The Bloom Boxall Great Fiction List--Read 'Em Or Else Vol. I: Pre-1800

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I cross-referenced Harold Bloom’s Western Canon with the Peter Boxall "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die" (2006 and 2008 versions, inclusive) to come up with this Must-Read list to end all Must-Read lists. It will be split into three volumes by century. PLEASE DON’T ADD OR DELETEANYTHING. Create your own, or adopt mine and leave me a comment if I have omitted something. Please remember that Bloom is hopelessly stuffy (H. G. Wells is "serious" literature and Jules Verne isn’t; Waugh’s political satire is worthwhile and "Brideshead Revisited" is fluff) and that his "canon" doesn’t include anything from the past 20 years or so. Boxall’s lists are almost entirely comprised of novels.

  1. 1.
    Aesop's Fables: A Classic Illustrated Edition
    by Aesop

  2. 2.
    ?
    The Thousand and One Nights (complete collection)
    by Anonymous

  3. 3.
    ?
    The Metamorphoses
    by Ovid

  4. 5.
    ?
    The Luciads
    by Luis de Camoëns

  5. 7.

  6. 9.
    Don Quixote
    by Miguel de Cervantes

  7. 10.
    ?
    The Pilgrim’s Progress
    by John Bunyan

  8. 11.
    ?
    The Princess of Cleves
    by Madame de La Fayette

  9. 12.
    A Tale of A Tub (Great Ideas S.)
    by Jonathan Swift

  10. 13.

  11. 14.
    ?
    Robinson Crusoe
    by Daniel Defoe

  12. 15.
    Moll Flanders (Norton Critical Editions)
    by Daniel Defoe

  13. 16.
    ?
    Tom Jones
    by Henry Fielding

  14. 19.
    ?
    Pamela
    by Samuel Richardson

  15. 21.
    Candide
    by Voltaire

  16. 23.
    Emile, or On Education
    by John, Jacques Rousseau

  17. 24.
    ?
    The Vicar of Wakefield
    by Oliver Goldsmith

  18. 25.
    ?

  19. 26.
    ?
    A Sentimental Journey Through France and Germany
    by Laurence Sterne

  20. 27.
    ?
    The Sorrows of Young Werther
    by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  21. 28.
    Evalina
    by Fanny Burney

  22. 29.
    Dangerous Liasons (Classic Fiction)
    by Choderlos de Laclos

  23. 30.
    ?
    Confessions
    by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  24. 31.
    ?
    Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship
    by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  25. 32.
    Elective Affinities (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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Created by jillelvish on Oct 08, 2008.
 

Comments

Untitled — 2 weeks ago

Celestina by Fernando de Rojas is on both lists as well, if I’m not mistaken. It’s a pre-1800 book, too.


Untitled — 4 years ago

Thanks very much for this list!




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