The World's Greatest Classic Books: Titles

World's Greatest Classic Books

Titles

Sorted by time period

800 B.C.-999

1000-1599

1600-1849

1850-1899

1900-1934

1935-1970

1935-1970

1937 J. R. R. TOLKIEN’S THE HOBBIT	1937 JOHN STEINBECK’S OF MICE AND MEN	1938 THORNTON WILDER’S OUR TOWN
1939 JOHN STEINBECK’S THE GRAPES OF WRATH	1940 ERNEST HEMINGWAY’S FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS	1940 RICHARD WRIGHT’S NATIVE SON
1942 ALBERT CAMUS’S THE STRANGER	1944 TENNESSEE WILLIAMS’S THE GLASS MENAGERIE	1945 GEORGE ORWELL’S ANIMAL FARM
1945 RICHARD WRIGHT’S BLACK BOY	1946 ROBERT PENN WARREN’S ALL THE KING’S MEN	1947 TENNESSEE WILLIAMS’S A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE
1947 JOHN STEINBECK’S THE PEARL	1948 ALAN PATON’S CRY, THE BELOVED COUNTRY	1949 GEORGE ORWELL’S 1984
1949 ARTHUR MILLER’S DEATH OF A SALESMAN	1951 J. D. SALINGER’S THE CATCHER IN THE RYE	1952 ERNEST HEMINGWAY’S THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA
1952 RALPH ELLISON’S THE INVISIBLE MAN	1953 ARTHUR MILLER’S THE CRUCIBLE	1955 WILLIAM GOLDING’S LORD OF THE FLIES
1956 J. R. R. TOLKIEN’S THE LORD OF THE RINGS	1960 JOHN KNOWLES’S A SEPARATE PEACE	1960 HARPER LEE’S TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
1961 JOSEPH HELLER’S CATCH-22	1962 KEN KESEY’S ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST	1962 EDWARD ALBEE’S WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?
1969 KURT VONNEGUT’S SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE

Featured author:

Aldous Huxley

The English novelist and essayist Aldous Leonard Huxley, b. July 26, 1894, d. Nov. 22, 1963, a member of a distinguished scientific and literary family, intended to study medicine, but was prevented by an eye ailment that almost blinded him at the age of 16. He then turned to literature, publishing two volumes of poetry while still a student at Oxford. His reputation was firmly established by his first novel, Crome Yellow (1921), a witty satire on the intellectual pretensions of his time. Huxley's early comic novels, which include Antic Hay (1923), Those Barren Leaves (1925), and Point Counter Point (1928), demonstrate his ability to dramatize intellectual debate in fiction; he discussed philosophical and social topics in a volume of essays, Proper Studies (1927). In both fiction and nonfiction Huxley became increasingly critical of Western civilization in the 1930s. Brave New World (1932), his most celebrated work, is a bitterly satiric account of an inhumane society controlled by technology, in which art and religion have been abolished and human beings reproduce by artificial fertilization. Huxley's distress at what he regarded as the spiritual bankruptcy of the modern world led him toward mysticism and the use of hallucinatory drugs. The novel Eyeless in Gaza (1936) portrays its central character's conversion from selfish isolation to transcendental mysticism; and in The Doors of Perception (1954) and Heaven and Hell (1956) he describes the use of mescaline to induce visionary states of mind. Huxley, who moved to southern California in 1947, was primarily a moral philosopher who used fiction during his early career as a vehicle for ideas; in his later writing, which consists largely of essays, he adopts an overtly didactic tone. Like his contemporaries D. H. Lawrence and George Orwell, Huxley abhorred conformity and denounced the orthodox attitudes of his time. The enormous range of his intellect and the pungency of his writing make him one of the most significant voices of the early 20th century.