 | The Odyssey (Penguin Classics) by Homer
Buy new: £5.98 / Used from: £3.20 Its for your own good... A good grounding in Classical drama and epic sets you up for life. Really.
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 | The Aeneid (Penguin Classics) by Virgil
Buy new: £5.84 / Used from: £3.55 Reading it will add a depth of understanding and clarity of reference to all the literature that came after...
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 | Beowulf: Verse Translation (Penguin Classics) by PENGUIN GROUP (UK)
Buy new: £4.99 / Used from: £2.79 Unless you're familiar with Old English, read it in translation (of which Michael Alexander's is the best). Heroic epic, dragons and shield-maidens. This is where Tolkien began...
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 | The Saga of the Volsungs: The Norse Epic of Sigurd the Dragon Slayer (Penguin Classics) by none
Buy new: £5.98 / Used from: £8.38 Norse epic at its most entertaining - the forefather of the Nibenlungenlied, Wagner's Ring Cycle and Lord of the Rings.
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 | The Consolation of Philosophy (Penguin Classics) by Ancius Boethius
Buy used from: £4.75 Absolutely vital for understanding the literature and mindset of the Middle Ages - this is an excellent translation that stays true to the poetical feel of the original Classical text.
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 | The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd Ed. by Geoffrey Chaucer
Buy used from: £6.20 Heavy, scholarly and completely indispensable. Forget the single volume editions of Chaucer, the Riverside sets you up for life. And builds muscles.
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 | The Romance of the Rose (Oxford World's Classics) by Guillaume de Lorris
Buy new: £9.89 / Used from: £4.95 "...in which the whole art of love is contained..." - the most popular Romance of the mediaeval period and still highly entertaining. Read Boethius before hand.
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 | The Decameron (Penguin Classics) by Giovanni Boccaccio
Buy new: £7.77 / Used from: £4.00 One of the first of the Italian masters, often reworked by Chaucer but with the dirtier parts left out.
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 | The Divine Comedy: I. Inferno: Inferno. Parallel Text Vol 1 (Galaxy Books) by Alighieri Dante
Buy new: £7.75 / Used from: £0.39 Lives up to its name - a very "divine" read. IMHO this translation is far, far superior to the Penguin one and the parallel text means you can compare with the original, Italian allowing.
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 | Paradise Lost (Penguin Classics) by John Milton
Buy new: £5.48 / Used from: £4.49 Its all worth it in the end, trust me. And mind boggling once you start thinking about it...
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 | The Complete English Poems (Penguin Classics) by John Donne
Buy new: £7.67 / Used from: £0.88 Donne most certainly has my heart when it comes to Renaissance poetry - harsh, tender, cynical, violent and loving...
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 | Five Jacobean Tragedies (Wordsworth Classics of World Literature) by Thomas Middleton
Buy used from: £0.34 Everyone knows about Shakespeare...you'll come across him again and again. So I'm giving him a gentle push aside in favour of Jacobean tragedy...Duchess of Malfi especially.
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 | Works (Oxford Standard Authors) by Thomas Malory
Buy new: £10.12 / Used from: £3.00 In my haste, I forgot Malory. Bible for all things Arthurian and sometimes called the first "novel"...well worth the effort...
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 | Gulliver's Travels (Penguin Classics) by Jonathan Swift
Buy new: £3.98 / Used from: £1.20 Little people, big people and lots of political satire. Definitely not the children's book some publisher seem to think it to be...
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 | Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
Buy used from: £0.01 The Victorians censored it as "a motley history of bastardism, fornication and adultery" - if thats not a recommendation in itself then what is??? ;-)
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