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cjacklen's "Classic Literature Challenge 2007"

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Here is my version of a basic reading list of the classics; hopefully, by the time I am done, I will understand most of the references to Machiavelli, Cervantes, Homer, and others I see in many contemporary novels. I hope to finish the list by the end of 2007, but I am not holding my breath. Either way, when I am finished I plan to make another list in order to fill in some of the holes in this one.

The list is actually four lists of 25 each: first introductory literature, like you might read in high school, then American lit, then British lit, then world lit; all in alphabetical order by author. I am willing to consider suggestions; I haven’t read anything of literary value in about 10 years and my memory is a bit fuzzy about what’s out there.

  1. 1.
    Beowulf: A Prose Translation (Penguin Classics)
    by Anonymous

    Drag me to re-order


  2. 2.
    The Complete Fables (Penguin Classics)
    by Aesop

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  3. 3.
    Tarzan of the Apes
    by Edgar Rice Burroughs

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  4. 5.
    The Awakening
    by Kate Chopin

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  5. 6.
    Don Quixote (P.S.)
    by Miguel de Cervantes

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  6. 7.

  7. 8.
    A Passage to India (Penguin Classics)
    by E.M. Forster

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  8. 9.
    The Diary of Anne Frank
    by Anne Frank

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  9. 10.
    Lord of the Flies
    by William Golding

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  10. 12.
    The Scarlet Letter
    by Nathaniel Hawthorne

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  11. 13.
    The Iliad

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  12. 14.
    The Odyssey
    by Homer - Translated By Ian Johnston

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  13. 15.
    Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
    by Edgar Allan Poe

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  14. 16.
    All Quiet on the Western Front
    by Erich Maria Remarque

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  15. 17.
    The Catcher in the Rye
    by J.D. Salinger

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  16. 18.
    Julius Caesar (Folger Shakespeare Library)
    by William Shakespeare

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  17. 19.
    Macbeth (Folger Shakespeare Library)
    by William Shakespeare

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  18. 20.
    Romeo and Juliet (Folger Shakespeare Library)
    by William Shakespeare

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  19. 21.
    Frankenstein
    by Mary Shelley

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  20. 22.
    Dracula (Norton Critical Editions)
    by Bram Stoker

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  21. 23.
    The Hobbit
    by J.R.R. Tolkien

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  22. 24.
    The Lord of the Rings
    by J.R.R. Tolkien

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  23. 25.
    The War of the Worlds (Modern Library Classics)
    by H. G. Wells

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  24. 27.
    Little Women (Signet Classics)
    by Louisa May Alcott

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  25. 28.
    I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
    by Maya Angelou

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  26. 30.
    My Antonia (Signet Classics)
    by Willa Cather

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  27. 31.
    The Red Badge of Courage
    by Stephan Crane

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  28. 32.
    Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
    by Frederick Douglass

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  29. 33.
    The Great Gatsby
    by F. Scott Fitzgerald

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  30. 34.
    The Autobiography and Other Writings (Penguin Classics)
    by Benjamin Franklin

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  31. 35.
    The Federalist Papers (Signet Classics)
    by Alexander Hamilton

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  32. 37.
    Good-Bye, Mr. Chips
    by James Hilton

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  33. 38.

  34. 39.
    Moby-Dick: or, The Whale
    by Herman Melville

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  35. 40.
    Death of a Salesman
    by Arthur Miller

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  36. 41.
    Gone with the Wind
    by Margaret Mitchell

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  37. 43.
    The Grapes of Wrath (Penguin Classics)
    by John Steinbeck

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  38. 44.
    The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Norton Critical Editions)
    by Robert Louis Stevenson

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  39. 45.
    Uncle Tom's Cabin (Norton Critical Editions)
    by Harriet Beecher Stowe

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  40. 46.
    Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau

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  41. 47.
    The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Penguin Classics)
    by Mark Twain

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  42. 48.
    The Jungle: The Uncensored Original Edition
    by Upton Sinclair

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  43. 49.
    Our Town: A Play in Three Acts (Perennial Classics)
    by Thornton Wilder

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  44. 50.
    The Glass Menagerie
    by Tennessee Williams

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  45. 52.
    Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Signet Classics)
    by Anonymous

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  46. 53.
    Pride and Prejudice
    by Jane Austen

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  47. 54.
    Jane Eyre (Penguin Classics)
    by Charlotte Brontë

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  48. 55.
    Wuthering Heights (Norton Critical Editions)
    by Emily Bronte

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  49. 56.
    The Canterbury Tales (Penguin Classics)
    by Geoffrey Chaucer

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  50. 57.
    Heart of Darkness (Norton Critical Editions)
    by Joseph Conrad

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  51. 59.
    The Origin Of Species
    by Charles Darwin

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  52. 60.
    Robinson Crusoe (Penguin Classics)
    by Daniel Defoe

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  53. 61.
    Great Expectations
    by Charles Dickens

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  54. 62.
    Rebecca
    by Daphne duMaurier

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  55. 63.
    Silas Marner
    by George Eliot

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  56. 64.
    Tess of the D'Urbervilles (Penguin Classics)
    by Thomas Hardy

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  57. 65.
    Brave New World
    by Aldous Huxley

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  58. 66.
    Lady Chatterly's Lover
    by D.H.Lawrence

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  59. 67.
    Dr. Faustus (Modern Library)
    by Thomas Mann

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  60. 68.
    Animal Farm and 1984
    by George Orwell

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  61. 69.
    Hamlet (Folger Shakespeare Library)
    by William Shakespeare

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  62. 70.
    A Midsummer Night's Dream (Folger Shakespeare Library)
    by William Shakespeare

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  63. 71.
    The Taming of the Shrew (Folger Shakespeare Library)
    by William Shakespeare

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  64. 72.
    Pygmalion (Penguin Classics)
    by George Bernard Shaw

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  65. 73.
    Gulliver's Travels (Norton Critical Editions)
    by Jonathan Swift

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  66. 74.
    Vanity Fair (Penguin Classics)
    by William Makepeace Thackeray

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  67. 76.
    The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete
    by Anonymous

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  68. 78.
    The Divine Comedy
    by Dante Alighieri

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  69. 80.
    The Stranger
    by Albert Camus

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  70. 81.
    The Cherry Orchard (Methuen Drama)
    by Anton Chekhov

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  71. 82.
    Père Goriot (Norton Critical Editions)
    by Honoré de Balzac

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  72. 83.
    Crime and Punishment (Signet Classics)
    by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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  73. 84.
    The Count of Monte Cristo (Tor Classics)
    by Alexandre Dumas

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  74. 85.
    Madame Bovary (Penguin Classics)
    by Gustave Flaubert

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  75. 86.
    The Tin Drum
    by Gunter grass

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  76. 87.
    Siddhartha
    by Hermann Hesse

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  77. 88.
    Les Miserables

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  78. 89.
    A Doll's House
    by Henrik Ibsen

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  79. 90.
    The Prince
    by Niccolo Machiavelli

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  80. 91.
    Le Morte D'Arthur: Complete, Unabridged, Illustrated Edition
    by Sir Thomas Malory

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  81. 92.
    Lolita
    by Vladimir Nabokov

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  82. 93.
    Doctor Zhivago
    by Boris Pasternak

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  83. 94.
    Plato's Republic (complete)
    by Plato

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  84. 95.
    Travels of Marco Polo (Signet Classics (Paperback))
    by Marco Polo

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  85. 96.
    Cyrano De Bergerac
    by Edmond Rostand

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  86. 97.
    One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch (Signet Classics)
    by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

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  87. 99.
    Anna Karenina (Signet Classics)
    by Leo Tolstoy

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  88. 100.
    Candide: or, Optimism (Modern Library Classics)
    by Voltaire

    Drag me to re-order


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Created by cjacklen on Dec 14, 2006.