Rexroth

=Kenneth Rexroth's Reading Lists= These are the reading lists from Kenneth Rexroth's books "Classics Revisited" and "More Classics Revisited" with the titles linked to Gutenberg.org texts and other places on the net with free texts. If you find a missing book or a better version online, let us know. Some are not linked because of copyright issues or lack of an online text. I like his take on the "Canon" because it is multicultural and at least includes a few women. I think this list is a good foundation for a decent education, but I would add a few more science texts and others. I am starting a "what would you add" section below. If you want to add to it, enter something in the discussion forum above or drop me an email. It is helpful to compare this list with others like [|Mortimer Adler], [|Martin Seymour Smith], and [|Harold Bloom]. It is interesting to see the purposes and prejudices in all of these lists. Ezra Pound's "ABC of Reading" provides insight into both literature and Ezra Pound. I also appreciate lists of "influential books" like [|Henry Miller's.] I am posting Rexroth's lists here because I have always admired Rexroth as a poet and critic. Stephen Downes did an interesting post with a link to[| Neil DeGrasse Tyson's response to a Reddit query].
 * ==**From Classics Revisited**==

[|The Epic of Gilgamesh]

Homer, [|The Iliad]

Homer, [|The Odyssey]

[|Beowulf]

[|Njal's Saga]

[|Job]

[|The Mahabharata]

[|The Kalevala]

Sappho, [|Poems]

Aeschylus, [|The Oresteia]

Sophocles, [|The Theban Plays]

Euripides, [|The Bacchae], [|The Trojan Women]

Herodotus, [|History]

Thucydides, [|The Peloponnesian War]

Plato, [|Euthyphro], [|Apology], [|Crito] and [|Phaedo]

Plato, [|The Republic]

[|The Greek Anthology]

Lucretius, [|On the Nature of Things]

Livy, [|Early Rome]

Julius Caesar, [|The War in Gaul]

Petronius, [|The Satyricon]

Tacitus, [|Histories]

Plutarch, [|Parallel Lives]

Marcus Aurelius, [|Meditations]

Apuleius, [|The Golden Ass]

[|Medieval Latin Lyrics]

Tu Fu, [|Poems]

[|Classic Japanese Poetry], [|Rexroth's Trans.]

Lady Murasaki, [|The Tale of Genji]

Chaucer, [|Canterbury Tales] ||.

. Rabelais, [|The Adventures of Gargantua and Pantagruel]

Marco Polo, [|The Travels of Marco Polo Vol. I], [|Vol. II]

Thomas More, [|Utopia]

Machiavelli, [|The Prince]

Malory, [|Le Morte d'Arthur, Vol I]., [|Vol II]

Montaigne, [|Essays]

Cervantes, [|Don Quixote, Vol I]., [|Vol II]

Shakespeare, [|Macbeth]

Shakespeare, [|The Tempest]

Webster, [|The Duchess of Malfi]

Ben Jonson, [|Volpone]

Izaak Walton, [|The Compleat Angler]

John Bunyan, [|Pilgrim's Progress]

Tsao Hsueh Chin, [|The Dream of the Red Chamber I], [|and II]

Giacomo Casanova, [|History of My Life]

Henry Fielding, [|Tom Jones]

Laurence Sterne, [|The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent.]

Restif de la Bretonne, [|Monsieur Nicolas]

Edward Gibbon, [|Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire]

Stendhal, [|The Red and the Black]

Baudelaire, [|Poems]

Karl Marx, [|The Communist Manifesto]

Walt Whitman, [|Leaves of Grass]

Dostoevsky, [|The Brothers Karamazov]

Gustave Flaubert, [|A Sentimental Education]

Tolstoy, [|War and Peace]

Rimbaud, [|Poems]

Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Journal

Mark Twain, [|Huckleberry Finn]

Chekhov, [|Plays] || ==**From More Classics Revisited**==

[|The Song of Songs]

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

Euripides, Hippolytus

Aristotle, [|Poetics]

Euclid, [|Archimedes], [|Apollonius]

[|The Bhagavad-Gita]

Ssu-Ma Chien, Records of the Grand Historian of China

[|Catullus]

Virgil, [|The Aeneid]

[|The Early Irish Epic]

Sei Shonagon, The Pillow Book

[|Abelard and Heloise]

[|Heike Monogatari]

[|St. Thomas Aquinas]

[|The English and Scottish Popular Ballad]

Racine, [|Phedre]

Daniel Defoe, [|Robinson Crusoe]

Daniel Defoe, [|Moll Flanders]

Jonathon Swift, [|Gulliver's Travels]

Choderlos de Laclos, Dangerous Acquaintances

Gilbert White, [|A Natural History and Antiquity of Selbourne]

[|Robert Burns]

[|William Blake]

[|Johann Wolfgang von Goethe]

[|Honore de Balzac]

[|The Journal of John Woolman]

Charles Dickens, [|The Pickwick Papers]

Francis Parkman,[| France and England in North America]

Harriet Beecher Stowe, [|Uncle Tom's Cabin]

[|Frederick Douglass]

Ivan Turgenev, [|Fathers and Sons]

Arthur Conan Doyle, ``[|Sherlock Holmes]''

[|Alexander Berkman]

Leo Tolstoy, [|The Kingdom of God is within You]

[|H.G. Wells]

William Butler Yeats, [|Plays]

Ford Madox Ford, Parade's End

Franz Kafka, [|The Trial]

Herbert Read, The Green Child

William Carlos Williams, [|Poems] ||

I would definitely add:

Benjamin Franklin, [|Autobiography] Herman Melville, [|Moby Dick] Charles Darwin, [|On the Origin of Species] Virgina Woolf, [|The Voyage Out] or [|Orlando] Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, (Vol 1. [|Swann's Way]) Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus