Pour une Bibliotheque Ideale

In the early 1950s Raymond Queneau asked several dozen French (or living in France) authors and critics to list the hundred books they would choose if they had to limit themselves to that number. He reproduced all their responses in the book Pour une Bibliothèque Idéale (Gallimard, 1956), along with the overall top 100 list reproduced bellow.
The list of respondents can be seen at
http://web.archive.org/web/20010223073820/w3.tvi.cc.nm.us/~rswigg/BIAuthorsPolled.html
I’m not sure if all of them have a list in the book, or just an answer explaining why they did not vote.
On the above page you can also find a link to Queneau’s own list.

Two more individual lists from the book are also online
Henry Miller’s:
http://web.archive.org/web/20001021225726/literarycritic.com/miller.htm
and Marianne Moore’s:
http://web.archive.org/web/20001022025805/literarycritic.com/moore1.htm

Other famous names include Jean Anouilh, Andre Breton, Paul Claudel (the only one who had a book included in the overall top 100), Jean Cocteau, Paul Eluard, and Georges Simenon.

(found at: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pour_une_Biblioth%C3%A8que_Id%C3%A9ale)

Send to Printer Pour une Bibliotheque Ideale In the early 1950s Raymond Queneau asked several dozen French (or living in France) authors and critics to list the hundred books they would choose if they had to limit themselves to that number. He reproduced all their responses in the book Pour une Bibliothèque Idéale (Gallimard, 1956), along with the overall top 100 list reproduced bellow. The list of respondents can be seen at http://web.archive.org/web/20010223073820/w3.tvi.cc.nm.us/~rswigg/BIAuthorsPolled.html I’m not sure if all of them have a list in the book, or just an answer explaining why they did not vote. On the above page you can also find a link to Queneau’s own list. Two more individual lists from the book are also online Henry Miller’s: http://web.archive.org/web/20001021225726/literarycritic.com/miller.htm and Marianne Moore’s: http://web.archive.org/web/20001022025805/literarycritic.com/moore1.htm Other famous names include Jean Anouilh, Andre Breton, Paul Claudel (the only one who had a book included in the overall top 100), Jean Cocteau, Paul Eluard, and Georges Simenon. (found at: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pour_une_Biblioth%C3%A8que_Id%C3%A9ale)
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	1.		Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Wordsworth Royals Series) (Wordsworth Royals Series) by William Shakespeare
	2.	?	The Bible by
	3.		In Search of Lost Time: Proust 6-pack (Proust Complete) by Marcel Proust
	4.		Montaigne: Essays by Michel de Montaigne
	5.		Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais
	6.		The Flowers of Evil (Wesleyan Poetry) by Charles Baudelaire
	7.		Pensees by Blaise Pascal
	8.		Five Plays (Methuen World Classics) by Moliere
	9.		Confessions (Oxford World's Classics) by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
	10.		The Red and the Black (Modern Library Classics) by Stendhal
	11.		The Dialogues of Plato (Bantam Classic) by Plato
	12.		The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendhal
	13.		Francois Villon's The Legacy & The Testament by Francois Villon
	14.		Rimbaud: Poems (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets) by Arthur Rimbaud
	15.		The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz (Complete) by Cardinal de Retz
	16.	?	War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
	17.		Memoirs: Duc de Saint-Simon (Lost Treasures)
	18.		Don Quixote (P.S.) by Miguel de Cervantes
	19.		The Complete Plays of Jean Racine, Volume I: Iphigenia, Andromache, Britannicus by Jean Racine
	20.		Collected Works of Aeschylus by Aeschylus
	21.		The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
	22.		Collected Poems and Other Verse (Oxford World's Classics) by Stéphane Mallarmé
	23.		The Fables of La Fontaine by Jean De La Fontaine
	24.		Faust (Bantam Classics) by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
	25.		Alcools by Guillaume Apollinaire
	26.		A Sentimental Education (Oxford World's Classics) by Gustave Flaubert
	27.		The Odyssey by Homer
	28.		Corneille: Three Masterpieces (Absolute Classics) by Pierre Corneille
	29.		The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
	30.		Memoires d'Outre Tombe by FrancoisRene de Chateaubriand
	31.	?	THE NOVELS OF HONORE DE BALZAC (45 VOLUMES)The Human Comedy by HONORE DE BALZAC
	32.		The Complete Plays of Sophocles by Sophocles
	33.		Ulysses by James Joyce
	34.		Dangerous Liaisons (Penguin Classics) by Pierre Ambroise Francois Choderlos de Laclos
	35.		Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
	36.		Poems of Paul Verlaine by Paul Verlaine
	37.		Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
	38.		A Season in Hell by Arthur Rimbaud
	39.		A Discourse on the Method (Oxford World's Classics) by Rene Descartes
	40.		Manon Lescaut by Francoise Prevost
	41.		Selected Poems (Penguin Classics S.) by Pierre Ronsard
	42.		Aristophanes: The Complete Plays
	43.		The Annals & The Histories (Modern Library Classics) by Tacitus
	44.		Ethics (Penguin Classics) by Benedict de Spinoza
	45.		Selected Poems by Friedrich Holderlin
	46.		Les Filles Du Feu / Les Chimeres (Garnier-Flammarion) by Nerval
	47.		Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
	48.		The Confessions of Saint Augustine by St. Augustine of Hippo
	49.		Maldoror by Comte de Lautreamont
	50.		Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
This is a community list. You can contribute, edit, or help maintain it by adding it to your lists. Created by frbrown on Oct 10, 2008.