Literature Reading List

The following list is work in progress. To be added: a list of Titles by Topics: Reading List II.

The short historical reading list

Our Basismodul 1 offered this - short - historical reading list, designed to give you a broad view of the variety of Materials

1. Beowulf (composed c. 750/ manuscript source c. 1010) Benjamin Slade's edition Best printed edition: Beowulf, a dual-language edition translated with an introduction and Commentary by Howell D. Chickering, Jr. (New York: Anchor, 1977/2006).
2. Geoffrey Chaucer Canterbury Tales (1386-1400). Virginia e-text (you may try to read the Shipman's tale with a translation into modern English).
3. Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur (1471/1485) EEBO, Marteau esp. Caxton's preface and book 5
4. William Shakespeare, King Lear (1608). EEBO
5. William Wycherley, The Country Wife (1675). ECCO
6. Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719). ECCO, Marteau
7. George Eliot, Middlemarch (1871/72). 19thNovels.com
8. T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land (1922). Wikisource
9. Edward Bond, Saved (1965)
10. Salman Rushdie, Satanic Verses (1988).

The longer historical reading list

• Beowulf c.750 (in modern translation)
• Sir John Mandeville; Travels (1370)
• Sir Gawayn and the Green Night (c.1380) - printed editions preserved the text into the early 18th century.
• Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur [1471] (London: William Caxton, 1485) - especially the first five and the last four books in Caxton's numbering of chapters.
• Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales (1386-1400)

1500

• Thomas Morus, Utopia (1515)
• Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedie: or, Hieronimo is Mad Againe (c. 1590).
• Christopher Marlowe, The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus is a play by Christopher Marlowe (1594 [published in 1604]).

1600

• William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1603).
• William Shakespeare, Anthony and Cleopatra (c. 1607 [published in 1623]).
• John Fletcher, The Wild Goose Chase (c.1621 [published in 1652]).
• Richard Head, The English Rogue vol.1 (1665).
• John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667).
• William Congreve, The Country Wife (1675).
• John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress (1678).
• Aphra Behn, Love Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister (1684).
• John Donne - Selected Poems

1700

• Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719).
• Eliza Haywood, Love in Excess (1719-1720).
• Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (1722).
• Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels (1726).
• Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal: For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick (1729).
• Samuel Madden, Memoirs of the Twentieth Century (1733).
• Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1734).
• Samuel Richardson, Pamela (1740).
• John Cleland, Fanny Hill (1748).
• Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy (1759-67).
• James McPherson, Fingal, an Ancient Epic Poem [...] composed by Ossian [...], translated from the Gaelic Language (1761).

1800

• Walter Scott, Waverley (1814).
• Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1819).
• Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist (1838).
• James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans (1826).
• Mary Shelley, The Last Man (1828).
• Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813).
• Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851).
• Henry David Thoreau, Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1854).
• Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1855).
• Edgar Allan Poe, Tales of Mystery and Imagination (?)
• Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly (1852).
• George Eliot, Middlemarch (1871-72).
• Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886).
• Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889).
• Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward: 2000-1887 (1888).
• Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890, revised edition: 1891)
• H. G. Wells, The Time Machine (1895).
• Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Ernest (1895).

1900

• T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (1922).
• Ernest Hemingway, "Hills like White Elephants" and "The Killers" from Men Without Women (1927).
• George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).
• D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow (1915).
• James Joyce, Ulysses (1922).
• John Dos Passos, U.S.A. trilogy, comprising: The 42nd Parallel (1930), Nineteen Nineteen (1932), and The Big Money (1936).
• Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (1925).
• Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932).
• Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot [originally written in 1948/49 under the title En attendant Godot] (1952).
• Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955).
• Salman Rushdie, Satanic Verses (1988).
• David and Janet Peoples [authors], Terry Gilliam [director], Twelve Monkeys [movie] (1995).