The New Lifetime Reading Plan
by Clifton Fadiman and John S. Major
(4th ed., 1997)
Source
Robert Teeter's Home Page > Books and Libraries > What Books to Read > Great Books Lists > Fadiman and Major. New Lifetime Reading Plan, 4th ed
Preface
"We assume that nearly every reader of this book will
own a Bible and be at least somewhat accustomed to reading it; there is
nothing we might try to say about it that would not seem presumptuous."
— Fadiman and Major
Part One
- Anonymous, ca. 2000 BCE. The Epic of Gilgamesh.
- Homer, ca. 800 BCE. The Iliad.
- Homer, ca. 800 BCE. The Odyssey.
- Confucius, 551-479 BCE. The Analects.
- Aeschylus, 525-456/5 BCE. The Oresteia.
- Sophocles, 496-406 BCE. Oedipus Rex; Oedipus at Colonus;
Antigone
- Euripides, 484-406 BCE. Alcestis; Medea; Hippolytus;
Trojan Women; Electra; Bacchae.
- Herodotus, ca. 484-425 BCE. The Histories.
- Thucydides, 470/460-ca.400 BCE. The History of the Peloponnesian War.
- Sun-tzu, ca. 450-380 BCE. The Art of War.
- Aristophanes, 448-388 BCE. Lysistrata; The Clouds;
The Birds.
- Plato, 428-348 BCE. Selected Works.
- Aristotle, 384-322 BCE. Ethics; Politics; Poetics.
- Mencius, ca. 400-320 BCE. The Book of Mencius.
- Valmiki, ca. 300 BCE. The Book of Ramayana.
- Vyasa, ca. 200 BCE. The Mahabharata.
- Anonymous, ca. 200 BCE. The Bhagavad Gita.
- Ssu-ma Ch'ien, 145-86 BCE. Records of the Grand Historian.
- Lucretius, ca. 100-ca. 50 BCE. Of the Nature of Things.
- Virgil, 70-19 BCE. The Aeneid.
- Marcus Aurelius, 121-180. Meditations.
Part Two
- Saint Augustine, 354-430. The Confessions.
- Kalidasa, ca. 400. The Cloud Messenger; Sakuntala.
- Revealed to Muhammad, ca. 650. The Koran.
- Hui-neng, 638-713. The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch.
- Firdausi, ca. 940-1020. Shah Nameh.
- Sei Shonagon, ca. 965-1035. The Pillow Book.
- Lady Murasaki, ca. 976-1015. Tale of Genji.
- Omar Khayyam, 1048-? The Rubaiyat.
- Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321. The Divine Comedy.
- Luo Kuan-chung, ca. 1330-1400. The Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
- Geoffrey Chaucer, 1342-1400. The Canterbury Tales.
- Anonymous, ca. 1500. The Thousand and One Nights.
- Niccolò Macchiavelli, 1469-1527. The Prince.
- François Rabelais, 1483-1553. Gargantua and Pantagruel.
- Wu Cheng-en, 1500-1582. Journey to the West.
- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, 1533-1592. Selected Essays.
- Miguel de Cervantes de Saavedra, 1547-1616. Don Quixote.
Part Three
- William Shakespeare, 1564-1616. Complete Works.
- John Donne, 1573-1631. Selected Works.
- Anonymous, 1618. The Plum in the Golden Vase (Chin P'ing Mei)
- Galileo Galilei, 1574-1642. Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief
World Systems.
- Thomas Hobbes, 1588-1679. Leviathan.
- René Descartes, 1596-1650. Discourse on Method.
- John Milton, 1608-1674. Paradise Lost; Lycidas; On the
Morning of Christ's Nativity; Sonnets; Areopagitica.
- Molière, 1622-1673. Selected Plays.
- Blaise Pascal, 1623-1662. Thoughts (Pensées).
- John Bunyan, 1628-1688. Pilgrim's Progress.
- John Locke, 1632-1688. Second Treatise of Government.
- Matsuo Basho, 1644-1694. The Narrow Road to the Deep North.
- Daniel Defoe, 1660-1731. Robinson Crusoe.
- Jonathan Swift, 1667-1745. Gulliver's Travels.
- Voltaire, 1694-1778. Candide and Other Works.
- David Hume, 1711-1776. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.
- Henry Fielding, 1707-1754. Tom Jones.
- Ts'ao Hsüeh-ch'in, 1715-1763. The Dream of the Red Chamber
(also called The Story of the Stone).
- Jean Jacques Rousseau, 1712-1778. Confessions.
- Laurence Sterne, 1713-1768. Tristram Shandy.
- James Boswell, 1740-1795. The Life of Samuel Johnson.
- Thomas Jefferson and others. Basic Documents in American History,
edited by Richard B. Morris
- Hamilton, Madison, and Jay. The Federalist Papers, edited by
Clinton Rossiter.
Part Four
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749-1832. Faust.
- William Blake, 1757-1827. Selected Works.
- William Wordsworth, 1770-1850. The Prelude; Selected Shorter Poems;
Preface to the Lyrical Ballads (1800).
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772-1834. The Ancient Mariner;
Christabel; Kubla Khan; Biographia Literaria;
Writings on Shakespeare.
- Jane Austen, 1775-1817. Pride and Prejudice; Emma.
- Stendhal, 1783-1842. The Red and the Black.
- Honoré de Balzac, 1799-1850. Père Goriot; Eugénie Grandet.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882. Selected Works.
- Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1804-1864. The Scarlet Letter; Selected Tales.
- Alexis de Tocqueville, 1805-1859. Democracy in America.
- John Stuart Mill, 1806-1873. On Liberty; The Subjection
of Women.
- Charles Darwin, 1809-1882. The Voyage of the Beagle; The
Origin of Species.
- Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, 1809-1852. Dead Souls.
- Edgar Allan Poe, 1809-1849. Short Stories and Other Works.
- William Makepeace Thackeray, 1811-1863. Vanity Fair.
- Charles Dickens, 1812-1870. Pickwick Papers; David
Copperfield; Great Expectations; Hard Times;
Our Mutual Friend; Little Dorrit.
- Anthony Trollope, 1815-1882. The Warden; The Last
Chronicle of Barset; The Eustace Diamonds; The
Way We Live Now; Autobiography.
- The Brontë Sisters
- 79A. Charlotte Brontë, 1816-1855. Jane Eyre
- 79B. Emily Brontë, 1818-1848. Wuthering Heights
- Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862. Walden; Civil Disobedience.
- Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev, 1818-1883. Fathers and Sons.
- Karl Marx, 1818-1883, and Friedrich Engels, 1820-1895. The
Communist Manifesto.
- Herman Melville, 1819-1891. Moby Dick; Bartleby the Scrivener.
- George Eliot, 1819-1880. The Mill on the Floss; Middlemarch.
- Walt Whitman, 1819-1892. Selected Poems; Democratic Vistas; Preface
to the first issue of Leaves of Grass (1855); A Backward Glance
O'er Travelled Roads.
- Gustave Flaubert, 1821-1880. Madame Bovary.
- Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, 1821-1881. Crime and Punishment;
The Brothers Karamazov.
- Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy, 1828-1910. War and Peace.
- Henrik Ibsen, 1828-1906. Selected Plays.
- Emily Dickinson, 1830-1886. Collected Poems.
- Lewis Carroll, 1832-1898. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland; Through
the Looking-Glass.
- Mark Twain, 1835-1910. Huckleberry Finn.
- Henry Adams, 1838-1918. The Education of Henry Adams.
- Thomas Hardy, 1840-1928. The Mayor of Casterbridge.
- William James, 1842-1910. The Principles of Psychology;
Pragmatism; Four Essays from The Meaning of Truth;
The Varieties of Religious Experience.
- Henry James, 1843-1916. The Ambassadors.
- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, 1844-1900. Thus Spake Zarathustra;
The Genealogy of Morals; Beyond Good and Evil; and
other works.
Part Five
- Sigmund Freud, 1856-1939. Selected Works, including The
Interpretation of Dreams; Three Essays on the Theory of
Sexuality; and Civilization and Its Discontents.
- George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950. Selcted Plays and Prefaces.
- Joseph Conrad, 1857-1924. Nostromo.
- Anton Chekhov, 1860-1904. Uncle Vanya; Three Sisters;
The Cherry Orchard; Selected Short Stories.
- Edith Wharton, 1862-1937. The Custom of the Country;
The Age of Innocence; The House of Mirth.
- William Butler Yeats, 1865-1939. Collected Poems; Collected Plays;
The Autobiography.
- Natsume Soseki, 18676-1916. Kokoro.
- Marcel Proust, 1871-1922. Remembrance of Things Past.
- Robert Frost, 1874-1963. Collected Poems.
- Thomas Mann, 1875-1955. The Magic Mountain.
- E. M. Forster, 1879-1970. A Passage to India.
- Lu Hsün, 1881-1936. Collected Short Stories.
- James Joyce, 1882-1941. Ulysses.
- Virginia Woolf, 1882-1941. Mrs. Dalloway; To the Lighthouse;
Orlando; The Waves.
- Franz Kafka, 1883-1924. The Trial; The Castle; Selected Short
Stories.
- D. H. Lawrence, 1885-1930. Sons and Lovers; Women in Love.
- Tanizaki Junichiro, 1886-1965. The Makioka Sisters.
- Eugene O'Neill, 1888-1953. Mourning Becomes Electra;
The Iceman Cometh; Long Day's Journey into Night.
- T. S. Eliot, 1888-1965. Collected Poems; Collected Plays.
- Aldous Huxley, 1894-1963. Brave New World.
- William Faulkner, 1897-1962. The Sound and the Fury; As I Lay Dying.
- Ernest Hemingway, 1899-1962. Short Stories.
- Kawabata Yasunari, 1899-1972. Beauty and Sadness.
- Jorge Luis Borges, 1899-1986. Labyrinths Dreamtigers.
- Vladimir Nabokov, 1899-1977. Lolita; Pale Fire; Speak,
Memory.
- George Orwell, 1903-1950. Animal Farm; Nineteen Eighty-Four;
Burmese Days.
- R. K. Narayan, 1906- . The English Teacher; The Vendor
of Sweets.
- Samuel Beckett, 1906-1989. Waiting for Godot; Endgame;
Krapp's Last Tape.
- W. H. Auden, 1907-1973. Collected Poems.
- Albert Camus, 1913-1960. The Plague; The Stranger.
- Saul Bellow, 1915- . The Adventures of Augie March; Herzog;
Humboldt's Gift.
- Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, 1918- . The First Circle;
Cancer Ward.
- Thomas Kuhn, 1922-1996. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
- Mishima Yukio, 1925-1970. Confessions of a Mask; The
Temple of the Golden Pavilion.
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1928- . One Hundred Years of Solitude.
- Chinua Achebe, 1930- . Things Fall Apart.