From: msmorris@watsci.waterloo.edu (Mike Morris)
Subject: Some Canonical Lists
Organization: University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 1992 21:30:52 GMT


                                    Saturday, the 15th of August, 1992

Part 4 of 5 , Continued.

**********
List 6: The Library of America
1. Herman Melville, _Typee_, _Omoo_, _Mardi_
2. Nathaniel Hawthorne, _Tales and Sketches_
3. Walt Whitman, _Poetry and Prose_
4. Harriet Beecher Stowe, _Three Novels_
5. Mark Twain, _Mississippi Writings_
6. Jack London, _Novels and Stories_
7. Jack London, _Novels and Social Writings_
8. William Dean Howells, _Novels 1875-1886_
9. Herman Melville, _Redburn_, _White-Jacket_, _Moby Dick_
10. Nathaniel Hawthorne, _Novels_
11. Francis Parkman, _France and England in North America_, vol. I
12. Francis Parkman, _France and England in North America_, vol. II
13. Henry James, _Novels 1871-1880_
14. Henry Adams, _Novels_, _Mont Sant Michel_, _The Education_
15. Ralph Waldo Emerson, _Essays and Lectures_
16. Washington Irving, _History, Tales, and Sketches_
17. Thomas Jefferson, _Writings_
18. Stephen Crane, _Prose and Poetry_
19. Edgar Allan Poe, _Poetry and Tales_
20. Edgar Allan Poe, _Essays and Reviews_
21. Mark Twain, _The Innocents Abroad_, _Roughing It_
22. Henry James, _Essays, American & English Writers_
23. Henry James, _European Writers & The Prefaces_
24. Herman Melville, _Pierre_, _Israel Potter, The Confidence-Man_,
    _Tales_, & _Billy Budd_
25. William Faulkner, _Novels 1930-1935_
26. James Fenimore Cooper, _The Leatherstocking Tales_ vol. I
27. James Fenimore Cooper, _The Leatherstocking Tales_ vol. II
28. Henry David Thoreau, _A Week_, _Walden_, _The Maine Woods_, _Cape Cod_
29. Henry James, _Novels 1881-1886_
30. Edith Wharton, _Novels_
31. Henry Adams, _History of the United States during the Administration
    of Jefferson_
32. Henry Adams, _History of the United States during the Administration
    of Madison_
33. Frank Norris, _Novels and Essays_
34. W.E.B. Du Bois, _Writings_
35. Willa Cather, _Early Novels and Stories_
36. Theodore Dreiser, _Sister Carrie_, _Jennie Gerhardt_, _Twelve Men_
37. Benjamin Franklin, _Writings_
38. William James, _Writings 1902-1910_
39. Flannery O'Connor, _Collected Works_
40. Eugene O'Neill, _Complete Plays 1913-1920_
41. Eugene O'Neill, _Complete Plays 1920-1931_
42. Eugene O'Neill, _Complete Plays 1932-1943_
43. Henry James, _Novels 1886-1890_
44. William Dean Howells, _Novels 1886-1888_
45. Abraham Lincoln, _Speeches and Writings 1832-1858_
46. Abraham Lincoln, _Speeches and Writings 1859-1865_
47. Edith Wharton, _Novellas and Other Writing_
48. William Faulkner, _Novels 1936-1940_
49. Willa Cather, _Later Novels_
50. Ulysses S. Grant, _Personal Memoirs and Selected Letters_
51. William Tecumseh Sherman, _Memoirs_

---

I think this set of books is wonderful for providing editions of
complete works. So, for instance, I've read almost every play I could find
in paperback by O'Neill, which is most of his oevre but not quite
and the LoA edition gives me access to the missing plays. The series is
still in the process of being published, and two volumes of Richard Wright's
collected works have been added, as well as Madison's _Notes on the
Constitutional Debates_, and another volume of Parkman containing
_The Oregon Trail_ and _The Conspiracy of Pontiac_.

Again the bias so far is for older works, but they are beginning
to do some twentieth century stuff, and more can be expected
in the future.

You can find the volumes in bookstores with black covers set off
in red striping, and there are both hardback and paperback formats
available. I subscribe, have now 45 of them, and they send them
to me at 8 a year at $29.70 US per (this is a little higher than
it would be in the US because of the Canadian postage & tax).

I've read 26., 27., 16., 11., 12. and 17., for 6 out of 51 of these
at present.

**********

List 7: _99 Novels: The Best in English Since 1939_, by Anthony Burgess
   |1939
1. _Party Going_, Henry Green
2. _After Many a Summer_, Aldous Huxley
3. _Finnegans Wake_, James Joyce
4. _At Swim-Two-Birds_, Flann O'Brien
   |1940
5. _The Power and the Glory_, Graham Greene
6. _For Whom the Bell Tolls_, Ernest Hemingway
7. _Strangers and Brothers_ (to 1970), C.P. Snow
   |1941
8. _The Aerodrome_, Rex Warner
   |1944
9. _The Horse's Mouth_, Joyce Cary
10. _The Razor's Edge_, Somerset Maugham
   |1945
11. _Brideshead Revisited_, Evelyn Waugh
   |1946
12. _Titus Groan_, Mervyn Peake
   |1947
13. _The Victim_, Saul Bellow
14. _Under the Volcano_, Malcolm Lowry
   |1948
15. _The Heart of the Matter_, Graham Greene
16. _Ape and Essence_, Aldous Huxley
17. _The Naked and the Dead_, Norman Mailer
18. _No Highway_, Nevil Shute
   |1949
19. _The Heat of the Day_, Elizabeth Bowen
20. _Nineteen Eighty-Four_, George Orwell
21. _The Body_, William Sansom
   |1950
22. _Scenes from Provincial Life_, William Cooper
23. _The Disenchanted_, Budd Schulberg
   |1951
24. _A Dance to the Music of Time_ (to 1975), Anthony Powell
25. _The Catcher in the Rye_, J.D. Salinger
26. _The Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight_ (to 1969), Henry Williamson
27. _The Caine Mutiny_, Herman Wouk
   |1952
28. _Invisible Man_, Ralph Ellison
29. _The Old Man and the Sea_, Ernest Hemingway
30. _The Groves of Academe_, Mary McCarthy
31. _Wise Blood_, Flannery O'Connor
32. _Sword of Honour_ (to 1961), Evelyn Waugh
   |1953
33. _The Long Goodbye_, Raymond Chandler
   |1954
34. _Lucky Jim_, Kingsley Amis
   |1957
35. _Room at the Top_, John Braine
36. _The Alexandria Quartet_ (to 1960), Lawrence Durrell
37. _The London Novels_ (to 1960), Colin MacInnes
38. _The Assistant_, Bernard Malamud
   |1958
39. _The Bell_, Iris Murdoch
40. _Saturday Night and Sunday Morning_, Alan Sillitoe
41. _The Once and Future King_, T.H. White
   |1959
42. _The Mansion_, William Faulkner
43. _Goldfinger_, Ian Fleming
   |1960
44. _Facial Justice_, L.P. Hartley
45. _The Balkans Trilogy_ (to 1965), Olivia Manning
   |1961
46. _The Mighty and Their Fall_, Ivy Compton-Burnett
47. _Catch-22_, Joseph Heller
48. _The Fox in the Attic_, Richard Hughes
49. _Riders in the Chariot_, Patrick White
50. _The Old Men at the Zoo_, Angus Wilson
   |1962
51. _Another Country_, James Baldwin
52. _An Error of Judgment_, Pamela Hansford Johnson
53. _Island_, Aldous Huxley
54. _The Golden Notebook_, Doris Lessing
55. _Pale Fire_, Vladimir Nabokov
   |1963
56. _The Girls of Slender Means_, Muriel Spark
   |1964
57. _The Spire_, William Golding
58. _Heartland_, Wilson Harris
59. _A Single Man_, Christopher Isherwood
60. _The Defence_, Vladimir Nabokov
61. _Late Call_, Angus Wilson
   |1965
62. _The Lockwood Concern_, John O'Hara
63. _The Mandelbaum Gate_, Muriel Spark
   |1966
64. _A Man of the People_, Chinua Achebe
65. _The Anti-Death League_, Kingsley Amis
66. _Giles Goat-Boy_, John Barth
67. _The Late Bourgeois World_, Nadine Gordimer
68. _The Last Gentleman_, Walker Percy
   |1967
69. _The Vendor of Sweets_, R.K. Narayan
   |1968
70. _The Image Men_, J.B. Priestley
71. _Cocksure_, Mordecai Richler
72. _Pavane_, Keith Roberts
   |1969
73. _The French Lieutenant's Woman_, John Fowles
74. _Portnoy's Complaint_, Philip Roth
   |1970
75. _Bomber_, Len Deighton
   |1973
76. _Sweet Dreams_, Michael Frayn
77. _Gravity's Rainbow_, Thomas Pynchon
   |1975
78. _Humboldt's Gift_, Saul Bellow
79. _The History Man_, Malcolm Bradbury
   |1976
80. _The Doctor's Wife_, Brian Moore
81. _Falstaff_, Robert Nye
   |1977
82. _How to Save Your Own Life_, Erica Jong
83. _Farewell Companions_, James Plunkett
84. _Staying On_, Paul Scott
   |1978
85. _The Coup_, John Updike
   |1979
86. _The Unlimited Dream Company_, J.G. Ballard
87. _Dubin's Lives_, Bernard Malamud
88. _A Bend in the River_, V.S. Naipaul
89. _Sophie's Choice_, William Stryon
   |1980
90. _Life in the West_, Brian Aldiss
91. _Riddley Walker_, Russell Hoban
92. _How Far Can You Go?_, David Lodge
93. _A Confederacy of Dunces_, John Kennedy Toole
   |1981
94. _Lanark_, Alasdair Gray
95. _Darconville's Cat_, Alexander Theroux
96. _The Mosquito Coast_, Paul Theroux
97. _Creation_, Gore Vidal
   |1982
98. _The Rebel Angels_, Robertson Davies
   |1983
99. _Ancient Evenings_, Norman Mailer

---

How's that for something completely different?

Again, I'd recommend the little book. It's made up of one
page appreciations for each of the novels mentioned. It is
a little maddening, though, because he really doesn't limit himself
to 99 books. Instead, he often will say he chose this particular
book for some quirky reason, and that all the 10 other novels by this 
author are equally as good. Anyway, it's a lovely list of suggested
readings in modern English novels.

Of course, I do much better when there are classical Greeks on the
list. I've read 3., 4., 5., 20., 25., 29., 41., and 77., for 8
out of 99.

**********

(continued to Part 5)
      
                 Mike Morris
              (msmorris@watsci.uwaterloo.ca)