read the western canon

Some time ago. Next up is the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

The Theocratic Age
The Ancient Near East

• The Epic of Gilgamesh
• The Egyptian Book of the Dead
• The Bible (King James Version)
• The Apocrypha
• Saying of the Fathers (Pirke Aboth)

Ancient India (Sanskrit)

• The Mahabharata
• The Bhagavad-Gita
• The Ramayana

The Ancient Greeks

• Homer
  o The Iliad translated by Andrew Lang
  o The Odyssey translated by S.H. Butcher and Andrew Lang
• Hesiod
  o Works of Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica
• Sappho
  o One Hundred Lyrics by Bliss Carman
• Pindar
  o The Extant Odes of Pindar, translated by Ernest Myers
• Aeschylus
  o Four Plays by Aeschylus (Suppliant Maidens, Persians, Seven Against Thebes, and Prometheus Bound) translated by E.D.a. Morshead
  o The House of Atreus (Agamemnon, Libation-Bearers, Furies) translated by E.D.A. Morshead
• Sophocles
  o Oedipus Trilogy (Oedipus the King, Antigone, and Oedipus at Colonus) translated by F. Storr
  o Seven Plays in English Verse (Antigone, Aias, King Oedipus, Electra Trachinian Maidens, Philoctetes, Oedipus at Colonos) translated by Lewis Campbell
• Euripides
  o Tragedies of Euripides volume 1 (Hecuba, Orestes, Phoenissae, Medea, Hippolytus, Alcestis, Bacchae, Heraclidae, Iphigenia in Alide, and Iphigenia in Tauris) translated by Theodore Alois Buckley
• Aristophanes
  o The Eleven Comedies
  + volume 1 (Knights, Acharnians, Peace, Lysistrata, Clouds)
  + volume 2 (Wasps, Birds, Frogs, Thesmophoriazusae, Ecclesiazusae, Plutus)
• Herodotus
  o The History of Herodotus, translated by G.C. Macaulay
  + volume 1
  + volume 2
• Thucydides
  o The History of the Peolponnesian War, translated by Richard Cawley
• Plato
  o Dialogues translated by Benjamin Jowett
  + Alcibiades
  + Apology
  + Charmides (and preface to the collection)
  + Cratylus
  + Critias
  + Crito
  + Euthydemus
  + Euthyphro
  + Gorgias
  + Ion
  + Laches
  + Laws
  + Lesser Hippias
  + Lysis
  + Menexus
  + Meno
  + Parmenides
  + Phaedo
  + Phaedrus
  + Philebus
  + Protagoras
  + Republic
  + Sophist
  + Statesman
  + Symposium
  + Theaetetus
  + Timaeus
• Aristotle
  o Poetics translated by S.H. Butcher
  o Ethics

Hellenistic Greeks

• Longinus
  o On the Sublime, translated by H.L. Havell
• Theocritus
  o Idylls translated by C.S. Calverley
• Plutarch
  o Lives (complete), translated by A.H. Clough
  o Essays and Miscellanies (Complete Works, volume 3)
• Aesop
  o Fables, translated by V.S. Jones
• Lucian of Samosata
  o Works
  + volume 1
  + volume 2
  + volume 3

The Romans

• Plautus
  o Works, volume 1 (Amphitryon, Comedy of Asses, Pot of Gold, Two Bacchises, Captives)
• Terence
  o The Comedies of Terence, translated by Henry Thomas Riley and George Colman (Andrian, Eunuch, Self-Tormentor, Brothers, Step-Mother, Phormio)
• Lucretius
  o Of the Nature of Things, translated by William Ellery Leonard
• Cicero
  o On Friendship and Old Age, translated by E.S. Shuckburgh
• Horace
  o Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry, translated by John Conington
  o The Odes and Carmen Saeculare, translated by John Conington
  o Works of Horace, translated by C.Smart
• Catullus
  o The Poems and Gragments of Catullus, translated by Robinson Ellis
• Virgil
  o The Aeneid
  o Eclogues
  o Georgics
• Lucan
  o Pharsalia
• Ovid
  o Metamorphoses, volume 1, books 1-7, translated by Henry T. Tiley
• Petronius
  o The Satyricon, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff
• Apuleius
  o The Golden Asse, translated by William Adlington

The Middle Ages: Latin, Arabic, and the Vernacular Before Dante

• Saint Augustine
  o Confessions, translated by Edward Bouverie Pusey
  o City of God, translated by Marcus Dods
• The Koran
  o Three Translations, side-by-side (Abdullah Yusuf Ali, Marmaduke Pickthall, Mohammad Habib Shakir)
• The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, translated by Richard F. Burton
  o volume 1
  o volume 2
  o volume 3
  o volume 4
  o volume 5
  o volume 6
  o volume 7
  o volume 8
  o volume 9
  o volume 10
  o supplemental volume 1
  o supplemental volume 2
  o supplemental volume 3
  o supplemental volume 4
  o supplemental volume 5
  o supplemental volume 6
• The Eddas
  o The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfussioin translated by Benjamin Thorpe, and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson, translated by I.A. Blackwell
  o The Younger Edda or Prose Edda edited by Rasmus B. Anderson
• The Nibelungenlied, translated by George Henry Needler
• Chretien DeTroyes
  o Four Arthurian Romances (Erec and Enide, Cliges, Yvain, and Lancelot)
• Beowulf, translated by Lessllie Hall
• Lay of the Cid, translated by R. Selden Rose and Leonard Bacon

The Aristocratic Age
Italy

• Dante
  o The Divine Comedy, translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• Petrarch
  o Poems of Petrarch,
• Giovanni Boccaccio
  o The Decameron, translated by J.M. Rigg
  + volume 1
  + volume 2
• Ludovico Aristo
  o Orland Furioso
• Michael Angelo Buonarroti
  o The Sonnets of Michael Angelo Buonarroti and Tommaso Campanella, translated by John Addington Symonds
• Niccolo Machiavelli
  o The Prince, translated by W.K. Marriott
• Leonardo da Vinci
  o Notebooks
• Baldassare Castiglione
  o The Book of the Courtier, translated by Thomas Hoby
• Benvenuto Cellini
  o Autobiography, translated by John Addington Symonds
• Toquato Tasso
  o Jerusalem Delivered, translated by Edward Fairfax
• Tommaso Campanella
  o The City of the Sun
  o The Sonnets of Michael Angelo Buonarroti and Tommaso Campanella, translated by John Addington Symonds

Spain

• Miguel de Cervantes
  o Don Quixote, translated by John Ormsby
  o The Exemplary Novels, translated by Walter K. Kelly
• Pedro Calderon de la Barca
  o Life is a Dream, translated by Denis Florence MacCarthy
  o The Wonder-Working Magician, translated by Denis Floence MacCarthy

England and Scotland

• Geoffrey Chaucer
  o The Canterbury Tales, edited by D. Laing Purves
• Sir Thomas Malory
  o Le Morte Darthur (King Arthur and His Noble Knights of the Round Table)
  + volume 1
  + volume 2
• Sir Thomas More
  o Utopia
• Sir Philip Sidney
  o Astrophel and Stella
  o Defence of Poesie
• Edmund Spenser
  o The Faerie Queene
  o Amoretti
  o Astrophel
  o Shephearde’s Calender
  o Sonnets
• Christopher Marlowe
  o Dr. Faustus
  o Edward the Second
  o Hero and Leander and Other Poems
  o Jew of Malta
  o Massacre at Paris
  o Tamburlaine the Great
  + part 1
  + part 2
  o Tragedy of Dido Queen of Cathage
  o Works of Christopher Marlowe, volume 3 (Hero and Leander, Ovid’s Elegies, Epigrams, First Book of Lucan, The Passioante Shepherd to His Love, Fragment, Dialogue in Verse)
• Michael Drayton
  o Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles
  o Edimion and Phoebe
  o Minor Poems of Michael Drayton
• Samuel Daniel
  o Delia
  o Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles by Daiel and Constable
  o Defence of Ryme
• Thomas Nashe
  o The Unfortunate Traveller
• William Shakespeare
  o plays—the Mobey electronic edition
  + All’s Well that Ends Well
  + Antony and Cleopatra
  + As You Like It
  + Comedy of Errors
  + Coriolanus
  + Cymbeline
  + Hamlet
  + Henry IV Part 1
  + Henry IV Part 2
  + Henry V
  + Henry VI Part 1
  + Henry VI Part 2
  + Henry VI Part 3
  + Henry VIII
  + Julius Caesar
  + King John
  + King Lear
  + Love’s Labor’s Lost
  + Macbeth
  + Measure for Measure
  + Merchant of Venice
  + Merry Wives of Windsor
  + Midsummer Night’s Dream
  + Much Ado About Nothing
  + Othello
  + Pericles Prince of Tyre
  + Richard II
  + Richard III
  + Romeo and Juliet
  + Taming of the Shrew
  + Tempest
  + Timon of Athens
  + Titus Andronicus
  + Troilus and Cressida
  + Twelfth Night
  + Two Gentlemen of Verona
  + Winter’s Tale
  o plays—the first folio (35 plays in a single document)
  o glossary
  o poetry
  + Lover’s Complaint
  + Passionate Pilgrim
  + Rape of Lucrece
  + Sonnets
  + Venus and Adonis
• Ben Jonson
  o The Alchemist
  o Cynthia’s Revels
  o Discoveries Made Upon Men and Matter and Some Poems
  o Epicoene
  o Every Man in His Humor
  o Every Man Out of His Humor
  o Masque of Beauty
  o Masque of Blacknesse
  o Poetaster
  o Sejanus
  o Volpone
• Francis Bacon
  o Essays
• Robert Burton
  o The Anatomy of Melancholy
• Sir Thomas Browne
  o Religio Medici, Hydriotphia, and The Letter to a Friend
• Thomas Hobbes
  o Leviathan
• Robert Herrick
  o Lyrical Poems
  o Web of Life
• Richard Lovelace
  o Lucasta
• Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
  o Beggar’s Bush
  o Custom of the Country
  o Elder Brother
  o Faithful Shepherdess
  o False One
  o Humorous Lieutenant
  o King and No King
  o Laws of Candy
  o Maid’s Tragedy
  o Philaster
  o Rule a Wife and Have a Wife
  o Scornful Lady
  o Spanish Curate
  o Wit Without Money
• George Chapman
  o Bussy D’Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D’Ambois
• John Webster
  o The White Devel
  o The Duchess of Malfi
• John Bunyan
  o Pilgrim’s Progress
• Izaak Walton
  o The Compleat Angler
• John Milton
  o Poetical Works (including Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes)
  o Four Poems (L’Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas
  o Areopagitica
• Samuel Butler
  o Hudibras
• John Dryden
  o Anti-Achitophel
  o Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry
  o Macflecknoe
  o Palamon and Arcite
  o Poetical Works of John Dryden edited by George Gilfillan
  + volume 1
  + volume 2
  o Works of John Dryden edited by Sir Walter Scott
  + volume 2 (The Rival Ladies, The Indian Queen. The Indian Emperor, Secret Love)
  + volume 4 (Almanzor and Almahide, or the Conquest of Granada by the Spaniards, parts 1 and 2, Marriage-la-Mode, a Comedy, The Assignation)
  + volume 5 (Amboyna, The State of Innocence, Aureng-Zebe, All For Love)
  + volume 6 (Oediups, Troilus and Cressida, The Spanish Friar)
  + volume 7 (The Duke of Guise, Albion and Albanius, Don Sebastian)
• Thomas Otway
  o Venice Preserved
• William Congreve
  o The Way of the World
  o Love for Love
• Jonathan Swift
  o A Tale of a Tub
  o Gulliver’s Travels
  o Battle of the Books
  o Journal to Stella
  o A Modest Proposal
  o Poems of Jonathan Swift
  + volume 1
  + volume 2
• Alexander Pope
  o Poetical Works
  + volume 1
  + volume 2
  o Essay on Criticism
  o Essay on Man
  o Rape of the Lock
• John Gay
  o The Beggar’s Opera
• James Boswell
  o Life of Johnson
  + volume 1
  + volume 2
  + volume 3
  + volume 4
  + volume 5
  + volume 6
  o Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides
  o Boswell’s Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew erskine and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica
• Samuel Johnson
  o A Grammar of the English Language (short)
  o Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland
  o The Lives of the Poets
  + Joseph Addison, Richard Savage, Jonathan Swift
  + Gay, Gray, Thomson, Young, and others
  + Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, and Pope
  + Waller, Milton, Cowley
  o The Merry-Thought
  + part 1
  + parts 2, 3, and 4
  o Notes to Shakespeare
  + volume 1—Comedies
  o Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language (short)
  o Preface to Shakespeare
  o Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia
  o The Vanity of Human Wishes, 1749
  o Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Jerome Lobo, translated by Samuel Johnson
  o Works of Samuel Johnson
  + Volume 1—Life Poems and Tales
  + Volume 2—The Rambler
  + Volume 4—the Adventurer and Idler
  + Volume 5—miscellaneous pieces
  + Volume 6—reviews, political tracts and lives of eminent persons
  + Volume 10—parliamentary debates
  + Volume 11—parliamentary debates
• Edward Gibbon
  o Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
  + volume 1
  + volume 2
  + volume 3
  + volume 4
  + volume 5
  + volume 6
• Edmund Burke
  o Selections from the Speeches and Writing of Edmund Burke
• William Collins
  o Odes
• Thomas Gray
  o Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard
• George Farquhar
  o The Beaux’ Strategem
• Christopher Smart
  o A Song to David
• Oliver Goldsmith
  o The Vicar of Wakefield
  o She Stoops to Conquer
  o The Deserted Village
• Richard Brinsley Sheridan
  o The School for Scandal
• William Cowper
  o The Task and Other Poems
• George Crabbe
  o The Borough
  o Inebriety and the Candidate
  o The Library
  o Miscellaneous Poems
  o The Parish Register
  o Tales
  o The Village and the Newspaper
• Daniel Defoe
  o Moll Flanders
  o Robinson Crusoe
  o Journal of the Plague Year
• Samuel Richardson
  o Clarissa
  + volume 1
  + volume 2
  + volume 3
  + volume 4
  + volume 5
  + volume 6
  + volume 7
  + volume 8
  + volume 9
  o Pamela
  + volume 1
  + volume 2
• Henry Fielding
  o Joseph Andrews
  + volume 1
  + volume 2
  o Tom Jones
• Tobias Smollett
  o The Adventures of Roderick Random
  o The Expedition of Humphry Clinker
• Laurence Sterne
  o The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy
  o A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy
• Fanny Burney
  o Evelina
• Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
  o The Spectator, volumes 1, 2, and 3

France

• The Song of Roland
• Francois Villon
  o Ballads and Lyrics of Old France, and Other Poems, translated by Andrew Lang
• Michel de Montaigne
  o Essays, translated by Charles Cotton
  + volume 1
  + volume 2
  + volume 3
  + volume 4
  + volume 5
  + volume 6
  + volume 7
  + volume 8
  + volume 9
  + volume 10
• Francois Rabelais
  o Five Books of the Lives, Heroic Deeds and Sayings of Gargantua and His Son Pantagruel, translated by sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromarty and Peter Antony Motteux
  + book 1
  + book 2
  + book 3
  + book 4
  + book 5
• Marguerite de Navarre
  o The Heptameron
  + volume 1
  + volume 2
  + volume 3
  + volume 4
  + volume 5
• Pierre Corneille
  o The Cid
  o Polyeucte
• Francois de La Rochefoucauld
  o Reflections, translated by J.W. Willis Bund and J. Hain Friswell
• Jean de La Fontaine
  o The Fables of La Fontaine, translated by Elizur Wright
• Moliere
  o Imaginary Invalid. translated by Charles Heron Wall
  o Middle-Class Gentleman, translated by Philip Dwight Jones
  o The Miser, translated by Charles Heron Wall
  o Pretentious Young Ladies
  o Tartuffe, translated by Curtis Hidden Page
• Jean Racine
  o Athaliah, translated by J. Donkersley
  o Phaedra, translated by Robert Bruce Boswell
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau
  o Confessions
  o Emile, translated by Barbara Foxley
• Voltaire
  o Zadig or the Book of Fate
  o Candide
  o Letters on England
• Abbe Prevost
  o Manon Lescaut
• Madame de La Fayette
  o The Princess of Cleves

Germany

• Erasmus
  o The Praise of Folly, translated by John Wilson
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
  o Egmont, translated by Anna Swanwick
  o Faust, part 1, translated by Charles T. Brooks
  o Hermann and Dorothea, translated by Ellen Frothingham
  o Iphigenia in Tauris, translated by Anna Swanwick
  o The Poems of Goethe, translated by Edgar Alfred Bowring
  o The Sorrows of Young Werther
• Fredrich Schiller
  o The Camp of Wallenstein, translated by James Churchill
  o The Death of Wallenstein, translated by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
  o Don Carlos
  o Mary Stuart
  o The Robbers
• Gotthold Lessing
  o Nathan the Wise, translated by William Tyalor of Norwich

The Democratic Age
Italy

• Giacomo Leopardi
  o Poems of Giacomo Leopardi, translated by Frederick Townsend

France

• Victor Hugo
  o Les Miserables, translated by Isabel F. Hapgood
  o Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre Dame)
  o Poems
• Honore de Balzac
  o The Girl with the Golden Eyes, translated by Ellen Marriage
  o Louis Lambert, translated by Clara Bell and James Waring
  o Cousin Betty, translatedb y James Waring
  o Eugenie Grandet, translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley
  o Ursula, translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley
• Gustave Flaubert
  o Madame Bovary, translated by Eleanor Marx-Aveling
  o Salammbo
  o A Simple Soul
• George Sand
  o The Devil’s Pool, translated by George B. Ives
• Paul Verlaine
  o Poems, translated by Gertrude Hall
• Guy de Maupassant
  o Works
  + volume 1
  + volume 2
  + volume 3
  + volume 4
• Emile Zola
  o L’Assomoir
  o Nana

Scandinavia

• Henrik Ibsen
  o Hedda Gabler, translated by Edmund Gosse and William Archer
  o The Master Builder, translated by Edmund Gosse and William Archer
  o The Lady from the Sea, translated by Eleanor Marx-Aveling
  o When We Dead Awaken
• August Strindberg
  o The Father and Other Plays (The Father, Coutness Julie, The Outlaw, The Stronger), translated by Edith and Warner Oland
  o Plays by August Strindberg, Second Series (There Are Crimes and Crimes, Miss Julia, The STronger, Creditors, Pariah), translated by Edwin Bjoerkman
  o The Road to Damascus, translated by Graham Rawson (all three parts)

Great Britain

• Robert Burns
  o Complete Works
• William Wordsworth
  o Lyrical Ballads and Other Poems
  + volume 1
  + volume 2
  o Poetical Works
  + volume 1
  + volume 2
  + volume 3
  o Poems
  + volume 1
  + volume 2
• Sir Walter Scott
  o Waverly
  o The Heart of Midlothian
  o Redgauntlet
  o Old Mortality
• Jane Austen
  o Pride and Prejudice
  o Emma
  o Mansfield Park
  o Persuasion
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge
  o Poems
• William Hazlitt
  o Lectures on the English Poets
  o The Spirit of the Age
  o Table-Talk: Essays on Men and Manners
• Lord Byron
  o Don Juan
  o Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
  o Byron’s Poetry volume 1
  o Works of Lord Byron
  + volume 3
  + volume 4
  + volume 6
• William Savage Landor
  o Imaginary Conversations and Poems
• Thomas De Quincey
  o Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
  o The Avenger
  o Biographical Essays
  o The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc
  o Memorials and Other Papers, volume
  o Miscellaneous Essays
  o Narrative and Miscellaneous Papers (both volumes)
  o The Note Book of an English Opium-Eater
  o Revolt of the Tartars
  o Theological Essays and other Papers
• Charles Lamb
  o Works of Charles and Mary Lamb
  + volume 2, Elia and The Last Essays of Elia
  + volume 4, Essays, Poems and Plays
• Maria Edgeworth
  o Castle Rackrent
• Elizabeth Gaskell
  o Cranford
  o Mary Barton
  o North and South
• James Hogg
  o The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
• Percy Bysshe Shelley
  o Complete Poetical Works
  + volume 1
  + volume 2
  + volume 3
  o A Defence of Poetry
• Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
  o Frankenstein
• John Keats
  o Poems of 187
  o Lamia
• Thomas Hood
  o Poetical Works
• Robert Browning
  o Dramatic Lyrics
  o Dramatic Romances
  o Browning’s Shorter Poems
• Charles Dickens
  o The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club
  o David Copperfield
  o The Adventures of Oliver Twist
  o A Tale of Two Cities
  o Bleak House
  o Hard Times
  o Nicholas Nickleby
  o Dombey and Son
  o Great Expectations
  o Martin Chuzzlewitt
  o A Christmas Carol
  o Cricket on the Hearth
  o Little Dorritt
  o Our Mutual Friend
  o The Mystery of Edwin Drood
• Alfred, Lord Tennyson
  o Becket and Other Plays (Becket, The Cup, The Falcon, The Promise of May)
  o Early Poems
  o Enoch Arden
  o Idylls of the King
  o Lady Clare
  o The Last Tournament
  o The Princess
  o Queen Mary and Harold
  o Suppressed Poems of Alfred, Lord Tennyson
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti
  o The House of Life
  o The Germ
• Matthew Arnold
  o Celtic Literature
  o Culture and Anarchy
  o Selections from the Prose Works
  o Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems
• Christina Rossetti
  o Goblin Market, The Prince’s Progress, and Other Poems
  o Poems
• Thomas Love Peacock
  o Nightmare Abbey
  o Gryll Grange
• Gerard Manley Hopkins
  o Poems
• Thomas Carlyle
  o Heroes and Hero Worship
  o On the Choice of Books
  o Past and Present
  o Sartor Resartus
• John Ruskin
  o Queen of the Air
  o Stones of Venice
• Walter Pater
  o Appreciations
  o Imaginary Portraits
  o Marius the Epicurean
  + volume 1
  + volume 2
• Edward FitzGerald
  o Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
• John Stuart Mill
  o Autobiography
• John Henry Newman
  o Apologia pro Vita Sua
• Anthony Trollope
  o The Barsetshire Novels
  + The Warden
  + Barchester Towers
  + Dr. Thorne
  + Framley Parsonage
  + The Small House at Allington
  + Last Chronicle of Barset
  o The Palliser Novels
  + Can You Forgive Her?
  + Phineas Finn
  + The Eustace Diamonds
  + Phineas Redux
  + The Prime Minister
  + The Duke’s Children
  o Orley Farm
  o The Way We Live Now
• Lewis Carroll
  o Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
  o The Game of Logic
  o Hunting of the Snark
  o Phantasmagoria and Other Poems
  o Sylvie and Bruno
  o Through the Looking Glass
• Edward Lear
  o Book of Nonsense
  o Laughable Lyrics
  o More Nonsense
  o Nonsense Books
  o Nonsense Drolleries
  o Nonsense Song
• George Gissing
  o New Grub Street
• Algernon Charles Swinburne
  o The Age of Shakespeare
  o Astrophel
  o Atalanta in Calydon
  o Century of Roundels
  o Channel Passage
  o Chastelard
  o Dark Month
  o The Duke of Gandia
  o Erechtheus
  o Heptalogia
  o Locrine
  o Midsummer Holiday
  o Poems and Ballads, Third Series
  o Rosamund
  o Songs Before Sunrise
  o Songs of the Springtides
  o Songs of Two Nations
  o Studies in Song
  o A Study of Shakespeare
  o The Tale of Balen
  o Various Poems
• Charlotte Bronte
  o Jane Eyre
  o Villette
• Emily Bronte
  o Wuthering Heights
• William Makepeace Thackeray
  o Vanity Fair
  o The History of Henry Esmond
• George Meredith
  o The Egoist
  o A Reading of Life
  o Poems
  + volume 1
  + volume 2
  + volume 3
• Francis Thompson
  o New Poems
  o Poems
  o Sister Songs
• Gilbert Keith Chesterton
  o The Man Who Was Thursday
• Samuel Butler
  o Erewhon
  o The Way of All Flesh
• W.S. Gilbert
  o The 14 Gilbert and Sullivan Plays
  o Bab Ballads
  o More Bab Ballads
  o 50 Bab Ballads
• Wilkie Collins
  o The Moonstone
  o The Woman in White
  o No Name
• Oscar Wilde
  o The Duchess of Padua
  o The Ideal Husband
  o The Importance of Being Earnest
  o Lady Windemere’s Fan
  o Salome
  o A Woman of No Importance
  o Essays and Lectures
  o The Picture of Dorian Gray
• George Eliot
  o Adam Bede
  o Silas Marner
  o The Mill on the Floss
  o Middlemarch
  o Daniel Deronda
• Robert Louis Stevenson
  o Essays
  o Essays of Travel
  o Kidnapped
  o The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
  o Treasure Island
  o The New Arabian Nights
  o The Master of Ballantrae
  o Weir of Hermiston
• William Morris
  o Poems by the Way and Love is Enough
  o The Well at the World’s End
  o News from Nowhere
• Bram Stoker
  o Dracula
• George Macdonald
  o Lilith
  o At the Back of the North Wind

Germany

• Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
  o Household Tales, translated by Margaret Hunt
• Theodore Storm
  o Immensee, translated by C.W. Bell
• E.T.A. Hoffman
  o The Cremona Violin, translated by J.T. Beally
• Friedrich Schlegel
  o Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature
• Friedrich Nietzsche
  o Beyond Good and Evil, translated by Helen Zimmern

Russia

• Aleksandr Pushkin
  o The Bakchesarian Fountain, translated by William D. Lewis
  o The Daughter of the Commandant, translated by Mrs. Milne Home
  o Marie, translated by Marie H. de Zielinska
  o The Queen of Spades, translated by H. Twitchell
  o The Shot, translated by T. Keane
  o The Talisman
  o Boris Godunov, translated by Alfred Hayes
• Nikolay Gogol
  o St. John’s Eve, translated by Isabell F. Hapgood
  o Taras Bulba and Other Tales
  o Dead Souls, translated by D.J. Hogarth
  o The Inspector-General, translated by Thomas Seltzer
• Mikhail Lermontov
  o A Hero of Our Time, translated by J.H. Widom and Marr Murray
• Ivan Turgenev
  o A Sportsman’s Sketches
  + volume 1
  + volume 2
  o On the Eve, translated by Constance Garnett
• Fyodor Dostoevsky
  o Notes from the Underground
  o Crime and Punishment, translated by Constance Garnett
  o The Idiot, trnaslated by Eva Martin
  o The Possessed (in .html format), translated by Constance Garnett
  o The Grand Inquisitor (from The Brothers Karamazov), translated by H.P. Blavatsky
  o The Gambler, translated by C.J. Hogarth
  o Poor Folk, translated by C.J. Hogarth
• Leo Tolstoy
  o The Cossacks, translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude
  o War and Peace
  + book 1
  + book 2
  + book 3
  + book 4
  + book 5
  + book 6
  + book 7
  + book 8
  + book 9
  + book 10
  + book 11
  + book 12
  + book 13
  + book 14
  + book 15
  o Anna Karenina, translated by Constance Garnett
  + part 1
  + part 2
  + part 3
  + part 4
  + part 5
  + part 6
  + part 7
  + part 8
  o Father Sergius
  o The Forged Coupon and Other Stories
  o The Kingdom of God is Within You, translated by Constance Garnett
  o The Kreutzer Sonata
  o Master and Man, translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude
  o An Old Acquaintance
  o What Men Live By
  o Youth, translated by C.J. Hogarth
• Aleksandr Ostrovsky
  o The Storm, translated by Constance Garnett
• Anton Chekhov
  o Plays, Second Series (On the High Road, The Proposal, The Wedding, The Bear, A Tragedian in Spite of Himself, The Anniversary, The Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard), translated by Julius West
  o Ivanoff
  o The Sea-Gull
  o Uncle Vanya
  o The Bishop and Other Stories, translated by Constance Garnett
  o The Chorus Girl and Other Stories, translated by constance Garnett
  o The Cook’s Wedding and other Stories, translated by Constance Garnett
  o The Darling and Other Stories, translated by Constance Garnett
  o The Duel and Other Stories, translated by Constance Garnett
  o The Horse Stealers and Other Stories, translated by Constance Garnett
  o The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories, translated by Constance Garnett
  o Love and Other Stories, translated by Constance Garnett
  o The Party and Other Stories, translated by Constance Garnett
  o The Wife and Other Stories, translated by Constance Garnett
  o The Schoolmistress and Other Stories
  o The Witch and Other Stories
  o Swan Song, translated by Marian Fell

The United States

• Washington Irving
  o The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon
• James Fenimore Cooper
  o The Deerslayer
• John Greenleaf Whittier
  o Anti-Slavery Poems
  o Boy Captives
  o Narrative and Legendary Poems
  o Personal Poems
  o Poems of Nature
  o Snow-Bound
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
  o Essays
  + first series
  + second series
  o May-Day and Other Piees
  o Poems
  o Representative Men
• Emily Dickinson
  o Poems
  + series 1
  + series 2
  + series 3
• Walt Whitman
  o Leaves of Grass
  o Poems
  o Drum-Taps
• Nathaniel Hawthorne
  o The Scarlet Letter
  o The Marble Faun
  + volume 1
  + volume 2
  o American Notebooks
  + volume 1
  + volume 2
  o English Notebooks
  o Passages from the French and Italian Notebooks
  o The Ancestral Footstep
  o Biographical Studies
  o A Book of Autographs
  o Brown’s Folly
  o Dr. Bullivant
  o The Dolliver Romance
  o Fanshawe
  o From Mosses from an Old Manse
  o The Great Stone Face and Other Tales
  o Grimshawe’s Secret
  o Journal of a Solitary Man
  o An Old Woman’s Tale
  o Other Tales and Sketches
  o Our Old Home, a Series of English Sketches
  o Septimius Felton
  o Sketches and Studies
  o Sketches from Memory
  o The Snow Image
  o Twice-Told Tales (edition of 1889)
• Herman Melville
  o Moby Dick
  o The Piazza Tales
  o Billy Budd
  o Battle Pieces and Aspects of the War
  o John Marr and Other Poems
• Edgar Allan Poe
  o Works (the Raven Edition)
  + volume 1
  + volume 2
  + volume 3
  + volume 4
  + volume 5
  o Complete Poetical Works
  o Eureka
• Henry David Thoreau
  o Walden
  o The Duty of Civil Disobedience
  o Excursions
  o Plea for Captain John Brown
  o Walking
  o A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
  o Wild Apples
• Richard Henry Dana, Jr.
  o Two Years Before the Mast
• Frederick Douglass
  o Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
  o Complete Poems
• Francis Parkman
  o The Oregon Trail
• Henry Adams
  o The Education of Henry Adams
  o Mont Saint Michel and Chartres
• Ambrose Bierce
  o Collected Works
  + volume 1
  + volume 2
• Louisa May Alcott
  o Little Women
• Charles Chestnutt
  o The Colonel’s Dream
  o The Conjure Woman
  o The House Behind the Cedars
  o The Marrow of Tradition
  o The Wife of His Youth and other Storis of the Color Line,a nd Selected Essays
• Kate Chopin
  o The Awakening
• William Dean Howells
  o The Rise of Silas Lapham
  o A Modern Instance
• Stephen Crane
  o The Red Badge of Courage
  o Active Service
  o The Little Regiment and other Episodes of the American Civil War
  o Maggie: A Girl of the Streets
  o Men, Women, and Boats
  o The Third Violet
  o War Is Kind
• Henry James
  o Portrait of a Lady
  + volume 1
  + volume 2
  o The Bostonians
  + volume 1
  + volume 2
  o The Awkward Age
  o The Ambassadors
  o The Golden Bowl
  o Altar of the Dead
  o Aspern Papers
  o Beast in the Jungle
  o Beldonald Holbein
  o Bundle of Letters
  o Chaperone
  o Daisy Miller
  o Death of the Lion
  o Eugene Pickering
  o Figure in the Carpet
  o Four Meetings
  o Georgina’s Reasons
  o Glasses
  o Greville Fane
  o International Episode
  o Jolly Corner
  o Lesson of a Master
  o Louisa Pallant
  o Madonna of the Future
  o Marriages
  o Nona Vincent
  o Pandora
  o Patagonia
  o Pension Beaurepas
  o Point of View
  o Pupil
  o Real Thing
  o Sir Dominick Ferrand
  o Some Short Stories
  o Turn of the Screw
• Harold Frederic
  o The Damnation of Theron Ware
• Mark Twain
  o $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories
  o Alonzo Fitz and Other Stories
  o The Curious Republic of Gondour and Other Whimsical Sketches
  o The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories
  o The Mysterious Stranger
  o Sketches New and Old
  o What Is Man? and Other Essays
  o The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
  o Pudd’nhead Wilson
  o A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
• William James
  o The Varieties of Religious Experience
  o Pragmatism
• Frank Norris
  o The Octopus
• Sarah Orne Jewett
  o The Country of the Pointed Firs
  o Deephaven and Selected Stories and Sketches

I’ve decided to embark on a quest to read the entire Western Canon according to Bloom. He divides the Canon into four historical periods following the Viconian cycle. The first period, the Theocratic Age (2000 BCE-1321 CE), is further broken down into the literature of the Ancient Near East, Ancient India (Sanskrit), The Ancient Greeks, The Hellenistic Greeks, The Romans, and The Middle Ages: Latin, Arabic, and the Vernacular before Dante.

I will accomplish this task section by section, age by age. To begin with I list the canonical books of the Ancient Near East:

• Gilgamesh
• Egyptian Book of the Dead
• Holy Bible (King James Version)
• The Apocrypha
• Sayings of the Fathers (Pirke Aboth)

I’ve already read the Epic of Gilgamesh, which is why it appears in bold. I am currently reading the Holy Bible, which is an arduous enough task that I’ve given it a whole section of its own.