Towards a graded GRHAPTISA+ HOEWAG Master List - the Homer-to-Hemmingway Canon (ver. 1 - Alder)
Email: me at talhaahsan.com
GRHAPTISA+ HOEWAG stands for Greco-Roman(ce)-Hebraic Arabo-Persianate-Turkic Indic-Sinic-Africana-Austrailasia-American (And So On+) History of Everything without any Gaps. It is an attempt to provide a Reading List for the most influential and seminal written works from around the world. It is not without shortcomings. Disputes are inevitable for choices, biases and absences. Some cultures are primarily oral. In any case, we believe that the list provides the best possible introduction to the cosmos of ideas that exist today and provide opportunities for further exploration and improvements.
The list is primarily built on Mortimer Alder's canon of 137 authors. We recommend Oxford World's Classics (OWC) publications of works for accesible and affordable criticial editions over Penguin Classics unless otherwise stated. Other editions may exist. Some of Alder's recommendations do not exist as separate publications but come in a collection. Sadly, many of the scientific works still lack critical editions. You can supplement the list with Harold Bloom's canon. Other reading lists in addition to the ones on the previous website include Henry Eliots's The Penguin Classics Book and Frederic Raphael and Kenneth McLeish's The List of Books: A Recommended Library of over 3,000 Works. Regional experts can also offer specialist lists too.
To purchase items, we recommend using the price comparison sites https://www.best-book-price.co.uk and https://www.bookfinder.com. World of Books offer 4 for 3 on many titles: https://www.worldofbooks.com/en-gb. See also Vinted for possible bargains:
https://www.vinted.co.uk.
The total number of authors is 135, including anonymous works or collections of oral literature and excluding the Bible. 14 Greeks; 16 Romans; 6 Medieval Europe; 13 Renaissance; 32 Enlightenment; 9 Industrial Age; 26 Victorians; 5 World War I; 2 World War II; 12 Cold War.
Happy reading!
Please do contact me for corrections or your comments.
Abbreviation for common publishers:
P = Penguin
A = editions available on Amazon
CUP = Cambridge University Press
EUP = Edinburgh University Press
HUP = Harvard University Press
OUP = Oxford University Press
PUP = Princeton University Press
UCP = University of Chicago Press
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The Old Testament (NIV Study Bible)
Ancient Greece
Homer (c. 9th or 8th century BCE):
Iliad
Odyssey
Classical Greece
Aeschylus (c. 525–456 BCE):
Persians and Other Plays [Seven Against Thebes; Suppliants; Prometheus Bound]
Oresteia [Agamemnon; Libation Bearers; Eumenides]
Herodotus (c. 484–425 BCE):
Histories
Sophocles (c. 495–406 BCE):
Antigone and other Tragedies [Deianeira; Electra]
Oedipus the King and Other Tragedies [Aias; Philoctetes; Oedipus at Colonus]
Euripides (c. 485–406 BCE):
Medea and Other Plays [Hippolytus; Electra; Helen]
The Trojan Women and Other Plays [Hecuba; Andromache]
Orestes and Other Plays [Ion; The Phoenician Women; The Suppliant Women]
Bacchae and Other Plays [Iphigenia among the Taurians; Iphigenia at Aulis; Rhesus]
Thucydides (c. 460–400 BCE):
The Peloponnesian War
Aristophanes (c. 448–380 BCE):
Frogs and Other Plays [Clouds; Women at the Thesmophoria]
Birds and Other Plays [Lysistrata; Assembly Women; Wealth]
Wasps and Other Plays [Acharnians; Knights; Peace]
Hippocrates (c. 460–377 BCE):
Medical Writings (P, selection), (F. Adams, Amazon)
Plato (c. 427–347 BCE):
For Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Hackett)
Protagoras
Theaetetus
Symposium
Meno and Other Dialogues [Charmides, Laches, Lysis]
Timaeus and Critias
Republic
Phaedrus
Gorgias
Phaedo
Defence of Socrates, Euthyphro, Crito
Philebus (P)
Early Socratic Dialogues [Ion, Laches, Euthydemus] (P)
Laws (P)
Aristotle (384–322 BCE):
For Complete Works: ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton, 2 vols.)
Physics
Politics
Art of Rhetoric
On the Soul and Other Psychological works [On Perception, On Memory, and On Sleep, On Dreams, On Prophecy, On Length, On Youth, Fragments, Hymn to Hermias]
Eudemian Ethics
Nicomachean Ethics
Poetics
Athenian Constitution (P)
Metaphysics (P)
Hellenistic Greece
Epicurus (c. 341–270 BCE):
Art of Happiness [complete extant works] (P)
Euclid (fl. c. 300 BCE):
Elements (Dover Books with Heath commentary)
See also Oliver Byrne 1847 edition of first six books with colour diagrams
Apollonius of Perga (fl. c. 240 BCE):
Conic Sections (Green Lion Press, 2013. Single volume for all four books)
Archimedes (c. 287–c. 212 BCE):
Works (Netz 2004, CUP)
Roman Republic
Lucretius (c. 99–c. 55 BCE):
On the Nature of Things
Cicero (106–43 BCE):
On Life and Death [On Old Age, On Friendship, and the whole of Books 1, 2, and 5 of the Tusculan Disputations, with the prefaces and summaries of 3 and 4]
Defence Speeches [Roscius, Murena, Archias, Caelius, Milo]
On Obligations (De Officiis)
Political Speeches [9: Verres, 2; Catiline, 4; Second Philippic; On the Command of Gnaeus Pompeius; For Marcellus]
The Nature of the Gods
The Republic and The Laws
Selected Letters [166 of Cicero's 914 surviving epistles]
The Augustans
Virgil (70–19 BCE):
Eclogues and Georgics
Aeneid
Ovid (c. 43 BCE – c. 18 CE):
Love Poems (Amores)
Fasti
Metamorphoses
Livy (c. 64 BCE – 17 CE):
History of Rome (5 vol.)
Horace (65–8 BCE):
Complete Odes and Epodes
Satires and Epistles
Imperial Rome
The New Testament (NIV Study Bible)
Plutarch (c. 46 – c. 120 CE):
Parallel Lives
Moralia
Tacitus (c. 46 –c. 120 CE):
Histories
Annals
Agricola and Germania
Nicomachus of Gerasa (c. 60 – c. 120 CE):
Introduction to Arithmetic (D'ooge, University of Michigan 1926)
Epictetus (c. 55–c. 135 CE):
Discourses, Fragments, Handbook [Encheiridion]
Ptolemy (c. 100–c. 170 CE):
Almagest (G. J. Toomer, Princeton 1998)
Lucian (c. 125–c. 180 CE):
Selected Dialogues [Praise of the Fly; The Dream; Charon; Timon; Icaromenippus, or High Above the Clouds; Nigrinus; The Death of Peregrinus; Hermotimus or On Philosophical Schools; Alexander; Demonax; Lovers of Lies, or The Sceptic; How to Write History; A True History I; A True History II; Dialogues of the Courtesans]
Marcus Aurelius (121–180 CE):
Meditations
Galen (c. 129–c. 216 CE)
On the Natural Faculties (A. J. Brock; A)
Plotinus (c. 204–c. 270 CE):
The Enneads (P)
St. Augustine (354–430 CE):
On the Teacher (P. King, Hackett 1995)
Confessions
City of God (P)
On Christian Doctrine
Medieval Europe
The Song of Roland (Author unknown; composed between 1040 and 1115)
The Nibelungenlied (Author(s) unknown; compiled around 1200)
The Saga of Burnt Njál (c. 1300–1320 CE) (P)
St. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274):
Summa Theologica
Dante Alighieri (c. 1265–1321):
The Divine Comedy
The New Life
On Monarchy (P. Shaw, CUP 1996)
Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343–1400):
For complete works: Riverside
Troilus and Criseyde
The Canterbury Tales
Renaissance
Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519):
Notebooks
Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527):
The Prince
Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy
Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536):
The Praise of Folly (P)
Thomas More (c. 1478-1535):
Utopia
Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543):
On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (M. Taylor, Concise Edition, Flame Tree 2023. See also P)
Martin Luther (1483–1546):
Table Talk (William Hazlitt, Pantianos Classics 1872)
Three Treatises (The Ninety-Five Theses and Other Writings, P.)
Francois Rabelais (c. 1494 – c. 1553):
Gargantua and Pantagruel (P)
John Calvin (1509-1564):
Institutes of the Christian Religion (F. L. Battles, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 1995)
Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592):
The Complete Essays (P)
Edmund Spenser c. 1552-1599):
Prothalamion (see: The Shorter Poems, P.)
The Faerie Queene (P)
William Gilbert (1540-1603):
On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies (A)
Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616):
Don Quixote
William Shakespeare (1564–1616):
(Arden)
1. All's Well That Ends Well
2. Antony and Cleopatra
3. As You Like It
4. The Comedy of Errors
5. Coriolanus
6. Cymbeline
7. Hamlet
8. Henry IV, Part 1
9. Henry IV, Part 2
10. Henry V
11. Henry VI, Part 1
12. Henry VI, Part 2
13. Henry VI, Part 3
14. Henry VIII
15. Julius Caesar
16. King John
17. King Lear
18. Love's Labour's Lost
19. Macbeth
20. Measure for Measure
21. The Merchant of Venice
22. The Merry Wives of Windsor
23. A Midsummer Night's Dream
24. Much Ado About Nothing
25. Othello
26. Pericles, Prince of Tyre
27. Richard II
28. Richard III
29. Romeo and Juliet
30. The Taming of the Shrew
31. The Tempest
32. Timon of Athens
33. Titus Andronicus
34. Troilus and Cressida
35. Twelfth Night
36. The Two Gentlemen of Verona
37. The Winter's Tale
38. Poems
39. Sonnets
Enlightenment
Francis Bacon (1561–1626):
Essays (P)
Advancement of Learning (see: The Works of Francis Bacon: Volume 4: Translations of the Philosophical Works 1, CUP 2011)
Novum Organum (see: The Works of Francis Bacon: Volume 4: Translations of the Philosophical Works 1, CUP 2011)
The New Atlantis (see: Three Early Modern Utopias, P.)
Johannes Kepler (1571–1630):
Epitome of Copernican Astronomy (C. G. Wallis, Prometheus 1995. Only books IV and V))
Concerning the Harmonies of the World (A. M. Duncan & E. J. Aiton, American Philosophical Society Press 1997)
Galileo Galilei (1564–1642):
Starry Messenger (Albert Van Helden, UCP 2016)
Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences (Stillman Drake, University of California Press 1962)
René Descartes (1596–1650):
Rules for the Direction of the Mind (OUP)
Discourse on the Method (P)
Geometry (Dover)
Meditations on First Philosophy (P)
See also: The Dawn of Modern Cosmology (P)
William Harvey (1578–1657):
On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals (New edition, Resource Publications 2016)
On the Circulation of the Blood
On the Generation of Animals
See: The Works Of William Harvey, M.D. Translated From The Latin With A Life Of The Author By Robert Willis (1847)
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662):
The Provincial Letters (A) (O.W. Wight, 1887)
Pensées
Scientific Treatises (A)
Molière (1622-1673):
The Misanthrope, Tartuffe, and Other Plays [The School for Wives; The School for Wives Criticized; The Impromptu at Versailles; The Clever Women]
Don Juan and Other Plays [Precious Provincials; The Reluctant Doctor; George Dandin; The Miser; The Would-be Gentleman; Scapin the Schemer]
John Milton (1608–1674):
Major Works
Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679):
Leviathan
Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695):
Treatise on Light (A)
Baruch de Spinoza (1639-1699):
Ethics (G. H. R. Parkinson, OUP 2000)
Jean‑Baptiste Racine (1639-1699):
Britannicus, Phaedra, Athaliah
Four French Plays [Cinna, The Misanthrope, Andromache, Phaedra] (P)
See also: Complete Works (Penn State University Press 2010)
John Locke (1632-1704):
Second Treatise of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration
Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Thoughts Concerning Education (Hackety 1996)
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716):
Discourse on Metaphysics (C. Johns, EUP 2023)
New Essays Concerning Human Understanding (Remnant and Bennett, CUP 1996)
Monadology (L. Strickland, EUP 2014)
Isaac Newton (1642-1727):
Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (Cohen and Witman, University of California Press 2016)
Optics (A)
William Congreve (1670-1729):
The Way of the World (P)
George Berkeley (1685-1729):
Principles of Human Knowledge
Daniel Defoe (1660-1731):
Robinson Crusoe
Alexander Pope (1688-1744):
Major Works [An Essay on Criticism; The Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man, etc]
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745):
A Tale of a Tub and Other Works [A Modest Proposal]
Journal to Stella (CUP 2013)
Gulliver’s Travels
Henry Fielding (1707-1754):
Joseph Andrews
Tom Jones
Montesquieu (1689-1755):
Persian Letters
Spirit of Laws (CUP 1989)
David Hume (1711-1776):
Treatise on Human Nature
Essays Moral and Political (Liberty Fund 1987)
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Jean‑Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778):
Discourse on the Origin of Inequality
Discourse on Political Economy
Émile (P)
The Social Contract
Voltaire (1694-1778):
Letters on the English
Candide and Other Stories [Micromegas; Zadig; The Ingenu; The White Bull; What Pleases the Ladies]
A Pocket Philosophical Dictionary
Laurence Sterne (1713-1778):
(see also: University of Florida Press)
Tristram Shandy
A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784):
The Lives of the Poets (OUP 2006)
Dictionary (Yale, vol. 18, 2005)
The Major Works [incl. The Vanity of Human Wishes]
Rasselas
Adam Smith (1723-1790):
(see also: Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, 6 vols., OUP)
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (P.; also: CUP)
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (also: University of Chicago Press, 1977)
Edward Gibbon 1737-1794):
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (P., 3 vols.)
Memoirs of My Life (P)
Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794):
Traité Élémentaire de Chimie (Elements of Chemistry) (Dover)
James Boswell (1740-1795):
(see also: Yale Boswell)
Journal [OWC: A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides]
Life of Johnson
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804):
(see also: The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant)
Critique of Pure Reason
Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals
Critique of Practical Reason
The Science of Right
Critique of Judgment
Perpetual Peace
Major Works (Biographia Literaria full text)
INDUSTRIAL AGE
Jane Austen (1775-1817):
Pride and Prejudice
Emma
Lord Byron (1788-1824):
Major Works [incl. Don Juan]
Also see: Complete Works (OUP, 7 vols.), plus Letters and Journals (Harvard, 13 vols.)
Jean‑Baptiste Joseph Fourier (1768-1830):
Analytical Theory of Heat (Dover)
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831):
Phenomenology of Spirit (Miller, OUP 1977)
Philosophy of Right
Lectures on the Philosophy of History (Brown and Hodgson, OUP 2011, 2 vols.)
[Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics (P)]
Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831):
On War (Howard and Paret, Princeton 1989)
Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832):
(see also: The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham, OUP)
Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (also: Dover)
Theory of Fictions (also: Routledge)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832):
(see also: Princeton Goethe's Collected Works, 12 vol.)
Faust
Poetry and Truth (Princeton)
Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804), John Jay (1745-1829), James Madison (1751-1836):
The Federalist Papers (also: Yale)
Stendhal (1783-1842):
The Red and the Black
The Charterhouse of Parma
On Love (P)
Victorian Age
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1850):
(see also: Princeton Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
Complete Poems (P)
William Wordsworth (1770-1850):
(see also: The Cornell Wordsworth Collection)
Lyrical Ballads 1798 and 1802
Major Works
Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850):
Le Père Goriot
Eugénie Grandet
Auguste Comte (1798-1857):
The Positive Philosophy (CUP; 1853 condensed version)
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859):
Democracy in America (Bevan, Penguin 2003; Mansfield and Winthrop, 4 vol., UCP 2000; Goldhammer, Library of America 2004)
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860):
(Studies in Pessimism)
Parerga and Paralipomena (CUP)
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864):
The Scarlet Letter
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862):
Civil Disobedience (P)
Walden
For definitive collected works, see: PUP
Michael Faraday (1791-1867):
Chemical History of a Candle (OUP)
Experimental Researches in Electricity (CUP)
Charles Dickens (1812-1870):
The Pickwick Papers
David Copperfield
Hard Times
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873):
(see also: Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, University of Toronto Press)
A System of Logic (CUP, 2 vols)
On Liberty, Utilitarianism and Other Essays [Considerations on Representative Government; The Subjection of Women]
Autobiography
Charles Lyell (1797-1875):
Principles of Geology (P.; University of Chicago Press, 3 vols.)
Claude Bernard (1813-1878):
Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine (A)
George Eliot (1819-1880):
Adam Bede
Middlemarch
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880):
Madame Bovary
Three Stories
Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881):
Crime and Punishment
The Idiot
The Brothers Karamazov
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882):
(see also: Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, HUP, 4 vols)
Representative Men (HUP)
Essays
Journal
Charles Darwin (1809-1882):
On the Origin of Species
Evolutionary Writings including the Autobiographies [and Descent of Man]
Karl Marx (1818-1883):
Capital (Reitter, PUP 2024)
The Communist Manifesto
Herman Melville (1819-1891):
Moby‑Dick
Billy Budd, Sailor and Selected Tales
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900):
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Beyond Good and Evil
The Genealogy of Morals
The Will to Power
See also: The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, 19 vols, Stanford University Press.
Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906):
Peer Gynt
Four Major Plays (Doll's House; Ghosts; Hedda Gabler; and The Master Builder)
An Enemy of the People, The Wild Duck, Rosmersholm
See: Oxford Ibsen (MacFarlane, 8 vols)
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910):
War and Peace
Anna Karenina
What is Art? (P)
The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories [Family Happiness; The Cossacks; Hadji Murád]
The Devil and Other Stories [The Snowstorm; Lucerne; Three Deaths; Polikushka; Strider: The Story of a Horse; God See the Truth, But Waits; The Notes of a Madman; Where Love Is, God Is; Father Sergy; After the Ball]
The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories [The Two Old Men; How Much Land Does a Man Need?; The Forged Coupon; Master and Workman; Alyosha Pot]
Twenty Three Tales (A)
Mark Twain (1835-1910):
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Mysterious Stranger (University of California Press 2024)
William James (1842-1910):
The Principles of Psychology (A)
The Varieties of Religious Experience
Pragmatism and Other Writings ['The Meaning of Truth', 'Psychology', 'The Will to Believe', and 'Talks to Teachers on Psychology'] (P)
Essays in Radical Empiricism (Lexington 2022)
See: The Works of William James, 19 vols, HUP 1988.
Jules Henri Poincaré (1854-1912)
Science and Hypothesis (Bloomsbury, 2017)
Science and Method (Cosimo Classics, 2007)
First World War
Henry James (1843-1916):
The American
The Ambassadors
Marcel Proust (1871-1922):
Remembrance of Things Past (2 vol., P)
Lenin (1870-1924):
The State and Revolution (P)
Franz Kafka (1883-1924):
The Trial
The Castle
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939):
The Interpretation of Dreams
Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (P)
Civilization and Its Discontents (P)
New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (P)
See also: Penguin Freud Library (15 vols.)
Second World War
Henri Bergson (1859-1941):
Time and Free Will (Henri Bergson: Key Writings, Bloomsbury)
Matter and Memory (Zone Books)
Creative Evolution (D. Landes, Routledge, 2024)
The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (University of Notre Dame Press, 1977)
(For all, see: Henri Bergson: Key Writings, Bloomsbury)
James Joyce (1882-1941):
‘The Dead’ in Dubliners
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Ulysses
Cold War
Max Planck (1858-1947):
Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory (Dover)
Where Is Science Going? (Dover)
Scientific Autobiography ( Philosophical Library/Open Road)
Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947):
An Introduction to Mathematics
Science and the Modern World
The Aims of Education and Other Essays
Adventures of Ideas
See also: Edinburgh Critical Edition of the Complete Works of Alfred North Whitehead (current), otherwise (A)
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950):
Plays and prefaces
See also: The Bodley Head Bernard Shaw (Collected Plays with Their Prefaces), 1970s.
George Santayana (1863-1952):
The Life of Reason (MIT Press)
Skepticism and Animal Faith (MIT Press)
Persons and Places (MIT Press)
John Dewey (1859-1952):
(see also: Southern Illinois University Press for Collected Works 37 vol.)
How We Think
Democracy and Education (Columbia University Press, 2024)
Experience and Nature (A)
Logic (A)
The Theory of Inquiry (A)
Thomas Mann (1875-1955):
The Magic Mountain (P)
Joseph and His Brothers (P)
Albert Einstein (1879-1955):
(See: Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, Princeton)
The Meaning of Relativity (PUP)
On the Method of Theoretical Physics (PUP?)
The Evolution of Physics (PUP?)
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970):
The Problems of Philosophy (Routledge?)
The Analysis of Mind (Routledge)
An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth (Routledge)
Human Knowledge, Its Scope and Limits (Routledge)
(see also: The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell: The McMaster University Edition, 20 vol.)
Jacques Maritain (1882-1973):
(see: The Collected Works of Jacques Maritain, University of Notre Dame Press
Art and Scholasticism)
The Degrees of Knowledge (UNDP)
The Rights of Man and Natural Law (Ignatius Press)
True Humanism (UNDP)
Arnold J. Toynbee (1889-1975):
A Study of History (12 vol., OUP)
Civilization on Trial (OUP)
Jean Paul Sartre (1905-1980):
Nausea (P)
No Exit (Vintage)
Being and Nothingness (Routledge)
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008):
The First Circle (Harper Perennial 2009, uncensored version)
The Cancer Ward (P)