Suggested Reading List

The following is a list of books that students should have had exposure to before entering college.  The 100 Most-Often-Recommended Works for College Freshman Novels and Short Stories Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice British, 1813 James Baldwin Go Tell It on the Mountain American, 1953 Saul Bellow Seize the Day American, 1956 Charlotte Brontë Jane Eyre British 1847 Emily Brontë Wuthering Heights British, 1847 Albert Camus The Stranger French, 1942 Lewis Carroll Alice's Adventures in Wonderland British, 1865 Willa Cather My Antonia American, 1918 Miguel de Cervantes Don Quixote Spanish, 1605, 1617 Kate Chopin The Awakening American, 1899 Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness British, 1902 Stephen Crane The Red Badge of Courage American, 1895 Daniel Defoe Robinson Crusoe British, 1719 Charles Dickens Great Expectations British, 1860-61 Feodor Dostoevski Crime and Punishment Russian, 1866 George Eliot The Mill on the Floss British, 1860 Ralph Ellison Invisible Man American, 1947 William Faulkner The Sound and the Fury American, 1929 Henry Fielding Tom Jones British, 1749 F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby American, 1925 Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary French, 1857 E.M. Forster A Passage to India British, 1924 Gabriel García Márquez One Hundred Years of Solitude Columbian, 1967 William Golding Lord of the Flies British, 1954 Thomas Hardy Tess of the D'Urbervilles British, 1891 Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter American, 1850 Ernest Hemingway A Farewell to Arms American, 1929 Zora Neale Hurston Their Eyes Were Watching God American, 1937 Aldous Huxley Brave New World British, 1932 Henry James The Turn of the Screw American, 1898 James Joyce A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Irish, 1916 Franz Kafka The Trial Czechoslovakian, 1925 D.H. Lawrence Sons and Lovers British, 1913 Sinclair Lewis Babbitt American, 1922 Bernard Malamud The Assistant American, 1957 Thomas Mann Death in Venice German, 1912 Herman Melville Moby-Dick American, 1851 Toni Morrison Sula American, 1973 Flannery O'Connor A Good Man Is Hard to Find American, 1955 Tillie Olsen Tell Me a Riddle American, 1956-60 George Orwell Animal Farm British, 1945 Alan Paton Cry, the Beloved Country South African, 1948 Edgar Allan Poe Great Tales and Poems American, 1839-45 J.D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye American, 1951 Sir Walter Scott Ivanhoe British, 1820 Mary Shelley Frankenstein British, 1818 John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath American, 1939 Jonathan Swift Gulliver's Travels British, 1726 William Makepeace Thackeray Vanity Fair British, 1847-48 Leo Tolstoy War and Peace Russian, 1865-69 Ivan Turgenev Fathers and Sons Russian, 1862 Mark Twain The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn American, 1886 John Updike Rabbit, Run American, 1961 Voltaire Candide French, 1759 Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse Five American, 1969 Alice Walker The Color Purple American, 1982 Eudora Welty Thirteen Stories American, 1965 Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence American, 1920 Virginia Woolf To the Lighthouse British, 1927 Richard Wright Native Son American, 1940 Drama Aeschylus Oresteia Greek, 458 BCE Aristophanes Lysistrata Greek, 411, BCE Samuel Beckett Waiting for Godot Irish, 1952 Bertolt Brecht Mother Courage and Her Children German, 1941 Anton Chekov The Cherry Orchard Russian, 1904 Euripides Medea Greek, 431 BCE Johann von Goethe Faust, Part I German, 1808 Henrik Ibsen A Doll's House Norwegian, 1879 Christopher Marlowe Doctor Faustus British, 1604 Arthur Miller Death of a Salesman American, 1949 Molière The Misanthrope French, 1666 Eugene O'Neill Desire Under the Elms American, 1924 William Shakespeare Hamlet British, 1600 George Bernard Shaw Pygmalion British, 1913 Sophocles Oedipus Rex Greek, 430 BCE Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest British, 1895 Thornton Wilder Our Town American, 1938 Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie American, 1945 Poetry Allison, Alexander, Editor Norton Anthology of Poetry (Shorter Edition) British & American Anonymous Beowulf British, c. 700 Anonymous Sir Gawain and the Green Knight British, c. 1350-1400 Geoffrey Chaucer Canterbury Tales British, 1387-1400 Dante Inferno Italian, c. 1320 Homer The Odyssey Greek, c. 9th C. BCE John Milton Paradise Lost British, 1667 Vergil The Aeneid Italian, c. 18 BCE Walt Whitman Leaves of Grass American, 1855 Miscellaneous Aristotle Poetics Greek, 4th C. BCE Saint Augustine Confessions Italian, 397-401 Bible (esp. King James Version) Charles Darwin Origin of the Species British, 1859 Ralph Waldo Emerson "The American Scholar" American, 1837 Benjamin Franklin Autobiography American, 1771 Sigmund Freud Civilization and Its Discontents German, 1930 Edith Hamilton Mythology American, 1940 Niccolò Machiavelli The Prince Italian, 1532 Karl Marx Communist Manifesto German, 1848 Michel de Montaigne Selected Essays French, 1580 Plato Republic Greek, c. 370 BCE Henry David Thoreau Walden American, 1854   Back to Top