Top 40 Most Important Works in the World

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The editors at WLT have compiled a list of the Top 40 Most Important Works in the World: 1927-Present by consulting writers and academics from all over the globe, east and west. The works were chosen to reflect what readers and scholars regard as important and influential in the period that WLT has been in existence–works that readers as well as academics consistently return to. In this regard, they tried to avoid a purely scholar’s list (e.g., Finnegan’s Wake), but neither did they want a strictly popular or best-seller list. Hence they put on the advisory board writers who are focused on readers and also selected prestigious scholars, and the result is a "reader’s list" informed by academic judgment. The test of the list, of course, will be how long people consult it and find it useful.