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The art of writing & speaking the English language

Chapter 20: INDEX OF RECOMMENDED BOOKS (With Dates)
By Sherwin Cody
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About This Book

The book provides practical guidance for everyday readers on how to choose and study literature so reading yields both pleasure and practical benefit. It sets out criteria for judging poems, essays, short stories, and novels, contrasts major modes such as romantic and realistic fiction, and offers methods for approaching poetry and Shakespeare. The text includes curated recommendations and advice on skimming, close reading, and assembling a compact personal library, encouraging selection of the most inspiring and accessible passages rather than attempting to read every work in full.

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.