 | The Bible: Authorized King James Version (Oxford World's Classics)
Buy new: £26.98 / Used from: £7.00 Beautifully rendered into English by a committee of scholars this is a vital though sometimes brutal cultural artifact
|
 | The Poems of Catullus (Classics) by Gaius Valerius Catullus
Buy used from: £0.01 One of the most witty and passionate poets of the Ancient World Catullus was one of my first models for writing
|
 | Twelve Caesars (Wordsworth Classics of World Literature) by Suetonius
Buy new: £0.97 / Used from: £0.94 I read this at 9 and found it so much more interesting than school classes on sex. Power and pleasure mingled in large quantities
|
 | Arabian Nights: Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (Thousand Nights & One Night)
Buy new: £15.19 / Used from: £5.75 Maybe the greatest treasury of tales in the history of literature. Hilarious, fantastic and wise
|
 | The Divine Comedy (Oxford World's Classics) by Dante Alighieri
Buy used from: £7.20 A great epic combining the Classical and the Medieval world in a quest for spiritual love and enlightenment
|
 | The Canterbury Tales: A Selection (Penguin Popular Classics) by Geoffrey Chaucer
Buy new: £1.90 / Used from: £0.01 The first great classic of English literature, a collection of rollicking intimate tales that are finer in the English of the time than in translation
|
 | The Prince (Oxford World's Classics) by Niccolo Machiavelli
Buy used from: £0.01 Just remembered that Livy should be on this list... ah well, Machiavelli's cool and cynical textbook is a nice counterpoise to his work
|
 | The Histories of Gargantua and Pantagruel (Classics) by Francois Rabelais
Buy used from: £0.01 A prototype for all anarchical novels, this is a comic celebration of human bodily functions and human kindness and brutality. Monty Python X rated if you like
|
 | Don Quixote (Penguin Classics) by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Buy used from: £3.75 With more of a structure than Rabelais' books this much imitated book is at least as tragic and beautiful as it is funny. Art, impossible love and the questing spirit all rolled into one
|
 | The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Special Editions) by William Shakespeare
Buy new: £4.79 / Used from: £3.20 Of course this, the central text in English literature has to be here. Even if some of the plays aren't that good the best are in a class of their own
|
 | Spinoza : Ethics (Everyman) by Benedictus De Spinoza
Buy used from: £1.90 A bold philosophical work that anticipated much of modern thought this clearly puts the case for pantheism and atheism without contradiction between the two
|
 | Gulliver's Travels (Penguin Popular Classics) by Jonathan Swift
Buy new: £1.80 / Used from: £0.01 Usually packaged as a children's book, this is a scorching satire on 1700s politics and more interestingly what it is to be human
|
 | Candide (Penguin Popular Classics) by Voltaire
Buy new: £1.80 / Used from: £0.01 Another philosophical satire that mixes comedy with wisdom this is full of unforgettable images and witticisms with a strong message throughout it
|
 | The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake by William Blake
Buy new: £10.76 / Used from: £9.59 Revolutionary, prophet, poet and lover of nature, Blake gave us a whole new mythology as well as many lovely and compassionate compositions
|
 | Juliette by Marquis de Sade
Buy new: £8.75 / Used from: £1.75 A marvellous rambling adventure and philosophical study. De Sade is maybe the greatest prophet and philosopher of our age and anticipates female emancipation in this explosive novel
|
 | Wuthering Heights (Collector's Library) by Emily Bronte
Buy new: £3.15 / Used from: £0.28 One of the supreme accounts of obsessive passion, Wuthering Heights is a quirky parable and love story that never ceases to root you to the spot
|
 | David Copperfield (Penguin Popular Classics) by Charles Dickens
Buy new: £1.80 / Used from: £0.01 This was my favourite book at the age of 8 and it still is one of my favourite tales of growing up. There are so many wonderful incidents and characters in this book that there is not space to talk ab
|
 | Crime and Punishment (Collector's library) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Buy new: £5.49 / Used from: £1.46 Dickens and De Sade with added melancholy, Crime and Punishment is a perfect mix of philosophical, religious and crime novel
|
 | Anna Karenina (Wordsworth Classics) by L.N. Tolstoy
Buy new: £1.99 / Used from: £0.01 The other great Russian novelist of the period created this teeming, absorbing world full of great characters and a racing plot
|
 | The Decline of the West (Oxford Paperbacks) by Oswald Spengler
Buy new: £6.25 / Used from: £7.01 A book that I like because it attempts to write a history of civilisation and a philosophical/scientific study of the past, present and future
|
 | In Search of Lost Time: 6 Volumes by Marcel Proust
Its very long and describes a life story better than anything else ever written, The main character and the French society of the day come to life. Once again there is too little space to begin to dis
|
 | Ulysses (Oxford World's Classics) by James Joyce
Buy used from: £4.50 The ultimate work of 20th Century literature this revolutionised the art of writing in its depiction of one day in Dublin. Joyce was firing with all cylinders when it came to style and presentation
|
 | A Glastonbury Romance by John Cowper Powys
Buy used from: £24.98 A powerful and rather disturbing novel this a sublime and strange mixture of fantasy and real life, teasingly philosophical and entering into the deepest and darkest desires of a small town community
|
 | Tropic of Capricorn (Modern Classics) by Henry Miller
Buy used from: £0.01 My favourite depiction of America as the land of mixed cultures, transcendental wisdom, capitalist corruption and free love. Very funny and often very sexy and moving too
|
 | Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle (Penguin Modern Classics) by Vladimir Nabokov
Buy new: £7.14 / Used from: £5.00 The Nabokov novel that first made me a fan, this book is brilliantly and delightfully written, containing a passionate love story with a humourous and rhapsodic celebration of life and literature
|
Listmania!
