love (in the form of the cold and fascinating Estella) in London. In its conscious echoes of Frankenstein, Dickens's novel returns us not only to questions of parentage and origins but also to matters of ethical responsibility, all the while introducing us to one of the more memorable coteries of characters (here including the kindly blacksmith Joe Gargery, the alarmingly Rhadamanthine lawyer Jaggers, the escaped convict Abel Magwitch, and the vengeful recluse Miss Havisham) for which its author was, and remains, so famous. Annotation by Professor Christine McBride. This is a Read the Classics discussion title – February 14, 2010
Dickens, Charles
David Copperfield
(1849–1850)
“David Copperfield is the novel that draws most closely on Charles Dickens's own life. Its hero, orphaned as a boy, grows up to discover love and happiness, heartbreak and sorrow amid a cast of eccentrics, innocents, and villains. Praising Dickens's power of invention, Somerset Maugham wrote: 'There were never such people as the Micawbers, Peggotty and Barkis, Traddles, Betsey Trotwood and Mr. Dick, Uriah Heep and his mother. They are fantastic inventions of Dickens's exultant imagination...you can never quite forget them.'”
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor
Crime and Punishment
(1866)
“Dostoevsky's drama of sin, guilt, and redemption transforms the sordid story of an old woman's murder into the nineteenth century's most profound and compelling philosophical novel. Raskolnikov, an impoverished student living in the St. Petersburg of the tsars, is determined to overreach his humanity and assert his untrammeled individual will. When he commits an act of murder and theft, he sets into motion a story that, for its excruciating suspense, its atmospheric vividness, and its depth of characterization and vision is almost unequaled in the literatures of the world.”
Eliot, George
Middlemarch
(1871-72)
“It was George Eliot's ambition to create a world and portray a whole community--tradespeople, middle classes, country gentry--in the rising fictional provincial town of Middlemarch, circa 1830. Vast and crowded, rich in narrative irony and suspense, Middlemarch is richer still in character and in its sense of how individual destinies are shaped by and shape the community. This panoramic work--considered the finest novel in English by many critics--offers a complex look at English provincial life at a crucial historical moment, and, at the same time, dramatizes and explores some of the most potent myths of Victorian literature.”
Eliot, George
The Mill on the Floss
(1860)
“One of George Eliot's best-loved works, “The Mill on the Floss” is a brilliant portrait of the bonds of provincial life as seen through the eyes of the free-spirited Maggie Tulliver, who is torn between a code of moral responsibility and her hunger for self-fulfillment. Rebellious by nature, she causes friction both among the townspeople of St. Ogg's and in her own family, particularly with her brother, Tom. Maggie's passionate nature makes her a beloved heroine, but it is also her undoing.”
Flaubert, Gustave
Madame Bovary
(1856)
”This best known of French 19th century novels was immediately attacked by public prosecutors when it was serialized in 1856, Gustave Flaubert's most famous work, Madame Bovary, became an instant bestseller when it was published in book form the next year, and remains one of the most influential novels ever written. Its titular heroine, Emma Bovary, must contend with the colossal boredom of a respectable marriage to a dull physician in provincial France, and escapes into a world of romantic fiction and then into her own affairs of the heart. Emma's bourgeois daydreams, which precipitate her disastrous ending (and which gave rise to a whole new term, bovarysme), have raised questions for generations about the relations between romance and realism and between fiction and reality.” Annotation by Professor Christine McBride. This is a Read the Classics discussion title – December 13, 2009
Flaubert, Gustave
A Sentimental Education
(1869)
“Based on Flaubert's own youthful passion for an older woman, Sentimental Education was described by its author as 'the moral history of the men of my generation.' It follows the amorous adventures of Frederic Moreau, a law student who, returning home to Normandy from Paris, notices Mme Arnoux, a slender, dark woman several years older than himself. It is the beginning of an infatuation that will last a lifetime. He befriends her husband, an influential businessman, and as their paths cross and re-cross over the years, Mme Arnoux remains the constant, unattainable love of Moreau's life. Blending love story, historical authenticity, and satire, Sentimental Education is one of the great French novels of the nineteenth century.”
Hardy, Thomas
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
(1891)
“A tragic tale of cruel fates, touching on rape, illegitimate birth and murder, “Tess of the d'Urbervilles” shocked its early audiences, but has proved to be one of the most enduring and influential works of English literature.” It gives a vivid description of nineteenth century British rural life as well as exhibiting in living detail the class and gender structures of the society.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
The Scarlet Letter
(1850)
"'Thou and thine, Hester Prynne, belong to me.' With these chilling words a husband claims his wife after a two-year absence. But the child she clutches is not his, and Hester wears a scarlet "A" upon her breast, the sign of adultery visible to all. Under an assumed name, her husband begins his vindictive search for her lover, determined to expose what Hester is equally determined to protect. Set in the Puritan community of seventeenth-century Boston, “The Scarlet Letter” also sheds light on the nineteenth century in which it was written, as Hawthorne explores his ambivalent relations with his Puritan forebears.”
Hugo, Victor
Les Misérables
(1862)
“Published simultaneously in nine languages in 1862, Les Misérables is a vast tapestry set against the chaos of post-Napoleonic France. A cast of hundreds is woven into the epic story of the ex-convict Jean Valjean and his valiant struggle to redeem himself. A potent social document of the poverty, ignorance, and brutality of man, Les Misérables is also a rousing adventure and a passionate parable of love. Here, Victor Hugo displays his skills as a dramatist and poet, and shows his deeply felt compassion for all mankind.”
James, Henry
The Portrait of a Lady
(1881)
“One of the great heroines of American literature, Isabel Archer, journeys to Europe in order to, as Henry James writes in his 1908 preface, 'affront her destiny.' James began “The Portrait of a Lady” without a plot or subject, only the slim but provocative notion of a young woman taking control of her fate. The result is a richly imagined study of an American heiress who turns away her suitors in an effort to first establish, and then protect, her independence. But Isabel's pursuit of spiritual freedom collapses when she meets the captivating Gilbert Osmond.” This is a Read the Classics discussion title - April 11, 2010
Melville, Herman
Moby Dick
(1851)
Although it received mixed reviews upon its publication in 1851, Moby–Dick or, The Whale has gone on to become one of the most highly acclaimed novels in the English language and has often been dubbed one of the most important claimants for the title of "The Great American Novel." Melville's longest and most famous novel not only tells of the adventures of the sailor Ishmael aboard the whaler Pequod as he comes to realize its maniacal skipper, Captain Ahab, seeks to revenge himself upon the fabulous white whale that once tore off his leg, but also acts as a kind of encyclopedia of whale–lore, of sailing, and even of the world at large in the mid–19th century. Part Shakespearean tragedy, part Miltonic epic, part homoerotic pastoral idyll: Melville's masterwork blends all kinds of literary styles to consider the position of humanity in a dangerous and threatening universe that bids to annihilate it. By Jay Dickson. (This is a previous year's Read the Classics discussion title).
Scott, Walter, Sir
Waverley, or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since
(1814)
“The first 'historical novel' in English, Waverley is set at the time of the Jacobite rising of 1745. Edward Waverley, a young English soldier in the Hanoverian army, is sent to Scotland. He visits a Jacobite laird in the Lowlands of Perthshire, and then makes his way into the Highlands, where he meets a chieftain and his clansmen. Before long Waverley is caught up in the Jacobite cause, offering his allegiance to Prince Charles Edward Stuart, and to the dauntless Flora Mac-Ivor. The hero's journey of self-discovery takes place in a country torn by civil war, as the political outlook of the eighteenth century meets the older social organization of the Highlands in violent confrontation.”
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft
Frankenstein
(1818)
One of the cornerstones of Romantic fiction, Frankenstein was originally Mary Shelley's entry in the famous ghost-story competition she entered in with her lover (and later husband) Percy Bysshe Shelley at Lord Byron's villa on Lake Geneva one rainy summer day in 1816. In its nightmarish vision, which is deeply invested in questions of scientific capabilities and ethics, Victor von Frankenstein, the tormented Swiss scientist, breathes life into inanimate flesh. Frankenstein must wrestle not only with the dangers his creation poses to his family and to humanity in general, but also with his ethical responsibilities to his equally beleaguered "child." It is one of the most seminal texts not only in the genres of horror and science fiction, but of imaginative literature in general. Annotation by Professor Christine McBride. This is a Read the Classics discussion title – October 11, 2009
Stendhal
The Red & the Black
(1830)
“Handsome and ambitious, Julien Sorel is determined to rise above his humble peasant origins and make something of his life by adopting the code of hypocrisy by which his society operates. Julien ultimately commits a crime out of passion, principle or insanity that will bring about his downfall. The Red and the Black is a lively, satirical picture of French Restoration society after Waterloo, riddled with corruption, greed, and ennui. The complex, sympathetic portrayal of Julien, the cold exploiter whose Machiavellian campaign is undercut by his own emotions, makes him Stendhal's most brilliant and human creation, and one of the greatest characters in European literature.”
Stoker, Bram
Dracula
(1897)
“Count Dracula has inspired countless movies, books, and plays. But few, if any, have been fully faithful to Bram Stoker's original, best-selling novel of mystery and horror, love and death, sin and redemption. Dracula chronicles the vampire's journey from Transylvania to the nighttime streets of London. There, he searches for the blood of strong men and beautiful women while his enemies plot to rid the world of his frightful power. Today's critics see Dracula as a virtual textbook on Victorian repression of the erotic and fear of female sexuality." Stoker greatly elaborated on the idea of a vampire coming to London that was shown in John William Polidori's 1919 short story “The Vampyre: A Tale,” that was one of the round of ghost stories told in Lord Byron's company that included Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. It is included as an appendix to the Penguin edition of Frankenstein.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Uncle Tom's Cabin
(1852)
“Uncle Tom, Topsy, Sambo, Simon Legree, little Eva: their names are American bywords, and all of them are characters in Harriet Beecher Stowe's remarkable novel of the pre-Civil War South. Uncle Tom's Cabin was revolutionary in 1852 for its passionate indictment of slavery and for its presentation of Tom, a man of humanity, as the first black hero in American fiction. Labeled racist and condescending by some of today's critics, it remains a shocking, controversial, and powerful work - exposing the attitudes of white nineteenth-century society toward "the peculiar institution" and documenting, in heartrending detail, the tragic breakup of black Kentucky families 'sold down the river.'”
Thackeray, William Makepeace
Vanity Fair: a Novel Without a Hero
(1847–1848)
“Thackery's satiric novels are often regarded as the great upper-class counterpart to Dickens' panoramic depiction of lower-class Victorian society. Vanity Fair is a classic epic, a resplendent social satire exposing the greed and corruption raging in England during the turmoil of the Napoleonic wars, and brought Thackery immediate acclaim when it appeared in Punch in 1847. 'The more I read Thackeray's works,' wrote Charlotte Bronte, 'the more certain I am that he stands alone - alone in his sagacity, alone in his truth, alone in his feeling (his feeling, though he makes no noise about it, is about the most genuine that ever lived on a printed page), alone in his power, alone in his simplicity, alone in his self-control. Thackeray is a Titan. . . . I regard him as the first of modern masters.'"
Tolstoy, Leo
War and Peace
(1865–1869)
“Often called the greatest novel ever written, “War and Peace” is at once an epic of the Napoleonic Wars, a philosophical study, and a celebration of the Russian spirit. Tolstoy's genius is seen clearly in the multitude of characters in this massive chronicle - all of them fully realized and equally memorable. Out of this complex narrative emerges a profound examination of the individual's place in the historical process, one that makes it clear why Thomas Mann praised Tolstoy for his Homeric powers and placed War and Peace in the same category as the Iliad: 'To read him is to find one's way home to everything within us that is fundamental and sane.'"
Twain, Mark
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
(1884)
“The story of Huck and his companion Jim, a runaway slave, as they travel down the Mississippi to escape from slavery and 'sivilization' has been delighting readers around the world since Twain first published it in 1885. It is a masterpiece: revolutionary in its narrative method, surpassingly funny, and at the same time deeply perceptive about human nature. This is a classic American novel of the nineteenth century that still commands an audience and retains the capacity to stir controversy with its sharp satire on American racism.”
Wilde, Oscar
The Picture of Dorian Gray
(1891)
“Since its first publication, Oscar Wilde's only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, has remained the subject of critical controversy. Acclaimed by some as an instructive moral tale, it has been denounced by others for its implicit immorality. After having his portrait painted, Dorian Gray is captivated by his own beauty. Tempted by his world-weary friend, the decadent Lord Henry Wotton, he wished to stay young forever and pledges his very soul to keep his good looks. As Dorian's slide into crime and cruelty progresses, he stays magically youthful, while his beautiful portrait changes, revealing the hideous corruption of moral decay.”

1900 Novels book discussion programs

Hollywood Library
1st Sunday, October, December and February; and April 25 2–4 p.m.

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Further reading about 1900's literature

Classic 1900s novels

Bowen, Elizabeth
The Last September
(1929)
"In 1920, at their country home in County Cork, Sir Richard Naylor and his wife, Lady Myra, and their friends maintain a skeptical attitude toward the events going on around them, but behind the facade of tennis parties and army camp dances, all know that the end is approaching--the end of British rule in the south of Ireland and the demise of a way of life that had survived for centuries. Their niece, Lois Farquar, attempts to live her own life and gain her own freedoms from the very class that her elders are vainly defending. The last September depicts the tensions between love and the longing for freedom, between tradition and the terrifying prospect of independence, both political and spiritual."
The Death of the Heart
(1939)
"A child of sin raised in a series of shabby French hotels, Portia is possessed of a kind of terrible innocence. Like Chance the Gardener in pigtails, she literally can't comprehend evil or unkind motives. Unfortunately for her, she falls in with Anna's friend Eddie, who seems to be made entirely of bad motives. Though the plot follows Portia's relationship with Eddie, the novel's real tension lies between Portia and Anna, her sister-in-law, as the girl comes to grief against the shoals of Anna's glittering, urbane cynicism. But the book transcends the theme of innocence corrupted. As in Graham Greene's The Quiet American, Bowen inverts the formula to show the destructive power of innocence itself."
Camus, Albert
The Stranger
"The Stranger is both a brilliantly crafted story and an illustration of Camus' absurdist world view. The novel tells the story of an emotionally detached, amoral young man named Meursault. He does not cry at his mother's funeral, does not believe in God, and kills a man he barely knows without any discernible motive. For his crime, Meursault is deemed a threat to society and sentenced to death. When he comes to accept the 'gentle indifference of the world,' he finds peace with himself and with the society that persecutes him."
Cather, Willa
The Song of the Lark
(1915)
"This novel charts the story of a young woman's awakening as an artist against the backdrop of the western landscape. Thea Kronborg, an ambitious heroine and an aspiring singer, struggles to escape from the confines her small Colorado town to the world of possibility in the Metropolitan Opera House. In classic Cather style, The Song of the Lark is the beautiful, unforgettable story of American determination and its inextricable connection to the land."
My Antonia
(1918)
"After the death of his parents, Jim is sent to live with his grandparents on the Nebraska plains. By chance on that same train is a bright-eyed girl, Antonia, who will become his neighbor and lifelong friend. Her family has emigrated from Bohemia to start a new life farming but soon lose their money and must work had just to survive. Through it all, Antonia retains her natural pride and free spirit. Based on her own life, and set against Nebraska's panoramic landscape, Cather recreates the life of an immigrant girl who becomes the epitome of strong and dignifed womanhood."
Death Comes for the Archbishop
(1927)
"Willa Cather's best-known novel, a narrative whose spare beauty achieves epic--and even mythic--qualities as it recounts a life lived simply in the silence of the southwestern desert. Based on the lives of Bishop Jean Baptiste L'Amy and his vicar, Father Joseph Machebeut, the story recounts attempts of a Catholic bishop and a priest to establish a diocese in New Mexico Territory."
Colette
Chéri
(1920)
"The classic French novel tells the story of Lea, an aging retired ourtesan who is involved in a love affair with a younger man whom she calls "Cheri." The amour between Fred Peloux, the beautiful gigolo known as Chéri, and the courtesan Léa de Lonval tenderly depicts the devotion that stems from desire and is an honest account of the most human preoccupations of youth and middle age. With compassionate insight Colette paints a full-length double portrait using an impressionistic style all her own."
Conrad, Joseph
Lord Jim
(1900)
"This immortal novel of the sea tells the story of a British sailor haunted by a single youthful act of cowardly betrayal. To the white men in Bombay, Calcutta, and Rangoon, Jim is a man of mystery. To the primitive natives deep in the Malayan jungle, he is a god gifted with supernatural powers. To the beautiful half-caste girl who flees to his hut for protection, he is a lord to be feared and loved. Lord Jim is a classic portrait of a man's guilt, his search for forgiveness, and his final, tragic redemption."
Heart of Darkness
(1920)
"The classic French novel tells the story of Lea, an aging retired ourtesan who is involved in a love affair with a younger man whom she calls "Cheri." The amour between Fred Peloux, the beautiful gigolo known as Chéri, and the courtesan Léa de Lonval tenderly depicts the devotion that stems from desire and is an honest account of the most human preoccupations of youth and middle age. With compassionate insight Colette paints a full-length double portrait using an impressionistic style all her own."
The Secret Agent
(1907)
"The Secret Agent is the unsurpassed ancestor of a long series of twentieth-century novels and films which explore the confused motives that lie at the heart of political terrorism. In its use of powerful psychological insight to intensify narrative suspense, it set the terms by which subsequent works in its genre were created. Conrad was the first novelist to discover the strange in-between territory of the political exile, and his genius was such that we still have no truer map of that region's moral terrain than his story of a terrorist plot and its tragic consequences for the guilty and innocent alike."
Dreiser, Theodore
Sister Carrie
(1900)
"A teenage girl without money or connections leaves her small town in search of a better life in Dreiser's revolutionary first novel. The chronicle of Carrie Meeber's rise from obscurity to fame -- and the effects of her progress on the men who use her and are used in turn -- aroused much controversy upon its debut. Dreiser's remarkable first novel has deeply influenced such key writers as William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Saul Bellow, and Joyce Carol Oates."
Du Bois, W.E.B.
The Souls of Black Folk
(1903)
"'The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.' Thus speaks W.E.B. Du Bois in The Souls Of Black Folk. In this eloquent collection of essays, first published in 1903, Du Bois dares as no one has before to describe the magnitude of American racism and demand an end to it. Far ahead of its time, this book both anticipated and inspired much of the black consciousness and activism of the 1960's and is a classic in the literature of civil rights. The elegance of Du Bois's prose and the passion of his message are as crucial today as they were upon the book's first publication."
Faulkner, William
The Sound and the Fury
(1929)
“The Sound and the Fury unravels the disintegration of the Compson family, former genteel Southern patricians, through the consciousnesses of four of its members: Benjy, the Compson son afflicted with mental retardation; his dreamy and sensitive Harvard-educated brother Quentin; his other brother, the cynical and pragmatic Jason; and the family's African American servant Dilsey. The family's fall encapsulated for Faulkner the problems of the reconstructed South — racism, greed, pride and fatalism — that he saw crippling the region in the 20th century.” Annotation by Professor Jay Dickson. This is a Read the Classics discussion title – March 28, 2010

Light in August
(1932)
"Lena Grove's resolute search for the father of her unborn child begets a rich, poignant, and ultimately hopeful story of perseverance in the face of mortality. It also acquaints us with several of Faulkner's most unforgettable characters, including the Reverend Gail Hightower, who is plagued by visions of Confederate horsemen, and Joe Christmas, a ragged, itinerant soul obsessed with his mixed-race ancestry. Entwining these characters stories, Light in August vividly brings to life Faulkner's imaginary South, one of literature's great invented landsacapes in all of its impoverished, violent, unerringly fascinating glory."
As I Lay Dying
(1930)
"The story revolves around a grim yet darkly humorous pilgrimage, as Addie Bundren's family sets out to fulfill her last wish - noble or selfish - to be buried in her native Jefferson, Mississippi, far from the miserable backwater surroundings of her married life. The book is told in stream of consciousness style by fifteen different narrators in 59 chapters. The title is taken from Book XI of Homer's The Odyssey, wherein Agamemnon speaks to Odysseus: 'As I lay dying, the woman with the dog's eyes would not close my eyes as I descended into Hades."
Absalom, Absalom!
(1937)
"This is the story of Thomas Sutpen, an enigmatic stranger who came to Jefferson in the early 1830s to wrest his mansion out of the muddy bottoms of the north Mississippi wilderness. He was a man, Faulkner said, 'who wanted sons and the sons destroyed him.' From its magnificent and bold inception, when with his wild Negroes, the founder of the great plantation appeared out of nowhere to seize his hundred square miles of land and build his mansion, through the destruction of the Civil war and its aftermath and the drab beginnings of the new South, the narrative is colored by the authors glowing imagery, and his command of a powerful and magical prose style."
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Tender Is the Night
(1934)
"When it was published in 1934, Tender Is the Night was one of the most talked-about books of the year. Set on the French Riviera in the late 1920s, it is the tragic romance of the young actress Rosemary Hoyt and the stylish American couple Dick and Nicole Diver (thought by many to be an unflattering portrayal of Sara and Gerald Murphy). A brilliant young psychiatrist at the time of his marriage, Dick is both husband and doctor to Nicole, whose wealth goads him into a lifestyle not his own, and whose growing strength highlights Dick's harrowing demise. Tender Is the Night, is recognized as a powerful and moving depiction of the human frailties that affect privileged and ordinary people alike."
The Great Gatsby
(1925)
"At the end of World War I, the United States enjoyed the 'roaring 20s', a period of unprecedented prosperity marred by corruption, bootlegging, and the carelessness of the very rich. Enter Nick Carraway, the narrator of Jay Gatsby's tragic history with which Fitzgerald exposes the hypocrisy of the American Dream while also espousing the richness of the human condition and the value of ideals. In Jay Gatsby, Fitzerald embodies some of America's strongest obsessions: wealth, power, greed, and the promise of new beginnings."
Forster, E. M.
Howards End
(1910)
"Howard's End is the novel that earned E. M. Forster recognition as a major writer. At its heart lie two families--the wealthy and business-minded Wilcoxes and the cultured and idealistic Schlegels. When the beautiful and independent Helen Schlegel begins an impetuous affair with the ardent Paul Wilcox, a series of events is sparked--some very funny, some very tragic--that results in a dispute over who will inherit Howards End, the Wilcoxes' charming country home. As much about the clash between individual wills as the clash between the sexes and the classes, Howards End is a novel whose central tenet, 'only connect', remains a powerful prescription for modern life."
A Passage to India
(1924)
"Often regarded as Forster's greatest novel, A Passage to India was influential since its publication in shaping the international public discourse surrounding the ethicality of the raj, Great Britain's direct political rule over the Indian subcontinent from 1858 to 1947. A young English woman visiting India for the first time to see her fiancé, a local magistrate in the Indian Civil Service, befriends a local Muslim doctor; a sightseeing trip they take together ends in disaster with the doctor imprisoned, the young woman in hysterics, and the ruling Anglo-Indians panicked and tightening ranks. Forster's novel is an exploration of a clash of cultures, but it is also a study of the limits of human relations in the face of larger political pressures." Annotation by Professor Jay Dickson. This is a Read the Classics discussion title – October 4, 2009.
Gidé, Andre
The Immoralist
(1902)
"Gide presents the confessional account of a man seeking the truth of his own nature. The story's protagonist, Michel, knows nothing about love when he marries the gentle Marceline out of duty to his father. On the couple's honeymoon to Tunisia, Michel becomes very ill, and during his recovery he meets a young Arab boy whose radiant health and beauty captivate him. An awakening for him both sexually and morally, Michel discovers a new freedom in seeking to live according to his own desires. A frank defense of homosexuality and a challenge to prevailing ethical concepts, The Immoralist is a literary landmark, marked by Gide's masterful, pure, simple style." (Annotation from Amazon)
The Counterfeiters
(1925)
"Schoolboys of diverse ages and dispositions attend the Pension Azais. Some are suspected of having attempted to circulate counterfeit coins. Edouard, an author writing a novel entitled The Counterfeiters, observes that if a counterfeit coin is thought to be authentic, it is accepted as valuable; if it is found to be counterfeit, it is perceived as worthless. Therefore, he concludes, value is wholly a matter of perception and has nothing to do with reality. The counterfeiters are thus representative of those who disguise themselves with false personalities, either in unconscious self-deception or through conscious, hypocritical conformity to convention." (Annotation by Amazon)
Golding, William
Lord of the Flies
(1954)
"Labeled a parable, an allegory, a myth, a morality tale, a parody, a political treatise, even a vision of the apocalypse, Lord of the Flies has established itself as a true classic. In this story about a group of English school boys stranded on an unpopulated island, Golding explores the dark side of humanity and the savagery that surfaces when social structure is broken down, and rules, ideals and values are lost."
Greene, Graham
Brighton Rock
(1938)
"Set in Brighton among the criminal rabble, the book depicts the tragic career of a 17-year-old boy named Pinkie, abnormal, dwarfed and perverse, whose primary ambition is to lead a gang to rival that of the wealthy and established Colleoni. His calamitous childhood and repressed sexuality combine to create a force of evil which is both fascinating and repellent. This weird, sometimes original story is a blend of horror, adventure, mystery and morbid realism, with interesting psychological touches to the characters."
The Power and the Glory
(1940)
"In a poor, remote section of southern Mexico, the Red Shirts have taken control, God has been outlawed, and the priests have been systematically hunted down and killed. The last priest, the 'whiskey priest' is a degraded alcoholic who has broken most of his vows but who nevertheless, insists upon performing his duties until the very end, in order to find redemption."
Hemingway, Ernest
A Farewell to Arms
(1929)
"By turns romantic and harshly realistic, Hemingway's story of a tragic romance set against the brutality and confusion of World War I cemented his fame as a stylist and as a writer of extraordinary literary power. A volunteer ambulance driver and a beautiful English nurse fall in love when he is wounded on the Italian front. Surrounded by the brutality of war, they find comfort in each other and Catherine soon becomes pregnant. But when Henry is ordered back to the front lines, he is unsure if he will ever see his lover again."
The Sun Also Rises
(1926)
"The quintessential novel of the 'lost generation', The Sun Also Rises is one of Ernest Hemingway's masterpieces and a classic example of his spare but powerful writing style. A poignant look at the disillusionment and angst of the post-World War I generation, the novel introduces two of Hemingway's most unforgettable characters: Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley. The story follows the flamboyant Brett and the hapless Jake as they journey from the wild nightlife of 1920s Paris to the brutal bullfighting rings of Spain with a motley group of expatriates. It is an age of moral bankruptcy, spiritual dissolution, unrealized love, and vanishing illusions."
Hesse, Hermann
Siddhartha
(1922)
"Born the son of a Brahmin, Siddhartha was blessed in appearance, intelligence, and charisma. In order to find meaning in life, he discarded his promising future for the life of a wandering ascetic. True happiness still evaded him. Like Hermann Hesse's other creations of struggling young men, Siddhartha has a good dose of European angst and stubborn individualism. His final epiphany challenges both the Buddhist and the Hindu ideals of enlightenment." (Annotation from Amazon)
Steppenwolf
(1927)
"With its blend of Eastern mysticism and Western culture, Hesse's best-known and most autobiographical work is one of literatures most poetic evocations of the souls journey to liberation. Harry Haller is a sad and lonely figure, a reclusive intellectual for whom life holds no joy. He struggles to reconcile the wild primeval wolf and the rational man within himself without surrendering to the bourgeois values he despises. His life changes dramatically when he meets a woman who is his opposite, the carefree and elusive Hermine. This novel contains savage indictments of conventional bourgeois morality and searching philosophic forays into the role of art, music and the independent, self-willed individual."
Hurston, Zora Neale
Their Eyes Were Watching God
(1937)
"Fair and long-legged, independent and articulate, Janie Crawford sets out to be her own person – no mean feat for a black woman in the 1930's in the black town of Eaton, Florida. Janie's quest for identity takes her through three marriages and into a journey back to her roots. Hurston, a contemporary of Langston Hughe's and Richard Wright, was the preeminent black woman writer in the United States in the 1930's."
Huxley, Aldous
Brave New World
(1927)
"Aldous Huxley's tour de force, Brave New World is a darkly satiric vision of a 'utopian' future where humans are genetically bred and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively serve a ruling order. All emotion, love, art and human individuality have been replaced by social stability. A powerful work of speculative fiction that has enthralled and terrified readers for generations, it remains remarkably relevant to this day as both a warning to be heeded as we head into tomorrow and as thought-provoking, satisfying entertainment."
James, Henry
The Ambassadors
(1903)
"Lambert Strether, a mild middle-aged American of no particular achievements, is dispatched to Paris from the manufacturing empire of Woollett, Massachusetts. The mission conferred on him by his august patron, Mrs. Newsome, is to discover what, or who, is keeping her son Chad in the notorious city of pleasure, and to bring him home. But Strether finds Chad transformed by the influence of a remarkable woman and as the Parisian spring advances, he himself succumbs to the allure of the 'vast bright Babylon' and to the mysterious charm of Madame de Vionnet."
The Wings of the Dove
(1902)
"Confronting a Bronzino portrait in an English country house, a young American heiress comes face to face with her own predicament. For Milly Theale, who seems to have the world before her and at her feet, is fatally ill. Eager for life, eager for love, she embarks on her European adventure, warming to the admiration of her new friends Kate Croy and Merton Densher. But Merton and Kate are secretly engaged, and come to see in this angel with a thumping bank account as a solution to their own problems."
Joyce, James
Ulysses
(1922)
"A classic depiction of exile, estrangement, paralysis, and the disintegration of a society, Ulysses chronicles the passage of Leopold Bloom through Dublin during an ordinary day, June 16, 1904. The title parallels and alludes to Homer's Odyssey. Since publication, the book has attracted controversy and much scrutiny. The book's stream-of-consciousness technique, careful structuring, and experimental prose made the book a highly regarded novel in the Modernist pantheon."
Blamires, Harry
The New Bloomsday Book: a Guide Through Ulysses
(1966)
The New Bloomsday Book is a crystal clear, line by line running commentary on the plot of James Joyce'sUlysseswhich illuminates many symbolic themes and literary structures along the way. To ensure that Blamires' classic work will remain useful to new readers, this third edition contains the page numbering and references to the three most commonly read editions of Ulysses: the Gabler `Corrected Text' (1986) editions, the Oxford University Press `World Classics' (1993), and the Penguin `Twentieth-Century Classics (1992).
Joyce, James
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
(1922)
"Published in 1916 when Joyce was already at work on Ulysses, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is exactly what its title says and much more. In an exuberantly inventive masterpiece of subjectivity, Joyce portrays his alter ego, Stephen Dedalus, growing up in Dublin and struggling through religious and sexual guilt toward an aesthetic awakening. In part a vivid picture of Joyce's own youthful evolution into one of the twentieth century's greatest writers, it is also a moment in the intellectual history of an age, a tour de force of style and technique and a profound examination of the Irish psyche and society."
Kafka, Franz
The Metamorphosis
(1915)
"The story begins when a traveling salesman, Gregor Samsa, wakes up to find himself transformed into a giant insect. Curiously, his condition does not arouse surprise in his family, who merely despise it as an impending burden. As with all of Kafka's works, The Metamorphosis is open to a wide range of interpretations. Most obvious are themes relating to society's treatment of those who are different, the loneliness of isolation, and the absurdity of the human condition."
Lawrence, D.H.
Sons and Lovers
(1913)
"Lawrence's first major novel explores the ordinary working-class life from the inside, examining the intimacies enforced by a tightly-knit mining community and by a family where feelings are never hidden for long. As the marriage between Walter and his sensitive high-minded wife begins to break down, the bitterness seeps into their children's lives. Paul craves the warmth of family and community, but knows that he must sacrifice everything in the struggle for independence if he is not to repeat his parents' failure."
Women in Love
(1920)
"One of Lawrence's most popular novels, this fascinating and disturbing sequel to The Rainbow depicts the emotional life of the Brangwen sisters in the coal-mining town of Beldover. It is based in part on Lawrence's own stormy marriage to German aristocrat Frieda von Richthofen. Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen, who first appeared in Lawrence's earlier novel, take center stage as Lawrence explores their growth and development in their relationships with two powerful men, Rupert Birkin and his friend Gerald Crich. This prophetic masterpiece is filled with perceptions about sexual powers and sexual obsession now held to be timeless and true."
The Rainbow
(1915)
"Pronounced obscene and banned when it was first published, The Rainbow, is the epic story of three generations of the Brangwen family, set against the decline of the rural English midlands. A visionary novel, it explores the complex sexual and psychological relationships between men and women in an increasingly industrialized world. Lush with imagery, the novel exposes the sexual dynamics of marriage and physical love."
Larsen, Nella
Passing
(1929)
"This is an electrifying story of two women who cross the color line in 1920s New York. Irene Redfield, the novel's protagonist, is a woman with an enviable life. She and her husband, Brian, a prominent physician, share a comfortable Harlem town house with their sons. Clare Kendry, Irene's childhood friend, light-skinned, beautiful, and charming, left behind the black neighborhood of her adolescence and began passing for white, hiding her true identity from everyone, including her racist husband. As Clare begins inserting herself into Irene's life, Irene is thrown into a panic, terrified of the consequences of Clare's dangerous behavior. And when Clare witnesses the vibrancy and energy of the community she left behind, her burning desire to come back threatens to shatter her careful deception. Brilliantly plotted and elegantly written, Passing firmly established Nella Larsen's prominence among women writers of the Harlem Renaissance."
London, Jack
The Call of the Wild
(1913)
"Buck, half St. Bernard, half shepherd, is kidnapped from his safe California home and thrown into a life-death struggle on the frozen Artic wilderness. He learns many hard lessons as a sled dog, but the greatest lesson he learns, he learns from his last owner, John Thornton and that is the power of love and loyalty. Yet always, even at the side of the human he loves, Buck feels the pull in his bones, an urge to answer his wolf ancestors as they howl to him."
The Sea Wolf
(1904)
"In another gripping novel by London, Humphrey Van Weyden is rescued from the freezing waters of San Francisco Bay by a demonic sea captain and introduced to fates far worse that death. Through this story London recalls his own adventures on a sailing vessel at the age of seventeen."
Mann, Thomas
The Magic Mountain
(1924)
"With this dizzyingly rich novel of ideas, Thomas Mann rose to the front ranks of the great modern novelists, winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929. The story takes place in an exclusive tuberculosis sanatorium in the Swiss Alps-a community devoted to sickness that serves as a fictional microcosm for Europe in the days before the First World War. To this hermetic and otherworldly realm comes Hans Castorp, an ordinary young man who arrives for a short visit and ends up staying for seven years, during which he succumbs both to the lure of eros and to the intoxication of ideas."
Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family
(1901)
"Published when Mann was only twenty-six, Buddenbrookshas become a classic of modern literature. It is the story of four generations of a wealthy bourgeois family in northern Germany facing the advent of modernity in an uncertain new world. As Mann charts the Buddenbrooks decline from prosperity to bankruptcy, from moral and psychic soundness to sickly piety, artistic decadence, and madness, he ushers the reader into a world of stunning vitality, pieced together from births and funerals, weddings and divorces, recipes, gossip, and earthy humor. It is immense in scope, rich in detail, and full of humanity."
Death in Venice
(1924)
"Gustave von Aschenbach is a successful but aging writer who travels to Venice for a holiday. One day, at dinner, Aschenbach notices an exceptionally beautiful young boy who is staying with his family in the same hotel. Soon his days begin to revolve around seeing this boy and he is too distracted to pay attention to the ominous rumors that have begun to circulate about disease spreading through the city."
Maugham, W. Somerset
Of Human Bondage
(1915)
"Of Human Bondage gives a harrowing depiction of unrequited love. Philip Carey, a sensitive orphan born with a clubfoot, finds himself in desperate need of passion and inspiration. He abandons his studies to travel, first to Heidelberg, and then to Paris, where he nurses ambitions of becoming a great artist. Philip's youthful idealism erodes, however, as he comes face-to-face with his own mediocrity and lack of impact on the world. After returning to London to study medicine, he becomes wildly infatuated with Mildred, a vulgar, tawdry waitress, and begins a doomed love affair that will change the course of his life. "
Miller, Henry
Tropic of Cancer
(1934)
"Now hailed as an American classic, Tropic of Cancer , Henry Miller's masterpiece, was banned as obscene in this country for 27 years after its publication in Paris in 1934. Only a historic court ruling that changed American censorship standards permitted the publication of this first volume of Miller's famed mixture of memoir and fiction, which chronicles with unapologetic gusto the bawdy adventures of a young expatriate writer, his friends, and the characters they meet in Paris in the 1930s."
Mitchell, Margaret
Gone with the Wind
(1936)
"Many novels have been written about the Civil War and its aftermath. None take us into the burning fields and cities of the American South as the Pulitzer prize winning Gone With the Wind does, creating haunting scenes and thrilling portraits of characters so vivid that we remember their words and feel their fear and hunger for the rest of our lives. In the two main characters, the white-shouldered, irresistible Scarlett and the flashy, contemptuous Rhett, Margaret Mitchell not only conveyed a timeless story of survival under the harshest of circumstances, she also created two of the most famous lovers in the English-speaking world since Romeo and Juliet."
Nabokov, Vladimir
Lolita
(1955)
"Despite its lascivious reputation, the pleasures of Lolita are as much intellectual as erogenous. It is a love story with the power to raise both chuckles and eyebrows. Humbert Humbert is a European intellectual adrift in America, haunted by memories of a lost adolescent love. When he meets his ideal nymphet in the shape of 12-year-old Dolores Haze, he constructs an elaborate plot to seduce her, but first he must get rid of her mother. In spite of his diabolical wit, reality proves to be more slippery than Humbert's feverish fantasies, and Lolita refuses to conform to his image of the perfect lover. Playfully perverse in form as well as content, riddled with puns and literary allusions, Nabokov's 1955 novel is a hymn to the Russian-born author's delight in his adopted language."
Pale Fire
(1962)
"An ingeniously constructed parody of detective fiction and learned commentary, Pale Fire offers a cornucopia of deceptive pleasures, at the center of which is a 999-line poem written by the literary genius John Shade just before his death. Surrounding the poem is a foreword and commentary by the demented scholar Charles Kinbote, who interweaves adoring literary analysis with the fantastical tale of an assassin from the land of Zembla in pursuit of a deposed king. Brilliantly constructed and wildly inventive, this is a darkly witty novel of suspense, literary one-upmanship, and political intrigue."
Orwell, George
1984
(1949)
"The story of one man's nightmare odyssey as he pursues a forbidden love affair through a world ruled by warring states and a power structure that controls not only information but also individual thought and memory, Ninety Eighty-Four is a prophetic, haunting tale. While the totalitarian system that provoked Orwell into writing it has since passed into oblivion, his harrowing cautionary tale of a man trapped in a political nightmare has had the opposite fate: its relevance and power to disturb our complacency seem to grow decade by decade."
Proust, Marcel
A la Recherche du Temps Perdu
(1913 - 1927)
"Marcel Proust spent the last fourteen years of his life writing A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, translated as Remembrance of Things Past or In Search of Lost Time. It is an intimate epic, an excavation of the self, and a comedy of manners by turns and all at once. Proust is the twentieth century's Dante, presenting us with a unique, unsettling picture of ourselves as jealous lovers and unmitigated snobs, frittering our lives away, with only the hope of art as a possible salvation. He offers us a form of redemption for a sober and secular age." Amazon
Swann's Way (In Search of Lost Time, v. 1)
(1913)
Proust's seven-volume novel In Search of Lost Time (also translated as Remembrance of Things Past) is almost universally regarded as the greatest achievement of French fiction in the 20th century. The first volume, Swann's Way, not only introduces us to the major themes of Proust's great work (memory, obsessive desire, high society, and the passage of time) but also to many of the unforgettable core characters in the work: around Marcel, the novel's endlessly introspective and sensitive young hero, rotate his doting parents, the wealthy Jewish lawyer Charles Swann, Swann's mercurial love Odette de Crécy, and the powerful and socially unimpeachable Guermantes family. Annotation by Professor Jay Dickson. This is a Read the Classics discussion title - December 6, 2009.
Remarque, Erich Maria
All Quiet on the Western Front
(1949)
"Paul Baumer enlisted with his classmates in the German army of World War I. Youthful and enthusiastic, they become soldiers. Despite what they have learned, however, they break into pieces under the first bombardment in the trenches. As the horrible war plods on year after year, Paul holds fast to a single vow- to fight against the principles of hate that meaninglessly pits young men of the same generation but different uniforms against each other. This is a timeless classic of World War I that speaks to generation after generation." (Annotation from Amazon.)
Sartre, Jean-Paul
No Exit
(1949)
Three characters are sent to hell for their misdeeds while alive. Garcin cheated and mistreated his wife; Inez seduced her cousin's wife while living with them; and Estelle cheated on her husband and drowned her illegitimate baby. Their punishment is to be confined to the same room with each other, but when offered the chance to leave, none of them take it. As Garcin realizes the absurdity of their situation, he comments that "Hell is other people".
Sinclair, Upton
The Jungle
(1906)
"The Jungle is a vivid portrait of the life and death immigrant experience in the harrowing Chicago stockyards. For a literary work, its influence has been extraordinary. It is widely credited with awakening the public fury that led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act (1906), a watershed in consumer protection and government legislation."
Stein, Gertrude
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
(1933)
"This is written as if it were the autobiography of Stein's lifelong companion, Alice B. Toklas. The work ostensibly contains Toklas' first-person account not of her own life, but of Stein's, written from Toklas' viewpoint and replete with Toklas' sensibilities, observations, and mannerisms. The book describes the life that Toklas and Stein lead in Paris, including their at-homes with such artists, literary lions, and intellectuals as Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, Henri Matisse, and Georges Braque. While Stein exchanges ideas with men of genius, Toklas sits with their wives. Stein's most famous work and one of the richest and most irreverent biographies ever written."
Steinbeck, John
The Grapes of Wrath
(1933)
"This Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of the Joad family's life on a failing Oklahoma farm, their difficult journey to California, and their disillusionment once they arrive there and fall prey to a parasitic economic system. A portrait of conflict between the powerful and the powerless, the novel captures the horrors of the Depression and probes the very nature of equality in America."
East of Eden
(1945)
"This sprawling and often brutal novel, set in the rich farmlands of California's Salinas Valley, follows the intertwined destinies of two families--the Trasks and the Hamiltons--whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel."
Toomer, Jean
Cane
(1923)
"A literary masterpiece of the Harlem Renaissance, Cane is a powerful work of innovative fiction evoking black life in the South. The sketches, poems, and stories of black rural and urban life that make up Cane are rich in imagery. Visions of smoke, sugarcane, dusk, and flame permeate the Southern landscape: the Northern world is pictured as a harsher reality of asphalt streets. Impressionistic, sometimes surrealistic, the pieces are redolent of nature and Africa, with sensuous appeals to eye and ear."" (Annotation from Amazon)
Waugh, Evelyn
Vile Bodies
(1930)
"The bright young things of 1920's Mayfair, with their paradoxical mix of innocence and sophistication, exercise their inventive minds and vile bodies in every kind of capricious escapade, whether it is promiscuity, dancing, cocktail parties or sports cars. A vivid assortment of characters, among them the struggling writer Adam Fenwick-Symes and the glamorous, aristocratic Nina Blount, hunt fast and furiously for ever greater sensations and the hedonistic fulfillment of their desires. Evelyn Waugh's acidly funny and experimental satire shows a new generation emerging in the years after the First World War, revealing the darkness and vulnerability beneath the glittering surface of the high life."
Brideshead Revisited
(1945)
"Waugh tells the story of the Marchmain family in this novel he considered his magnus opus. Aristocratic, beautiful and charming, the Marchmains are indeed a symbol of England and her decline in this novel of the upper class of the 1920s and the abdication of responsibility in the 1930s. As a student at Oxford, Charles Ryder is captivated by the decadent, aristocratic Sebastian Flyte, who invites him to spend time at his family home -- the magnificent Brideshead. He becomes infatuated with its eccentric inhabitants, especially Sebastian's sister, Julia, but things begin to unravel when Charles notices cracks in the family's carefully tended veneer, its secrets, its oppressive Catholicism and Sebastian's increasing reliance on alcohol. By turns romantic, sensuous, comic and somber, this is a remarkable examination of dysfunction and devotion." ((Annotation by Amazon)
Wharton, Edith
The Custom of the Country
(1913)
"The Custom of the Country is a scathing novel of ambition featuring one of the most ruthless heroines in literature. Undine Spragg is as unscrupulous as she is magnetically beautiful. Her rise to the top of New York's high society from the nouveau riche provides a provocative commentary on the upwardly mobile and the aspirations that eventually cause their ruin."
The Age of Innocence
(1925)
"The beautiful Countess Ellen Olenska, fleeing her brutish husband, returns from Europe to the upper-class world of Old New York in the 1870s. Her rebellious independence and impulsive awareness of life stir the educated sensitivity of Newland Archer, already engaged to marry Ellen's cousin. This novel won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for literature, making Wharton the first woman to win the award."
Woolf, Virginia
Mrs. Dalloway
(1925)
”Virginia Woolf's perfectly constructed Mrs. Dalloway is the study of a wealthy London political hostess and her society on one particular June day in 1923. Woolf's narrative shows us the hidden mechanisms behind Clarissa Dalloway's actions as she prepares for a large party that evening, and how her thoughts turn to an examination of the choices she has made in her life; so too does it unravel the hidden worlds of thought behind the dozens of others whom Clarissa Dalloway passes … in particular, a young veteran of the recent World War who cannot help but remember the horrors of that event that Clarissa's London works so desperately to repress.” Annotation by Professor Jay Dickson. This is a Read the Classics discussion title - February 7, 2010

To the Lighthouse
(1927)
"From the seemingly trivial postponement of a visit to a nearby lighthouse, Virginia Woolf constructs a remarkable and moving examination of the complex tensions and allegiances of family life, and the conflict between male and female principles, in what is probably her most popular novel."
A Room of One's Own
(1929)
"In this classic essay, Virginia Woolf takes on the establishment, using her gift of language to dissect the world around her and give a voice to those who have none. Her message is simple: A woman must have a fixed income and a room of her own in order to have the freedom to create."
The Waves
(1931)
"The personalities of six friends are revealed through interior monologues, as they move from childhood to maturity. Elliptical, but deeply poetic, the strands of their experiences emerge gently and reflectively in a stream of consciousness, illuminating the meaning of life itself. As always, the language, resonant and vivid, plays a paramount role."
Wright, Richard
Native Son
(1940)
"Set in Chicago in the 1930's, this is the story of a young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic. Wright's powerful novel is an unsparing reflection on the poverty and feelings of hopelessness experienced by people in inner cities across the country and of what it means to be black in America. Widely acclaimed as one of the finest books ever written on race and class divisions in America, this powerful novel reflects the forces of poverty, injustice, and hopelessness that continue to shape our society."

Russian Literature

Titles for previous year's discussion series

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Gogol, Nikolai Vasilevich
The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol
(Gogol, 1809–1852)
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a master of irony and of grotesque and sublime effects, whose humor horrifies and whose horror amuses. D.S. Mirsky has famously described the world of Gogol's texts as "one of the most marvelous, unexpected — in the strictest sense, original — worlds ever created by an artist of words." Unpredictable and unclassifiable, his works admit wildly divergent interpretations. Contemporaries read him as providing bold critique of tsarist conditions; the 20th century appreciates him for his verbal virtuosity and insights into the crisis of identity. By Lena Lencek.
Bulgakov, Mikhail Afanasevich
The Master and Margarita
(1966)
This eccentric text is one of the most inventive, captivating, and provocative novels of the 20th century. It was 12 years in the writing. Finally published in 1966, it was written at the height of the Stalin Terror. The novel interweaves at least four plot lines: a comic account of Satan's visit to Stalin's Moscow; a love story between a tormented writer and a brave woman; an artist's tale; and an alternative history of Christ's encounter with Pontius Pilate. By Lena Lencek.
Pushkin, Aleksandr Sergeevich
Little Tragedies
(Pushkin,1799–1837)
Little Tragedies is a cycle of "chamber" plays which were written during the prolific Boldino autumn of 1830. They explore universal themes: rumor and reputation, time and prudence, religion and the fear of death, and ideal and profane love. Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin, Russia's greatest poet, launched all the major forms of modern Russian literature and laid the foundation for the Russian literary language. By Lena Lencek.

More classic Russian literature

Bunin, Ivan Alekseevich, 1870–1953
Collected Stories
"Russian poet, short story writer, novelist who wrote of the decay of the Russian nobility and of peasant life. Ivan Bunin was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1933. He is considered one of the most important figures in Russian literature before the Revolution of 1917. Although Bunin wrote poetry throughout his creative life, he gained fame chiefly for his prose works."
Bulgakov, Mikhail
The Heart of a Dog
(1925)
"This hilarious, brilliantly inventive novel by the author of The Master and Margarita tells the story of a scroungy Moscow mongrel named Sharik. Thanks to the skills of a renowned Soviet scientist and the transplanted pituitary gland and testes of a petty criminal, Sharik is transformed into a lecherous, vulgar man who spouts Engels and inevitably finds his niche in the bureaucracy as the government official in charge of purging the city of cats."
Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich, 1860–1904
The Complete Plays
"Chekhov's plays deal with the passing of the vitality of the Russian landed gentry. His characters, helpless before the changes taking place in the 19th-century Russia, take refuge in elaborate, improbable dreams of renewed prosperity." Benet's Readers Encyclopedia
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 1821–1881
"One of the greatest writers in world literature, Fyodor Dostoyevsky depicted with remarkable insight the depth and complexity of the human soul."
The Adolescent "(originally published in English as A Raw Youth) is markedly different in tone from Dostoevsky's other masterpieces. It is told from the point of view of the nineteen-year-old narrator, whose immaturity, freshness, and naivete are unforgettably reflected in his narrative voice. Dostoevsky masterfully depicts adolescence as a state of uncertainty, ignorance, and incompleteness, but also of richness and exuberance, in which everything is still possible. His tale of a youth finding his way in the disorder of Russian society in the 1870s is a high and serious comedy that borders on both farce and tragedy."
The Brothers Karamazov "was Dostoevsky's last and greatest work. The Karamozov brothers become involved in the brutal murder of their despicable father. Exploring the secret depths of humanity's struggles and sins, Dostoevsky unfolds a grand epic which attempts to venture into mankind's darkest heart, and grasp the true meaning of existence."
Crime and Punishment "Dostoevsky's drama of sin, guilt, and redemption transforms the sordid story of an old woman's murder into the nineteenth century's most profound and compelling philosophical novel. Raskolnikov, an impoverished student living in the St. Petersburg of the tsars, is determined to overreach his humanity and assert his untrammeled individual will. When he commits an act of murder and theft, he sets into motion a story that, for its excruciating suspense, its atmospheric vividness, and its depth of characterization and vision is almost unequaled in the literatures of the world."
The Idiot "In this literary classic Dostoyevsky focuses on a nobleman, whose gentle, child-like nature has earned him the nickname of "the idiot." A superb, panoramic view of mid-19th-century Russian manners, morals and philosophy."
Gogol, Nikolai Vasilevich
The Inspector-General
(1836)
"Gogol was a Ukrainian writer. This satirical play is a comedy of errors that portrays greed, stupidity and corruption in Tzarist Russia. The Inspector General is original in that it involves no sympathetic characters and no romance. The plot centers on a small town and its mayor. People fear that an inspector is in their midst incognito, so they frantically try to cover up past misdeeds."
Lermontov, Mikhail, 1814–1841
A Hero of Our Time
"The only novel written by one of Russia's greatest Romantic poets, This beloved classic has everything for the modern reader - dangerous liaisons, elegant psychological complexity, dark passion, emotional tension, romantic duels and deception, fiery action in the Caucasus, beautiful and exotic women with flair . . . and the sexiest Byronic anti-hero in all of Russian literature. Mikhail Lermontov lived and worked in the shadow of Pushkin. His verse forms, his subject matter, and his death in a pointless duel (age 27), suggest his older contemporary at every turn. For the last four years of his life, he was widely acknowledged as Pushkin's heir, Russia's greatest living poet. But Lermontov is very much worth reading for his own sake."
Nabokov, Vladimir Vladimirovich, 1899–1977
Laughter in the Dark "'Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster.' Thus begins Vladimir Nabokov's Laughter in the Dark; and this, the author tells us, is the whole story--except that he starts from here, with his characteristic dazzling skill and irony, and brilliantly turns a fable into a chilling, original novel of folly and destruction."
Lolita "Awe and exhiliration - along with heartbreak and mordant wit - abound in Lolita, Nabokov's most famous and controversial novel, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America. Most of all, it is a meditation on love - love as outrage and hallucination, madness and transformation."
Platonov, Andrei Platonovich, 1899–1951.
Soul and Other Stories
"The Soviet writer Andrey Platonov saw much of his work suppressed or censored in his lifetime. This volume gathers eight works that show Platonov at his tenderest, warmest, and subtlest. Among them are The Return, about an officer's difficult homecoming at the end of World War II, The River Potudan, a moving account of a troubled marriage; and the title novella, the extraordinary tale of a young man unexpectedly transformed by his return to his Asian birthplace, where he finds his people deprived not only of food and dwelling, but of memory and speech. This prizewinning English translation is the first to be based on the newly available uncensored texts of Platonov's short fiction."
Pushkin, Aleksandr Sergeevich
The Queen of Spades and other stories.
(1833)
"The Queen of Spades has long been acknowledged as one of the world's greatest short stories, in which Pushkin explores the nature of obsession. The Captain's Daughter is a novel-length masterpiece which combines historical fiction in the manner of Sir Walter Scott with the devices of the Russian fairy-tale. Also includes The Negro of Peter the Great and Dubrovsky."
Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr Isaevich, 1918–
The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956: an Experiment in Literary Investigation "Solzhenitsyn's gripping epic masterpiece of his arrest, interrogation, and years in the Soviet prison camps where he would remain for nearly a decade. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was born in Kislovodsk, Russia, in 1918. A twice-decorated captain in the Soviet Army, he was stripped of his rank, arrested, and convicted in 1945 for privately criticizing Stalin. Exiled from the USSR in 1974, Solzhenitsyn eventually settled in the United States before returning to his homeland twenty years later. His literary awards include the Nobel Prize for Literature and the Medal of Honor for Literature."
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich "A masterpiece of modern Russian fiction, this novel is one of the most significant and outspoken literary documents ever to come out of Soviet Russia. A brutal depiction of life in a Stalinist camp and a moving tribute to man's triumph of will over relentless dehumanization, this is Solzhenitsyn's first novel to win international acclaim."
Tolstoy, Leo, 1828–1910
Anna Karenina, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, The Kreutzer Sonata, Resurrection, War and Peace
Turgenev, Ivan Sergeevich, 1818–1883
First Love, and other stories "Bringing together six of Turgenev's best known stories in one volume, this collection includes First Love, Asya, Mumu, The Diary of a Superfluous Man, Song of Triumphant Love, and King Lear of the Steppes. Ivan Turgenev is a major figure in 19th-century Russian literature whose work observes the social and psychological interactions of peasants and aristocrats. He is the author of the short story collection A Sportsman's Sketches, which is said to have contributed to Tsar Alexander II's decision to liberate the serfs."
"Fathers and Sons (1862), Turgenev's masterpiece, represents in its hero, Bazarov, 'the new man', a nihilist liberated from age-old conformities and at odds with the previous generation, questioning the very fabric of society. A novel of ideas, Fathers and Sons is also a moving story of human relationships."
Zamiatin, Evgenii Ivanovich, 1884–1937
We
"Evgenii Zamyatin was born in Russia in 1884. Arrested during the abortive 1905 revolution, he was exiled twice from St. Petersburg, then given amnesty in 1913. We, composed in 1920 and 1921, elicited attacks from party-line critics and writers. In 1929, the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers launched an all-out attack against him. Denied the right to publish his work, he requested permission to leave Russia, which Stalin granted in 1931. Zamyatin went to Paris, where he died in 1937."

Russian Poetry of the Silver Age

Akhmatova, Anna Andreevna
A.S. Blok
Berberova, Nina
Aleksandr Blok: a Life
(1996)
Mandelshtam, Osip
Mandelshtam, Nadezhda
Hope Against Hope: a Memoir
(1999)
Mayakovsky, Vladimir

Pasternak, Boris
Doctor Zhivago
(1957)
Tsvetaeva, Marina

Philosophy

Titles for previous year's discussion series

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Plato
Republic
(ca. 380 B.C.)
"The 20th century philosopher A.N. Whitehead famously said that "the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato," and among Plato's works, the Republic stands out as the most all–encompassing: Plato addresses just about every area of philosophy. It's all here: justice, poetry and art, education, religion, the soul, pleasure, desire, love, sex, marriage, death, mathematics, truth, knowledge, appearance vs. reality, political and social systems, and more." By Paul Hovda.
Hume, David
A Treatise of Human Nature
(1739)
"Hume boldly undertakes to found a "science of human nature," in much the way that Newton was supposed to have recently done for the science of physics. Hume seems to find compelling considerations for deflating conclusions about us: our most deep–seated concepts are not rationally attributable to the world in the way many philosophers have thought — for example, the relation of causation is not a "force" in the world, but a kind of projection of the mind; our most deep–seated moral convictions are not rationally justifiable. In certain ways, Hume's philosophy is decisively "modern," not least in its more disturbing moments." By Paul Hovda.
Kant, Immanuel
The Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics
(1783)
"The Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics are a kind of condensed version of Kant's immense Critique of Pure Reason (1781). Kant's leading idea (called "transcendental idealism) is roughly that the objects that we experience are subject to conditions imposed upon them by the mind. Because the world is, as it were, (partially) constructed by the mind, it is subject to universal rules that the mind can know." By Paul Hovda.
Kant, Immanuel
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
(1785)
"Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals lays out the fundamentals of Kant's account, on which reason plays the central role (rather than, as on Hume's account, non–rational emotion and feeling, or, as on the dominant accounts of his day, God)." By Paula Hovda.
Descartes, René
Meditations and Other Metaphysical Writings
(1641)
"Many of us have heard that Descartes said "I think therefore I am," but what's the point? The Meditations on First Philosophy, in which Descartes put this forward, seek a foundation for what we might now call "scientific" knowledge. The Meditations are usually categorized as among the very first post–medieval philosophical works, and they are often thought of as among the cornerstones of modern science, as well as setting the agenda for modern philosophy." By Paul Hovda.

More Philosophy classics

Plato
Trial and death of Socrates
(399 B.C.)
"Remains a powerful document partly because it was a true - perhaps in certain parts verbatim - account of the end of one of the greatest figures in history."
Plato
The Symposium
(385 B.C.?)
"In his celebrated masterpiece, The Symposium, Plato imagines a high-society dinner-party in Athens in 416 BC. The guests--including the comic poet Aristophanes and Plato's mentor Socrates--each deliver a short speech in praise of love. The sequence of dazzling speeches culminates in Socrates famous account of the views of Diotima, a prophetess who taught him that love is our means of trying to attain goodness, and a brilliant sketch of Socrates himself by a drunken Alcibiades, the most popular and notorious Athenian of the time."
Aristotle
The Nicomachean Ethics
(Aristotle 384-322 B.C.)
"This work focuses on virtue and moral character, both playing key roles in the defining of Aristotelian ethics. It is made up of ten individuals books based largely on notes from Aristotle's lectures at the Lyceum and edited by his son Nicomachus."
Lucretius
On the Nature of Things
(First century B.C.)
As an Epicurean, Lucretius argues with philosophic clarity and poetic power "against fear of the gods by demonstrating through observations and logical argument that the operations of the world can be accounted for entirely in terms of natural phenomena, the regular but purposeless motions and interactions of tiny atoms in empty space, instead of in terms of the will of the gods." (wikipedia) Translated by Professor Walter Englert, the leader of the Read the Classics: Greece and Rome discussions.
Locke, John
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
(1689)
"In An Essay concerning Human Understanding, John Locke sets out his theory of knowledge and how we acquire it. Eschewing doctrines of innate principles and ideas, Locke shows how all our ideas, even the most abstract and complex, are grounded in human experience and attained by sensation ofexternal things or reflection upon our own mental activities."
Kant, Immanuel
Critique of Pure Reason
(1781, 1787)
"This was his foundational work on metaphysics."
Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo
Confessions
(Augustine, 354 - 430)
“Saint Augustine of Hippo created what is at once the first true autobiography in Western literature and among the most sophisticated yet accessible theological arguments in the history of Christianity. With extraordinary candor and psychological acumen, Augustine recounts his passage from a life of sensuality, Manichaean superstition, and empty careerism to a genuine spiritual awakening, and he articulates views on marriage, morality, and faith that have shaped our discourse ever since. The Confessions allows us to appreciate both the startling modernity of Augustine's insights and the imperishable poetry of his voice.”
Descartes
Discourse on Method
(1637)
“Descartes sets out in brief his radical new philosophy, which begins with a proof of the existence of the self (the famous "cogito ergo sum"). Next he deduces from it the existence and nature of God, and ends by offering a radical new account of the physical world and of human and animal nature. Written in everyday language and meant to be read by common people of the day, it swept away all previous philosophical traditions.”

Antiquity: Non Greek or Roman

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The New Oxford Annotated Bible
This New Revised Standard translation is accepted by Catholics, Protestants and Jews. Many consider it the best study bible, with annotations and cross references to aid in understanding the historical and literary aspects of the bible. Includes the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical books.
Gilgamesh
(ca 2000 B.C.)
The oldest known epic in the world. "Gilgamesh, the semi-divine ruler of Uruk, is a larger-than-life bully and abuser of his people. In order to tame the arrogant king, the gods create the wild and handsome Enkidu. But after Enkidu and Gilgamesh become fast friends, they defy the gods in a series of outsized adventures that brings Gilgamesh face to face with both loss and death itself."
Sun-tzu
The Art of War
(6th century B.C.)
"One of the oldest books on military strategy in the world. It is the first and one of the most successful works on strategy and has had a huge influence on Eastern and Western military thinking, business tactics, and beyond."
Ramayana
(ca. 300 B.C.)
"India's most beloved and enduring legend, The Ramayana is widely acknowledged to be one of the world's literary masterpieces. It recounts the story of the great prince Rama: his banishment to the forest; the abduction of his wife, Sita, by the powerful demon Ravana; and Rama's rescue of her. Rama's heroic deeds have been the source of inspiration for countless generations of Indians. The epic has profoundly affected the literature, art, and culture of South and Southeast Asia - an influence unparalleled in the history of world literature, except, possibly, by that of the Bible." The Ramayana; a shortened modern prose version of the Indian epic
Mahabharata
(ca. 200 B.C.)
Growing from an oral tradition of ballads based on historic events in India, the Mahabharata was passed down and extended through the centuries, becoming one of the longest poem ever written. There are shortened editions available.
Confucius
Analects
(Confucius 551–479 B.C.)
“Few individuals have shaped their country's civilization more profoundly than the Confucius. Compulsory reading in the late Imperial period for all who wished to enter the Civil Service or Government, his sayings and those of his disciples form the foundation of a distinct social, ethical, and intellectual system. They have retained their freshness and vigour throughout the two and a half millennia of their currency, and are still admired even in today's China.”
Lao Tzu (or Laozi)
Tao te Ching (or Daodejing )
(Sixth- Fifth Century B.C.)
“The Tao-Te Ching includes 'The Book of the Way' (the Tao) and 'The Book of Virtue or Power' (the Te) in which the teachings of Lao-Tzu are set down. According to the teachings, wisdom is attained through understanding the way the universe works. In order to understand how the universe works, one must live in harmony with it, accepting the forces at play, and acting intuitively and spontaneously in accordance with these forces. These ideas inform not only Taoism but are also an important part of Buddhist and Confucian philosophy.”
Chuang-tzu
(Fourth or Third Century B.C.)
Ancient Taoism with a smile.

Non–western: 900s to 1700s

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UNESCO collection of representative works
A series of books that highlights ancient and modern classic works selected by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). Includes the Art album series, Chinese series, European series, Indian series, Japanese series, Korean series, and Latin American series.
Sei Shonagon
The Pillow Book
(Sei Shonagon, ca. 965–1035)
"Written by the Court gentlewoman Sei Shonagon ostensibly for her own amusement, The Pillow Book is one of the greatest works of Japanese literature. A fascinating exploration of life amongst the nobility at the height of the idyllic Heian period, it describes the exquisite pleasures of a confined world in which poetry, love, fashion and whim dominated, and harsh reality was kept firmly at a distance.”
Murasaki Shikibu
The Tale of Genji
(Lady Murasaki, ca. 976–1015)
The Tale of Genji is another candidate for being called the world's first novel, and is also called one of its greatest. “Genji the Shining Prince, the son of an emperor, is a passionate character whose tempestuous nature, family circumstances, love affairs, alliances, and shifting political fortunes form the core of this magnificent epic. Throughout, The Tale of Genji offers a lively and well-rounded glimpse of golden age of Japan with a richly conceived and nuanced cast of characters.”
Omar Khayyam
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
(Omar Khayyam 1048–1123)
“Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam was translated by Edward FitzGerald into beautiful English more than seven centuries after it was written. It was a meeting of minds, a great collaboration of the past and the present, and FitzGerald's rendition of those passionate verses has become one of the best loved poem cycles in the English language. With their concern for the here and now, as opposed to the hereafter, Omar Khayyam's quatrains are as romantic today as they were hundreds of years ago; they are a tribute to the power of one moment's pleasure over a lifetime of sorrow, of desire over the vicissitudes of time.”
Shi Nai'an
All Men are Brothers (Shui hu chuan)
(Shi Nai'an, ca. 1290–ca. 1365.)
All Men are Brothers is also called Water Margin or Outlaws of the Marsh. Luo Guanzhong (or Lo Kuan-chung ) may have edited the book with Shi Nai'an, or he may be Shi Nai'an. "The legendary account of 108 "Stars from Heaven" who, faced with a corrupt bureaucracy, flee to Liangshan Marsh, from a fortress there thwarting minions of the evil regime while continuing to serve the emperor. In its mix of politics, military tactics, action, martial arts, magic, and even the bawdy this beloved novel is an unsurpassed classic in any language."
Luo Guanzhong (or Lo Kuan–chung )
Romance of the Three Kingdoms
(Luo Guanzhong, ca. 1330–ca. 1400)
"A Chinese historical novel based upon events in the turbulent years near the end of the Han Dynasty and the Three Kingdoms era, starting in 169 and ending with the reunification of the land in 280."

The Thousand and One Nights
(ca. 1500. translated by Richard Burton 1888)
"About a thousand years ago a vast number of stories in Arabic from various countries began to be brought together; only much later was the collection called The Arabian Nights or the Thousand and One Nights. All the stories are told by Shahrazad (Scheherazade), who entertains her husband, King Shahryar, whose custom it was to execute his wives after a single night. Shahrazad begins a story each night but withholds the ending until the following night, thus postponing her execution. This selection includes many of the stories that are universally known though seldom read in this authentic form: Aladdin; or, the Wonderful Lamp, Sindbad the Seaman and Sindbad the Landsman, and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves."
Wu, Chèng–en
The Journey to the West
(Wu, Chèng–en, ca. 1500–ca. 1582.)
"One of the most beloved classics of Chinese literature. The fantastic tale recounts the sixteen-year pilgrimage of the monk Xuanzang (596-664), one of China's most illustrious religious heroes, who journeyed to India with four animal disciples in quest of Buddhist scriptures. For nearly a thousand years, his exploits were celebrated and embellished in various accounts, culminating in the hundred–chapter Journey to the West, which combines religious allegory with romance, fantasy, humor, and satire."
Xiaoxiaosheng
The Plum in the Golden Vase
(1618)
Also called The Golden Lotus, this "brilliant social satire and critique is a devastating portrayal of 16th century China in the grip of decadence, cynicism and excess." The eroticism made the book notorious but it may seem tame by today's standards.
Matsuo, Basho
The Narrow Road to the Deep North
(Matsuo Basho 1644–1694.)
Also called Narrow Road to the Interior, Back Roads to Far Towns, or The Narrow Road to the Far North. "Matsuo Basho is the most famous Haiku poet of Japan. He made his living as a teacher and writer of Haiku and is celebrated for his many travels around Japan, which he recorded in travel journals. "Oku–No–Hosomichi," or "The Narrow Road to the Deep North" details the most arduous part of a nine-month journey with his friend and disciple, Sora, through the backlands north of the capital, west to the Japan Sea and back toward Kyoto. More than a record of the journey, Basho's journal is a poetic sequence that has become a center of the Japanese mind/heart."
Cao, Xueqin
Dream of the Red Chamber (or The Story of the Stone)
(Cao, Xueqin, ca. 1717–1763.)
"Also known as A Dream of Red Mansions, The Story of the Stone, or Chronicles of the Stone; Hung Lou Meng, or The Dream of the Red Chamber is usually grouped with three other pre–modern Chinese works of fiction, collectively known as the Four Great Classical Novels, and is often taken to be the zenith of classical Chinese fiction."

Reading the Classics

Websites and book lists

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Murnighan, Jack
Beowulf on the Beach: What to Love and What to Skip in Literature's 50 Greatest Hits
(2009)
A light hearted and informative survey of a well selected list of 50 great literary classics. He focuses on what you will likely enjoy about the books and includes short sections for each book on “The Buzz,” “What People Don't Know,” “Best Line,” “What's Sexy” (see his other books for much more of this sort of thing!), “Quirky Facts,” and “What to Skip.” And really his advice on what to skip in The Faerie Queene, the longest epic poem in English, may make you decide to read it.
Fadiman, Clifton
The New Lifetime Reading Plan
(1997)
"Provides readers with brief, informative and entertaining introductions to more than 130 classics of world literature. From Homer to Hawthorne, Plato to Pascal, and Shakespeare to Solzhenitsyn, the great writers of Western civilization can be found in its pages. In addition, this new edition offers a much broader representation of women authors, such as Charlotte Bronte, Emily Dickinson and Edith Wharton, as well as non-Western writers such as Confucius, Sun-Tzu, Chinua Achebe, Mishima Yukio and many others."
Dirda, Michael
Classics for Pleasure
(2007)
Introductions to nearly ninety of the world's most entertaining books, organized thematically. Masterpieces of fantasy and science fiction, horror and adventure, as well as biography and history, poetry and children's literature. Sappho's yearnings and the Arthurian romances, the exploits of Sherlock Holmes and the ghost stories of M. R. James, classic fairy tales and the Regency romances of Georgette Heyer are approached as a passionate reader rather than as a critic or scholar. New authors, less familiar classics, and major genre titles too often excluded from the canon.
Bloom, Harold
The Western Canon: the Books and School of the Ages
(1995)
"More than a required reading list, The Western Canon is a major work of vision by the foremost literary critic in America. In defining the essential masterworks of world literature, the Western Canon, Bloom enlightens and inspires all readers to return to the special joys of reading that our literary tradition offers." The Western Canon: a web version of Bloom's list
Rexroth, Kenneth
Classics Revisited

(1986)
Rexroth, Kenneth
More Classics Revisited
(1989)
Great Books Lists
A list of classic book lists created by librarian Robert Teeter.

100 World Fiction Classics
Book list created by Multnomah County Library staff.

Basics I – World Fiction Classics
Book list created by Multnomah County Library staff.

Books / Literature databases and web sites
Databases and website links created by Multnomah County Library staff.

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Unquoted original annotations by Tom French, Librarian, Multnomah County Library, unless otherwise noted. Annotations for titles that are part of the discussion series are often written by the professors who lead the discussions. Unattributed, quoted annotations are from book jackets, summaries from the library catalog and Books in Print unless otherwise stated. Original publication dates in parentheses.

Made possible by the National Endowment for the Humanities Fund of The Library Foundation.