INDEX OF RECOMMENDED BOOKS (With Dates)
Reading edition
The following are the books the author would choose for a small public or private library for general reading. Of course this list should be supplemented by a judicious selection of books on history, science, and economics, as well as works of reference:
Books for young people are marked “juv.”
Joseph Addison (1672-1719), 74
Essays from the Spectator.
Louise M. Alcott (1833-1888), 122
Little Women (juv.)
Alice in Wonderland, (juv.), by Lewis Carroll, 122
Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875), 122
Fairy Tales (juv.)
Æsop’s Fables (75 B. C.) (juv.), 122
Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), 64, 79
Culture and Anarchy.
Poems.
Arabian Nights (1450-1704-’07) (juv.), 88
Jane Austen (1775-1817), 115
Sense and Sensibility.
Pride and Prejudice.
Emma.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626), 74
Essays.
Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850), 100
The Country Doctor.
Eugenie Grandet.
Père Goriot.
The Duchess de Langeais.
The Alkahest.
César Birotteau.
Cousin Pons.
J. M. Barrie (1860- ), 80
The Little Minister.
A Window In Thrums.
Sentimental Tommy.
Tommy and Grizel.
Bible, 123
R. D. Blackmore (1825-1900)
Lorna Doone.
Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson (1792)
Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855), 115
Jane Eyre
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)
Poems
Robert Browning (1812-1889), 58
Poems
William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), 61
Poems
Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873), 100
The Last Days of Pompeii.
John Bunyan (1628-1688), 84
Pilgrim’s Progress.
Robert Burns (1759-1796), 62
Poems.
George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824), 61
Poems
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), 76
Essays.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616), 84
Don Quixote.
Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) (1835- )
Innocents Abroad
Huckleberry Finn (juv.)
Joan of Arc (juv.)
S. T. Coleridge (1772-1834), 64
Poems
James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851), 100
The Spy (juv.)
The Last of the Mohicans.
The Prairie.
The Pathfinder.
The Deerslayer.
Dinah Maria Craik (Miss Mulock) (1826-1887), 123
John Halifax, Gentleman (juv.)
Richard Henry Dana (1815-1882), 123
Two Years Before the Mast (juv.)
Daniel Defoe (1661-1731), 84
Robinson Crusoe (juv.)
Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859), 75
Confessions of an English Opium Eater.
The English Mail Coach.
Charles Dickens (1812-1870), 102
Pickwick.
Oliver Twist.
Old Curiosity Shop.
A Christmas Carol.
The Cricket on the Hearth (juv.)
Dombey & Son.
David Copperfield (juv.)
Little Dorrit.
A Tale of Two Cities.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)
Vivian Grey.
Sir A. Conan Doyle (1859- ), 118
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
Alexandre Dumas (1808-1870), 94
The Count of Monte Cristo.
The Three Musketeers.
Twenty Years After.
The Vicomte de Bragelonne.
The Black Tulip.
George Eliot (pseud.) (1819-1880), 114
Adam Bede.
Middlemarch.
Mill on the Floss.
Romola.
Silas Marner.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), 76
Essays.
Henry Fielding (1707-1754), 85
Tom Jones.
Edward FitzGerald (1809-1883), 64
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
Benj. Franklin (1706-1790)
Autobiography (juv.)
Poor Richard’s Almanac.
Mrs. Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (1810-1865), 115
Cranford.
Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774), 86
Vicar of Wakefield.
The Deserted Village.
She stoops to Conquer (play).
Green Mountain Boys.
By Elisa F. Pollard (juv.)
Grimm Brothers (1785-1863, 1786-1859), 122
Fairy Tales (juv.)
Edward Everett Hale (1822- ), 120
A Man Without a Country (juv.)
Thomas Hardy (1840- )
Far From the Madding Crowd.
Tess of the D’Urbervilles.
Bret Harte (1839-1902), 120
The Luck of Roaring Camp.
The Outcasts of Poker Flat.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), 119, 122
Twice-Told Tales.
House of the Seven Gables.
The Scarlet Letter.
Blithedale Romance.
Mosses from an Old Manse.
Wonder Stories (juv.)
Tanglewood Tales (juv.)
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894), 61, 80
Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.
Poems.
Thomas Hughes (1828-1896), 123
Tom Brown’s Schooldays (juv.)
Victor Hugo (1802-1885), 97
Notre Dame.
Les Miserables.
Toilers of the Sea.
Washington Irving (1783-1859), 117
The Sketch-Book.
The Alhambra.
Knickerbocker’s History of New York.
John Keats (1795-1821), 61
Poems.
Rudyard Kipling (1865- ), 121
Soldiers Three, etc.
Jungle Book (juv.)
Kim.
Captains Courageous.
Charles Kingsley (1819-1875), 101, 122
Hypatia.
Westward, Ho!
Hereward the Wake (juv.)
Water Babies (juv.)
Charles Lamb (1775-1834), 75
Essays.
Tales from Shakspere (with Mary Lamb) (juv.)
Alain René Le Sage (1668-1747), 87
Gil Blas.
Charles Lever (1806-1872)
Charles O’Malley.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), 54
Poems (juv.)
Evangeline.
Hiawatha (juv.)
Courtship of Miles Standish.
James Russell Lowell (1819-1891)
Poems.
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859), 77
Essays.
Lays of Ancient Rome (juv.)
Frederick Marryat (1792-1848)
Pacha of Many Tales.
The Phantom Ship.
Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893), 120
The Odd Number.
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius (121-180 A. D.).
Herman Melville (1819-1891), 123
Moby-Dick (juv.)
George Meredith (1828- )
The Ordeal of Richard Feveral.
Diana of the Crossways.
John Milton (1608-1674), 63
Poems.
Paradise Lost.
Donald Grant Mitchell (1822- ), 80
Reveries of a Bachelor, by Ik Marvel.
Gilbert Parker (1862- ), 121
Pierre and His People.
Seats of the Mighty.
Right of Way.
Paul and Virginia. By Bernardin de St. Pierre (1788)
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), 61, 117
Best Tales.
Best Poems and Essays.
Plutarch’s Lives (about 80 A. D.) (juv.)
Charles Reade (1814-1884), 101
Cloister and the Hearth.
It’s Never Too Late to Mend.
John Ruskin (1819-1900), 77
Sesame and Lilies.
Crown of Wild Olive.
Modern Painters.
Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), 88
Guy Mannering.
Old Mortality.
The Antiquary.
Rob Roy.
The Heart of Midlothian.
The Bride of Lammermoor.
Ivanhoe.
The Monastery.
Kenilworth.
Quentin Durward.
William Shakspere (1564-1616), 65
Plays and Sonnets.
Scottish Chiefs, by Jane Porter.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), 61
Poems.
Henry Sienkiewicz (1845- ), 101
Quo Vadis.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), 121
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Treasure Island (juv.)
Prince Otto (juv.)
Frank Stockton (1834-1902), 120
The Lady or the Tiger?
Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896), 116
Uncle Tom’s Cabin (juv.)
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), 74
Gulliver’s Travels (juv.)
The Swiss Family Robinson (juv.), by J. R. Wyss.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), 57
Poems.
Wm. Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863), 105
Vanity Fair.
Pendennis.
Henry Esmond.
The Newcomes.
Count Leo Tolstoi (1828- ), 121
War and Peace.
Anna Karénina.
The Long Exile and other stories.
Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883), 121
Short Stories.
Lew Wallace (1827-1905), 101
Ben-Hur.
Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
Poems.
John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892), 61
Poems.
Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman (1862- ), 115, 120
A New England Nun.
A Humble Romance and other short stories.
William Wordsworth (1770-1850), 62
Poems.
Emile Zola (1840-1902), 113
The Downfall.
Money.
Drink.