Masterpieces of World Literature
Philosophy and fantasy, plays and poems, essays and epics -- 270 literary classics that range from The Divine Comedy and Death Comes for the Archbishop to The Aeneid and The Grapes of Wrath are summarized and analyzed in this essential reference. 244 books chosen by Frank N. Magill.
- 1
One Thousand and One Nights
Unknown · 2018 · 0 lists
- 2
- 3
The Epic of Gilgamesh
Unknown · 0 lists
- 4
- 5
The Twelve Labours of Hercules
Unknown · 1808 · 0 lists
- 6
Argonautika
Apollonius of Rhodes · 0 lists
- 7
The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes
Unknown · 1908 · 0 lists
- 8
Mahabharata
Vyasa · 2010 · 0 lists
- 9
The Nibelungenlied
Unknown · 1962 · 0 lists
- 10
Orpheus and Eurydice
Unknown · 0 lists
- 11
Poem of the Cid
Unknown · 1975 · 0 lists
- 12
Reynard the Fox
Unknown · 2018 · 0 lists
- 13
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood
Howard Pyle · 1883 · 0 lists
- 14
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Simon Armitage · 2008 · 0 lists
- 15
The Song of Roland
Unknown · 0 lists
- 16
The Complete Fairy Tales and Stories
Hans Christian Andersen · 2007 · 0 lists
- 17
The Birds
Aristophanes · 1889 · 0 lists
- 18
Confessions
Augustine of Hippo · 1482 · 0 lists
- 19
Decameron
Giovanni Boccaccio · 1516 · 0 lists
- 20
The Divine Comedy
Dante Alighieri · 1321 · 0 lists
- 21
The Education of Henry Adams
Henry Adams · 1777 · 0 lists
- 22
Emma
Jane Austen · 1815 · 12 lists
- 23
Lysistrata
Aristophanes · 1872 · 0 lists
- 24
Meditations
Marcus Aurelius · 170 · 0 lists
- 25
- 26
The Orlando Furioso
Ludovico Ariosto · 1824 · 0 lists
- 27
- 28
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen · 1813 · 28 lists
- 29
Prometheus Bound
Aeschylus · -500 · 0 lists
- 30
Summa Theologica
Thomas Aquinas · 1467 · 0 lists
- 31
Robert Browning's Poetry
Robert Browning · 2006 · 0 lists
- 32
Eugénie Grandet
Honoré de Balzac · 1868 · 4 lists
- 33
The Flowers of Evil
Charles Baudelaire · 2012 · 0 lists
- 34
The Good Earth
Pearl S. Buck · 1548 · 0 lists
- 35
Jane Eyre
Charlotte Brontë · 1847 · 26 lists
- 36
Life Is a Dream
Pedro Calderón de la Barca · 1914 · 0 lists
- 37
The Life of Samuel Johnson
James Boswell · 1791 · 0 lists
- 38
Selected Poems of Lord Byron
Lord Byron · 2002 · 0 lists
- 39
The New Atlantis
Francis Bacon · 1627 · 0 lists
- 40
The Old Wives' Tale
Arnold Bennett · 1908 · 0 lists
- 41
Father Goriot
Honoré de Balzac · 2012 · 0 lists
- 42
Pilgrim's Progress
John Bunyan · 1678 · 0 lists
- 43
Poems of Matsuo Bashō
Matsuo Bashō · 0 lists
- 44
Complete Poetry & Prose
William Blake · 1929 · 0 lists
- 45
Sonnets from the Portuguese
Elizabeth Barrett Browning · 1850 · 0 lists
- 46
Waiting for Godot
Samuel Beckett · 1989 · 0 lists
- 47
Wuthering Heights
Emily Brontë · 1847 · 29 lists
- 48
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll · 1865 · 2 lists
- 49
Biographia Literaria
Samuel Taylor Coleridge · 1817 · 0 lists
- 50
The Canterbury Tales
Geoffrey Chaucer · 1478 · 0 lists
- 51
Le Cid
Pierre Corneille · 1636 · 0 lists
- 52
Death Comes for the Archbishop
Willa Cather · 1927 · 0 lists
- 53
Don Quixote
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra · 1615 · 27 lists
- 54
Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad · 1899 · 29 lists
- 55
Last of the Mohicans
James Fenimore Cooper · 1826 · 5 lists
- 56
My Ántonia
Willa Cather · 1918 · 0 lists
- 57
Nostromo
Joseph Conrad · 1904 · 9 lists
- 58
Catiline Orations
Marcus Tullius Cicero · 0 lists
- 59
The Pioneers
James Fenimore Cooper · 1800 · 0 lists
- 60
The Plague
Albert Camus · 1947 · 7 lists
- 61
The Red Badge of Courage
Stephen Crane · 1855 · 0 lists
- 62
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Samuel Taylor Coleridge · 1798 · 0 lists
- 63
Three Sisters
Anton Chekhov · 1914 · 0 lists
- 64
The Brothers Karamazov
Fyodor Dostoevsky · 1880 · 22 lists
- 65
The Count of Monte Cristo
Alexandre Dumas · 1844 · 0 lists
- 66
Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoevsky · 1866 · 22 lists
- 67
David Copperfield
Charles Dickens · 1850 · 19 lists
- 68
Great Expectations
Charles Dickens · 1861 · 19 lists
- 69
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby
Charles Dickens · 1800 · 4 lists
- 70
On the Origin of Species
Charles Darwin · 1859 · 0 lists
- 71
The Pickwick Papers
Charles Dickens · 1994 · 0 lists
- 72
Poems of Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson · 1890 · 0 lists
- 73
Demons
Fyodor Dostoevsky · 2000 · 0 lists
- 74
The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Donne
John Donne · 1941 · 0 lists
- 75
Robinson Crusoe
Daniel Defoe · 1719 · 11 lists
- 76
The Bacchae
Euripides · 1954 · 0 lists
- 77
- 78
The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson · 2000 · 0 lists
- 79
Four Quartets
T.S. Eliot · 1943 · 0 lists
- 80
- 81
Middlemarch
George Eliot · 1871 · 26 lists
- 82
Parzival
Wolfram Eschenbach · 1885 · 0 lists
- 83
Silas Marner
George Eliot · 1861 · 4 lists
- 84
The Trojan Women
Euripides · 1905 · 0 lists
- 85
Absalom, Absalom!
William Faulkner · 1936 · 16 lists
- 86
As I Lay Dying
William Faulkner · 1915 · 0 lists
- 87
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin · 1883 · 0 lists
- 88
A Fable
William Faulkner · 2022 · 0 lists
- 89
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1925 · 0 lists
- 90
The Interpretation of Dreams
Sigmund Freud · 2018 · 0 lists
- 91
Madame Bovary
Gustave Flaubert · 1856 · 26 lists
- 92
A Passage to India
E. M. Forster · 1924 · 18 lists
- 93
Penguin Island
Anatole France · 2014 · 0 lists
- 94
The Poems of Robert Frost
Robert Frost · 1991 · 0 lists
- 95
The Sound and the Fury
William Faulkner · 1929 · 26 lists
- 96
Tom Jones
Henry Fielding · 1749 · 12 lists
- 97
Dead Souls
Nikolai Gogol · 1842 · 12 lists
- 98
Faust
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1808 · 0 lists
- 99
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Edward Gibbon · 1776 · 0 lists
- 100
Stories of Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Gogol · 2022 · 0 lists
- 101
She Stoops to Conquer
Oliver Goldsmith · 1773 · 0 lists
- 102
- 103
Dream of the Red Chamber
Cao Xueqin · 1958 · 0 lists
- 104
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
David Hume · 1748 · 0 lists
- 105
A Farewell to Arms
Ernest Hemingway · 1929 · 9 lists
- 106
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Ernest Hemingway · 1940 · 13 lists
- 107
The Histories of Herodotus
Herodotus · 1899 · 0 lists
- 108
The House of the Seven Gables
Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1851 · 3 lists
- 109
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
Victor Hugo · 1924 · 0 lists
- 110
Hunger
Knut Hamsun · 1890 · 8 lists
- 111
- 112
Jude the Obscure
Thomas Hardy · 1895 · 8 lists
- 113
Leviathan
Thomas Hobbes · 1651 · 0 lists
- 114
Les Misérables
Victor Hugo · 1862 · 16 lists
- 115
The Odyssey
Homer · -800 · 0 lists
- 116
The Old Man and the Sea
Ernest Hemingway · 1952 · 15 lists
- 117
The Return
Hisham Matar · 1950 · 6 lists
- 118
The Scarlet Letter
Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1850 · 13 lists
- 119
Tess Of The D'Urbervilles
Thomas Hardy · 1891 · 0 lists
- 120
Works and Days
Hesiod · 1993 · 0 lists
- 121
A Doll's House
Henrik Ibsen · 1889 · 0 lists
- 122
An Enemy of the People
Henrik Ibsen · 1882 · 0 lists
- 123
Hedda Gabler
Henrik Ibsen · 1890 · 0 lists
- 124
Stories of Washington Irving
Washington Irving · 1899 · 0 lists
- 125
The Alchemist
Paulo Coelho · 1988 · 3 lists
- 126
The Ambassadors
Henry James · 1903 · 8 lists
- 127
The Golden Bowl
Henry James · 1904 · 6 lists
- 128
The Portrait of a Lady
Henry James · 1881 · 13 lists
- 129
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
James Joyce · 1916 · 15 lists
- 130
Pragmatism
William James · 1999 · 0 lists
- 131
The Turn of the Screw
Henry James · 1898 · 5 lists
- 132
Two Essays on Analytical Psychology
C.G. Jung · 1956 · 0 lists
- 133
Ulysses
James Joyce · 1920 · 39 lists
- 134
Volpone
Ben Jonson · 1606 · 0 lists
- 135
The Castle
Franz Kafka · 1907 · 8 lists
- 136
Critique of Pure Reason
Immanuel Kant · 2016 · 0 lists
- 137
The Complete Poems
John Keats · 1994 · 0 lists
- 138
Kim
Rudyard Kipling · 1901 · 8 lists
- 139
The Sickness Unto Death
Soren Kierkegaard · 1954 · 0 lists
- 140
The Trial
Franz Kafka · 1925 · 21 lists
- 141
Babbitt
Sinclair Lewis · 1922 · 6 lists
- 142
Daphnis and Chloe
Longus · 1717 · 0 lists
- 143
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
John Locke · 1690 · 0 lists
- 144
Main Street
Sinclair Lewis · 1920 · 7 lists
- 145
De Rerum Natura
Lucretius · 1991 · 0 lists
- 146
Sons and Lovers
D.H. Lawrence · 1913 · 11 lists
- 147
Areopagitica
John Milton · 1644 · 0 lists
- 148
Benito Cereno
Herman Melville · 1855 · 0 lists
- 149
Billy Budd, Foretopman
Herman Melville · 1924 · 3 lists
- 150
Buddenbrooks
Thomas Mann · 1909 · 11 lists
- 151
Death in Venice
Thomas Mann · 1954 · 3 lists
- 152
Doctor Faustus
Thomas Mann · 1662 · 4 lists
- 153
Essays
Michel de Montaigne · 1618 · 0 lists
- 154
Das Kapital
Karl Marx · 1867 · 0 lists
- 155
The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton
John Milton · 2007 · 0 lists
- 156
The Magic Mountain
Thomas Mann · 1924 · 18 lists
- 157
The Misanthrope
Molière · 1666 · 0 lists
- 158
Moby-Dick
Herman Melville · 1851 · 0 lists
- 159
Mort
Terry Pratchett · 1557 · 0 lists
- 160
On Liberty
John Stuart Mill · 1859 · 0 lists
- 161
Paradise Lost
John Milton · 1667 · 0 lists
- 162
The Prince
Niccolò Machiavelli · 1515 · 0 lists
- 163
Spoon River Anthology
Edgar Lee Masters · 1915 · 0 lists
- 164
- 165
Utopia
Thomas More · 1518 · 0 lists
- 166
Beyond Good and Evil
Friedrich Nietzsche · 2009 · 0 lists
- 167
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Friedrich Nietzsche · 2011 · 0 lists
- 168
Metamorphoses
Ovid · 1479 · 6 lists
- 169
Mourning Becomes Electra
Eugene O'Neill · 1932 · 0 lists
- 170
Nineteen Eighty-Four
George Orwell · 1948 · 0 lists
- 171
The Age of Reason
Thomas Paine · 1794 · 0 lists
- 172
The Cantos
Ezra Pound · 1917 · 0 lists
- 173
The Poetry of Alexander Pushkin
Alexander Pushkin · 2003 · 0 lists
- 174
The Complete Works of Plato
Plato · 2005 · 0 lists
- 175
An Essay on Man
Alexander Pope · 1733 · 0 lists
- 176
Eugene Onegin
Alexander Pushkin · 1995 · 2 lists
- 177
The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe · 1849 · 0 lists
- 178
Pensées
Blaise Pascal · 1672 · 0 lists
- 179
The Rape of the Lock
Alexander Pope · 1712 · 0 lists
- 180
In Search of Lost Time
Marcel Proust · 1913 · 0 lists
- 181
The Republic
Plato · 375 · 0 lists
- 182
The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau · 1858 · 0 lists
- 183
Cyrano de Bergerac
Edmond Rostand · 1897 · 0 lists
- 184
The Duino Elegies
Rainer Maria Rilke · 2006 · 0 lists
- 185
Gargantua and Pantagruel
François Rabelais · 1930 · 0 lists
- 186
Phèdre
Jean Racine · 1677 · 0 lists
- 187
First Folio
William Shakespeare · 1953 · 0 lists
- 188
Oedipus at Colonus
Sophocles · 2020 · 0 lists
- 189
Oedipus Rex
Sophocles · 2006 · 0 lists
- 190
- 191
Dracula
Bram Stoker · 1897 · 16 lists
- 192
East of Eden
John Steinbeck · 1952 · 0 lists
- 193
Ethics
Baruch de Spinoza · 1558 · 0 lists
- 194
The Faerie Queene
Edmund Spenser · 1590 · 0 lists
- 195
The Father
August Strindberg · 1887 · 0 lists
- 196
Frankenstein
Mary Shelley · 1818 · 20 lists
- 197
The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck · 1939 · 32 lists
- 198
Gulliver’s Travels
Jonathan Swift · 1726 · 17 lists
- 199
Ivanhoe
Sir Walter Scott · 1800 · 3 lists
- 200
Kidnapped
Robert Louis Stevenson · 1886 · 3 lists
- 201
Miss Julie
August Strindberg · 1889 · 0 lists
- 202
Nausea
Jean-Paul Sartre · 1969 · 3 lists
- 203
The Poems of Sappho
Sappho · 1924 · 0 lists
- 204
The Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley · 1994 · 0 lists
- 205
The Red and the Black
Stendhal · 1830 · 14 lists
- 206
Scepticism and Animal Faith
George Santayana · 1923 · 0 lists
- 207
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Robert Louis Stevenson · 1886 · 8 lists
- 208
The Tale of Genji
Murasaki Shikibu · 2000 · 10 lists
- 209
- 210
Treasure Island
Robert Louis Stevenson · 1880 · 13 lists
- 211
Tristan
Gottfried von Strassburg · 1823 · 0 lists
- 212
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
Laurence Sterne · 1759 · 0 lists
- 213
The Wealth of Nations
Adam Smith · 1776 · 0 lists
- 214
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain · 1885 · 0 lists
- 215
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Mark Twain · 1876 · 0 lists
- 216
Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy · 1876 · 24 lists
- 217
Barchester Towers
Anthony Trollope · 1857 · 0 lists
- 218
Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas · 2016 · 0 lists
- 219
Democracy in America
Alexis de Tocqueville · 1945 · 0 lists
- 220
Civil Disobedience and Other Essays
Henry David Thoreau · 2005 · 0 lists
- 221
Fathers and Sons
Ivan Turgenev · 1907 · 5 lists
- 222
History of the Peloponnesian War
Thucydides · -400 · 0 lists
- 223
Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson · 2014 · 0 lists
- 224
Life on the Mississippi
Mark Twain · 1883 · 0 lists
- 225
Vanity Fair
William Makepeace Thackeray · 1847 · 15 lists
- 226
Walden
Henry David Thoreau · 1854 · 7 lists
- 227
War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy · 1869 · 29 lists
- 228
The Aeneid
Virgil · 19 · 0 lists
- 229
- 230
- 231
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Jules Verne · 1870 · 0 lists
- 232
Ethan Frome
Edith Wharton · 1910 · 5 lists
- 233
The Importance of Being Earnest
Oscar Wilde · 2018 · 0 lists
- 234
Leaves of Grass
Walt Whitman · 1855 · 0 lists
- 235
Mrs. Dalloway
Virginia Woolf · 1925 · 20 lists
- 236
The Prelude
William Wordsworth · 1850 · 0 lists
- 237
The Time Machine
H. G. Wells · 1895 · 5 lists
- 238
To The Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf · 1927 · 25 lists
- 239
The Waves
Virginia Woolf · 1931 · 9 lists
- 240
Autobiographies
William Butler Yeats · 1791 · 0 lists
- 241
Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats
William Butler Yeats · 1994 · 0 lists
- 242
Germinal
Émile Zola · 1885 · 5 lists
- 243
Don Juan
Lord Byron · 1819 · 0 lists
- 244
The Waste Land
T.S. Eliot · 1991 · 0 lists
