Masterpieces of World Literature by Frank N. Magill
Scholar Frank N. Magill’s famous literary studies reference book. A selection of over 200 of the greatest works of literature of all time
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The Odyssey by Homer
The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work traditionally ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the m...
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Works and Days by Hesiod
The Works and Days is a didactic poem of some 800 lines written by the ancient Greek poet Hesiod around 700 BCE. At its center, the Works and Days is a farmer's almanac in which Hesiod instructs hi...
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The Iliad by Homer
The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set in the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of Ilium by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and e...
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The Twelve Labours of Hercules by Unknown
The twelve labours of Hercules or dodekathlon (Greek: δωδέκαθλον, dodekathlon) are a series of episodes concerning a penance carried out by Heracles, the greatest of the Greek heroes, whose name wa...
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Epic of Gilgamesh by Unknown
The Epic of Gilgamesh is an epic poem from Ancient Iraq and is among the earliest known works of literary writings. Scholars believe that it originated as a series of Sumerian legends and poems abo...
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The Poems of Sappho by Sappho
Sappho was a Greek lyric poet, born on the island of Lesbos. The Alexandrians included her in the list of nine lyric poets. Her birth was sometime between 630 and 612 BCE, and it is said that she d...
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Ramayana by Valmiki
The Ramayana is an ancient Sanskrit epic. It is attributed to the Hindu sage Valmiki and forms an important part of the Hindu canon (smṛti). The Ramayana is one of the two great epics of India, the...
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Oresteia by Aeschylus
The Oresteia is a trilogy of Greek tragedies written by Aeschylus which concerns the end of the curse on the House of Atreus. When originally performed it was accompanied by Proteus, a satyr play t...
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The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides
The History of the Peloponnesian War is an account of the Peloponnesian War in Ancient Greece, fought between the Peloponnesian League (led by Sparta) and the Delian League (led by Athens). It was ...
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Antigone by Sophocles
Antigone is a tragedy by Sophocles written before or in 442 BC. Chronologically, it is the third of the three Theban plays but was written first.[1] The play expands on the Theban legend that preda...
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Medea by Euripides
Medea is an ancient Greek tragedy written by Euripides, based upon the myth of Jason and Medea and first produced in 431 BC. The plot centers on the barbarian protagonist as she finds her position ...
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Oedipus the King by Sophocles
Oedipus the King is an Athenian tragedy by Sophocles that was first performed c. 429 BC. It was the second of Sophocles's three Theban plays to be produced, but it comes first in the internal chron...
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The Histories of Herodotus by Herodotus
The Histories of Herodotus is considered one of the seminal works of history in Western literature. Written from the 450s to the 420s BC in the Ionic dialect of classical Greek, The Histories serve...
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Trojan Women by Euripides
The Trojan Women (Ancient Greek: Τρῳάδες, Trōiades), also known as Troades, is a tragedy by the Greek playwright Euripides. Produced in 415 BC during the Peloponnesian War, it is often considered a...
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Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus
Prometheus Bound is an Ancient Greek tragedy. In Antiquity, this drama was attributed to Aeschylus, but is now considered by some scholars to be the work of another hand, perhaps one as late as ca....
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The Birds by Aristophanes
The Birds (Greek: Ὄρνιθες Ornithes) is a comedy by the Ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes. It was performed in 414 BC at the City Dionysia where it won second prize. It has been acclaimed by mod...
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Lysistrata by Aristophanes
This classic comedy — from the 5th century BC — concerns the vow of Greek women to withhold sex from their husbands until the men agree to end the disastrous wars between Athens and Sparta. An exub...
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Electra by Sophocles
Electra or Elektra (Greek: Ἠλέκτρα / Ēlektra) is a Greek tragic play by Sophocles. Its date is not known, but various stylistic similarities with the Philoctetes (409 BC) and the Oedipus at Colonus...
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The Bacchae by Euripides
Electra or Elektra (Ancient Greek: Ἠλέκτρα, Ēlektra) is a Greek tragedy by Sophocles. Its date is not known, but various stylistic similarities with the Philoctetes (409 BC) and the Oedipus at Colo...
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Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles
Oedipus at Colonus is one of the three Theban plays of the Athenian tragedian Sophocles. It was written shortly before Sophocles' death in 406 BC and produced by his grandson (also called Sophocles...
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The Republic by Plato
The Republic is a Socratic dialogue by Plato, written c. 380 B.C.E.. It is one of the most influential works of philosophy and political theory, and Plato's best known work. In Plato's fictional di...
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The Complete Works of Plato by Plato
Plato (pronounced /ˈpleɪtoʊ/) (Greek: Πλάτων, Plátōn, "broad") (428/427 BC[a] – 348/347 BC), was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the ...
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Poetics by Aristotle
Aristotle's Poetics (Greek: Περὶ ποιητικῆς, Latin: De Poetica;[1] c. 335 BCE[2]) is the earliest surviving work of dramatic theory and the first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary t...
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The Quest for the Golden Fleece by Unknown
"The Argonautika", the only surviving epic of the Hellenistic era, is a retelling of the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece, probably the oldest extant Greek myth.
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Catiline Orations by Marcus Tullius Cicero
The Catiline Orations or Catilinarian Orations were speeches given in 63 BC by Marcus Tullius Cicero, the consul of Rome, exposing to the Roman Senate the plot of Lucius Sergius Catilina and his al...
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De Rerum Natura by Lucretius
De rerum natura is a first century BC epic poem by the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius with the goal of explaining Epicurean philosophy to a Roman audience. The poem, written in dactylic hexam...
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The Odes by Horace
The Odes (Latin: Carmina) are a collection in four books of Latin lyric poems by Horace. The Horatian ode format and style has been emulated since by other poets. Books 1 to 3 were published in 23 ...
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The Aeneid by Virgil
The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem written by Virgil in the late 1st century BC (29–19 BC) that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who traveled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the...
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Metamorphoses by Ovid
The Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid is a narrative poem in fifteen books that describes the creation and history of the world. Completed in 8 AD, it has remained one of the most popular works ...
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Thyestes by Seneca
Written in Nero's Rome in about AD62, Seneca's "Thyestes" is one of the greatest and most influential of classical tragedies. As the bloodiest work in the Greco-Roman canon, "Thyestes" was long rev...
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Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Meditations (Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν, Ta eis heauton, literally "thoughts/writings addressed to himself") is the title of a series of personal writings by Marcus Aurelius setting forth his ideas on Stoic phi...
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Daphnis and Chloe by Longus
Longus s "Daphnis and Chloe" (second or early third century CE), in which an idealized pastoral environment provides the setting as a boy and girl discover their sexuality, is one of the great work...
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Mahabharata by Vyasa
The Mahabharata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India, the other being the Rāmāyaṇa. The epic is part of the Hindu itihāsa (literally "history"), and forms an important part of Hi...
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Confessions by Augustine
Confessions is the name of an autobiographical work, consisting of 13 books, by St. Augustine of Hippo, written between AD 397 and AD 398. Modern English translations of it are sometimes published ...
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Beowulf by Unknown
Beowulf is an Old English heroic epic poem of unknown authorship, dating as recorded in the Nowell Codex manuscript from between the 8th and the early 11th century, set in Denmark and Sweden. Commo...
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The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
The Tale of Genji is a classic work of Japanese literature attributed to the Japanese noblewoman Murasaki Shikibu in the early eleventh century, around the peak of the Heian Period. It is sometimes...
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The Song of Roland by Unknown
The Song of Roland (French: La Chanson de Roland) is a heroic poem based on the Battle of Roncevaux in 778, during the reign of Charlemagne. It is the oldest surviving major work of French literatu...
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Reynard the Fox by Unknown
Reynard (French: Renart; German: Reineke; Dutch: Reinaert) is a literary cycle of allegorical French, Dutch, English, and German fables largely concerned with Reynard, an anthropomorphic red fox an...
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Poem of the Cid by Unknown
Few works have shaped a national literature as thoroughly as the Poem of the Cid has shaped the Spanish literary tradition. Tracing the life of the eleventh-century military commander Rodrigo Diaz ...
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The Nibelungenlied by Anonymous
Thought to have been first written down in the 12th century by an author who is still unknown, the Nibelungenlied, translated from Middle High German as the Song of the Nibelungs, is an epic German...
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Parzival by Wolfram Eschenbach
Composed in the early thirteenth century, Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival is the re-creation and completion of the story left unfinished by its initiator Chrétien de Troyes. It follows Parzival f...
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Tristan by Gottfried von Strassburg
Gottfried's work is regarded, alongside Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival and the Nibelungenlied, as one of the great narrative masterpieces of the German Middle Ages.
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Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas
The Summa Theologica (Latin: "Summary of Theology" or "Highest Theology") or the Summa Theologiæ or simply the Summa, written 1265–1274) is the most famous work of Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274), al...
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Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
In the early summer of the year 1348, as a terrible plague ravages the city, ten charming young Florentines take refuge in country villas to tell each other stories — a hundred stories of love, adv...
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The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
With their astonishing diversity of tone and subject matter, The Canterbury Tales have become one of the touchstones of medieval literature. Translated here into modern English, these tales of a mo...
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The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
Belonging in the immortal company of the great works of literature, Dante Alighieri's poetic masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, is a moving human drama, an unforgettable visionary journey through the ...
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Le Morte d'Arthur by Thomas Malory
Le Morte d'Arthur (spelled Le Morte Darthur in the first printing and also in some modern editions, Middle French for la mort d'Arthur, "the death of Arthur") is Sir Thomas Malory's compilation of ...
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Everyman by Anonymous
Everyman is the most durable of medieval morality plays, in which the central character, summoned by death, must face final judgment on the strength of his good deeds. The work is reprinted here al...
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Utopia by Thomas More
Controversial, contradictory, and mysterious, Utopia by Sir Thomas More has engaged scholars and intrigued readers since its initial publication in the 16th century. More's imagining of Utopia pres...
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The Orlando Furioso by Lodovico Ariosto
Orlando Furioso (The Frenzy of Orlando, more literally Mad Orlando) (in Italian furioso is seldom capitalized) is an Italian epic poem by Ludovico Ariosto which has exerted a wide influence on late...
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Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais
The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel (in French, La vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel) is a connected series of five novels written in the 16th century by François Rabelais. It is the story of t...
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The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
Il Principe (The Prince) is a political treatise by the Florentine public servant and political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli. Originally called De Principatibus (About Principalities), it was origi...
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Lazarillo de Tormes by Unknown
The bastard son of a prostitute, Lazarillo goes to work for a blind beggar, who beats and starves him, while teaching him some very useful dirty tricks. The boy then drifts in and out of the servic...
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Essays by Michel de Montaigne
Essays is the title given to a collection of 107 essays written by Michel de Montaigne that was first published in 1580. Montaigne essentially invented the literary form of essay, a short subjectiv...
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The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser
The Faerie Queene is an incomplete English epic poem by Edmund Spenser. The first half was published in 1590, and a second installment was published in 1596. The Faerie Queene is notable for its fo...
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Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
Alonso Quixano, a retired country gentleman in his fifties, lives in an unnamed section of La Mancha with his niece and a housekeeper. He has become obsessed with books of chivalry, and believes th...
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Volpone by Ben Jonson
Volpone[1] (Italian for "sly fox") is a comedy play by English playwright Ben Jonson first produced in 1606, drawing on elements of city comedy and beast fable. A merciless satire of greed and lust...
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First Folio by William Shakespeare
Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies is the 1623 published collection of William Shakespeare's plays. Modern scholars commonly refer to it as the First Folio. Printed in folio...
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New Atlantis by Francis Bacon
New Atlantis is an incomplete utopian novel by Sir Francis Bacon, published in 1627. In this work, Bacon portrayed a vision of the future of human discovery and knowledge, expressing his aspiration...
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The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Donne by John Donne
John Donne (/ˈdʌn/ dun) (between 24 January and 19 June 1572[1] – 31 March 1631) was an English poet and a cleric in the Church of England. He is considered the pre-eminent representative of the me...
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Life Is a Dream by Pedro Calderón de la Barca
Considered one of the outstanding Spanish dramas of all time, this 17th-century allegory explores the mysteries of human destiny, the illusory nature of existence, and the struggle between predesti...
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Le Cid by Pierre Corneille
THE STORY: Published in 1636, LE CID was held as an ideal work of drama for years by subsequent playwrights. In this tragic coming-of-age story, a young knight is asked to defend his father's honor...
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Areopagitica by John Milton
Areopagitica; A speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc’d Printing, to the Parlament of England is a 1644 prose polemical tract by the English poet, scholar, and polemical author John...
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Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
Leviathan, The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil, commonly called Leviathan, is a book written by Thomas Hobbes which was published in 1651. It is titled after th...
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Tartuffe by Molière
Tartuffe (full title: Tartuffe, or the Impostor, French: Tartuffe, ou l'Imposteur) is a comedy by Molière. It is his most famous play.
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Paradise Lost by John Milton
Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. It was originally published in 1667 in ten books. A second edition followed in 1674, redivided into twelve...
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The Misanthrope by Molière
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière (French pronunciation: [mɔ.ljɛːʁ]; 1622 – 1673), was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of co...
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The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton by John Milton
John Milton is, next to William Shakespeare, the most influential English poet, a writer whose work spans an incredible breadth of forms and subject matter. The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose ...
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Phèdre by Jean Racine
Phèdre (originally Phèdre et Hippolyte) is a dramatic tragedy in five acts written in alexandrine verse by Jean Racine, first performed in 1677.
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Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan
One of the most powerful dramas of Christian faith ever written, this captivating allegory of man's religious journey in search of salvation follows the pilgrim as he travels an obstacle-filled roa...
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An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding is one of John Locke's two most famous works, the other being his Second Treatise on Civil Government. First appearing in 1690, the essay concerns the founda...
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Poems of Matsuo Bashō by Matsuo Bashō
Matsuo Bashō (松尾 芭蕉?, 1644 – 1694), born 松尾 金作, then Matsuo Chūemon Munefusa (松尾 忠右衛門 宗房?),[2][3] was the most famous poet of the Edo period in Japan. During his lifetime, Bashō was recognized for ...
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One Thousand and One Nights by India/Iran/Iraq/Egypt
One Thousand and One Nights is a collection of Middle Eastern and South Asian stories and folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the Arabian Ni...
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The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope
The Rape of the Lock is a mock-heroic narrative poem written by Alexander Pope, first published anonymously in Lintot's Miscellaneous Poems and Translations in May 1712 in two cantos (334 lines), b...
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Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
A shipwreck’s sole escapee, Robinson Crusoe endures 28 years of solitude on a Caribbean island and manages not only to survive but also to prevail. A warm humanity, evocative details of his struggl...
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Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
From the preeminent prose satirist in the English language, a great classic recounting the four remarkable journeys of ship's surgeon Lemuel Gulliver. For children it remains an enchanting fantasy;...
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An Essay on Man by Alexander Pope
An Essay on Man is a poem published by Alexander Pope in 1734. It is a rationalistic effort to use philosophy in order to "vindicate the ways of God to man" (l.16), a variation of John Milton's cla...
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An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume
An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding is a book by the Scottish empiricist philosopher David Hume, published in 1748. It was a simplification of an earlier effort, Hume's A Treatise of Human Na...
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Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
A foundling of mysterious parentage brought up by Mr. Allworthy on his country estate, Tom Jones is deeply in love with the seemingly unattainable Sophia Western, the beautiful daughter of the neig...
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Candide by Voltaire
Candide, ou l'Optimisme is a French satire written in 1759 by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment. Candide is characterized by its sarcastic tone and its erratic, fantastical, an...
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Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne
As its title suggests, the book is ostensibly Tristram's narration of his life story. But it is one of the central jokes of the novel that he cannot explain anything simply, that he must make expla...
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The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is the traditional name for the unfinished record of his own life written by Benjamin Franklin from 1771 to 1790; however, Franklin himself appears to have ca...
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She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith
The action of She Stoops to Conquer (1773) is largely confined to a night and a day in Squire Hardcastle's somewhat dilapidated country house: Young Marlow, on his way there to meet the bride his f...
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The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was written by English historian Edward Gibbon and published in six volumes. Volume I was published in 1776, and went through six printings. ...
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The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (generally referred to by the short title The Wealth of Nations) is the magnum opus written by Scottish economist and moral philosophe...
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Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
The Critique of Pure Reason (German: Kritik der reinen Vernunft ) by Immanuel Kant, first published in 1781, second edition 1787, is one of the most influential works in the history of philosophy. ...
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The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Confessions is an autobiographical book by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In modern times, it is often published with the title The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in order to distinguish it from St. ...
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Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin
Dream of the Red Chamber is a masterpiece of Chinese vernacular literature and one of China's Four Great Classical Novels. The novel was composed some time in the middle of the 18th century during ...
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The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine
The Age of Reason; Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology is a pamphlet, written by British and American revolutionary Thomas Paine, that challenges institutionalized religion and the...
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The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (originally The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere) is the longest major poem by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, written in 1797–98 and published in 1798 in the ...
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Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust is a tragic play, although more appropriately it should be defined a tragicomedy, despite the very title of the work. It was published in two parts: Faust. Der Tr...
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Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The book is narrated in free indirect speech following the main character Elizabeth Bennet as she deals with matters of upbringing, marriage, moral rightness and education in her aristocratic socie...
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Emma by Jane Austen
Before she began the novel, Austen wrote, "I am going to take a heroine whom no-one but myself will much like."[1] In the very first sentence she introduces the title character as "Emma Woodhouse, ...
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Biographia Literaria by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Biographia Literaria, or in full Biographia Literaria; or Biographical Sketches of MY LITERARY LIFE and OPINIONS, is an autobiography in discourse by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, which he published in ...
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Don Juan: A Poem by Lord Byron
Don Juan (JEW-ən; see below) is a satiric poem by Lord Byron, based on the legend of Don Juan, which Byron reverses, portraying Juan not as a womaniser but as someone easily seduced by women. It is...
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Ivanhoe by Walter Scott
Ivanhoe is a historical novel by Sir Walter Scott published in 1820 and set in 12th-century England. Ivanhoe is sometimes credited for increasing interest in romance and medievalism; John Henry New...
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The Poems of John Keats by John Keats
John Keats (/ˈkiːts/; 31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English Romantic poet. He was one of the main figures of the second generation of Romantic poets along with Lord Byron and Percy Bys...
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The Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley (/ˈpɜrsi ˈbɪʃ ˈʃɛli/;[2] 4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822) was one of the major English Romantic poets, and is regarded by critics as amongst the finest lyric poets in the English l...
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The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell
He's one of English literature's all-time heavyweights, but most of what we know about Samuel Johnson, the man, comes from his friend Boswell’s hearty anecdotal biog.
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The Pioneers by James Fenimore Cooper
The Pioneers: The Sources of the Susquehanna; a Descriptive Tale is a historical novel, the first published of the Leatherstocking Tales, a series of five novels by American writer James Fenimore C...
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Selected Poems of Lord Byron by Lord Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron, FRS (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was an English poet and a leading figure...
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Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin
Eugene Onegin, a "novel in verse," as announced by its subtitle, and Russia's best-loved classic, was written by Alexander Pushkin, that country's unsurpassed literary idol. Yet the American readin...
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The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
The story is set in the British province of New York during the French and Indian War, and concerns—in part—a Huron massacre (with passive French acquiescence) of between 500 to 1,500 Anglo-America...
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The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake by William Blake
William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English painter, poet and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of t...
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The Red and the Black by Stendhal
Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black), subtitled Chronique du XIXe siécle ("Chronicle of the 19th century"), is an historical psychological novel in two volumes by Stendhal, published in 1830...
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The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo
Quasimodo, a gentle and kind hunchback who lives a lonely, isolated life in a cathedral in Paris, rescues the beautiful Esmerelda from being hanged for a crime she did not commit.
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Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
At this challenge, Mary Shelley began work on the 'ghost story' that was to evolve into the most celebrated horror novel in literary history. Frankenstein was published the next year and become the...
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Eugenie Grandet by Honoré de Balzac
1927. Balzac is considered to be the greatest name in the post-Revolutionary literature of France. His writings display a profound knowledge of the human heart, with an extraordinary range of knowl...
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Father Goriot by Honoré de Balzac
Le Père Goriot (English: Father Goriot or Old Goriot) is an 1835 novel by French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850), included in the Scènes de la vie privée section of his novel s...
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The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
Written for publication as a serial, The Pickwick Papers is a sequence of loosely-related adventures. The novel's main character, Mr. Samuel Pickwick, Esquire, is a kind and wealthy old gentleman, ...
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The Poetry of Alexander Pushkin by Alexander Pushkin
Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin was a Russian author of the Romantic era who is considered by many to be the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature. Pushkin was born in...
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Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens
After his father's death, Nicholas Nickleby, his mother and sister are at the mercy of his cold and unfeeling Uncle Ralph. Keen to rid himself of his nephew, Ralph sends Nicholas to work for a wick...
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Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville
De la démocratie en Amérique (published in two volumes, the first in 1835 and the second in 1840) is a classic French text by Alexis de Tocqueville on the United States in the 1830s and its strengt...
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Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol, Russian writer, was first published in 1842, and is one of the most prominent works of 19th-century Russian literature. Gogol himself saw it as an "epic poem in prose",...
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Fairy Tales and Stories by Hans Christian Anderson
a Danish author and poet noted for his children's stories. These include "The Steadfast Tin Soldier", "The Snow Queen", "The Little Mermaid", "Thumbelina", "The Little Match Girl", and the "The Ugl...
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The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Set against the tumultuous years of the post-Napoleonic era, The Count of Monet Cristo recounts the swashbuckling adventures of Edmond Dantes, a dashing young sailor falsely accused of treason. The...
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Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
The narrative is non-linear, involving several flashbacks, and two primary narrators: Mr. Lockwood and Ellen "Nelly" Dean. The novel opens in 1801, with Mr. Lockwood arriving at Thrushcross Grange,...
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Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
No one is better equipped in the struggle for wealth and worldly success than the alluring and ruthless Becky Sharp, who defies her impoverished background to clamber up the class ladder. Her senti...
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Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Jane Eyre is a first-person narrative of the title character, a small, plain-faced, intelligent and honest English orphan. The novel goes through five distinct stages: Jane's childhood at Gateshead...
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The Sickness Unto Death by Søren Kierkegaard
The Sickness Unto Death (Danish: Sygdommen til Døden) is a book written by Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard in 1849 under the pseudonym Anti-Climacus. A work of Christian existentialism, the bo...
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David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
The story of the abandoned waif who learns to survive through challenging encounters with distress and misfortune.
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The Prelude by William Wordsworth
The Prelude; or, Growth of a Poet's Mind is an autobiographical, "philosophical" poem in blank verse by the English poet William Wordsworth. Wordsworth wrote the first version of the poem when he w...
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Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Forty-four poems examine the depth and complexities of married love and shares a wife's feelings for her husband
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The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Hester Prynne is a beautiful young woman. She is also an outcast. In the eyes of her neighbors she has committed an unforgivable sin. Everyone knows that her little daughter, Pearl, is the product ...
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The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The House of the Seven Gables is a Gothic novel written beginning in mid-1850 by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne and published in April 1851 by Ticknor and Fields of Boston. The novel follows a...
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Moby Dick by Herman Melville
First published in 1851, Melville's masterpiece is, in Elizabeth Hardwick's words, "the greatest novel in American literature." The saga of Captain Ahab and his monomaniacal pursuit of the white wh...
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Stories of Nikolai Gogol by Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Vasilievich was a Ukrainian dramatist, novelist and short story writer. Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, ...
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Walden by Henry David Thoreau
Walden (first published as Walden; or, Life in the Woods) is an American book written by noted transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings.
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Benito Cereno by Herman Melville
Benito Cereno is a novella by Herman Melville. It was first serialized in Putnam's Monthly in 1855 and later included a slightly revised version in his collection The Piazza Tales (1856).
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Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass (1855) is a poetry collection by the American poet Walt Whitman. Among the poems in the collection are "Song of Myself," "I Sing the Body Electric," "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Roc...
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Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
Barchester Towers, published in 1857, is the second novel in Anthony Trollope's series known as the "Chronicles of Barsetshire". Among other things it satirises the then raging antipathy in the Chu...
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Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
For daring to peer into the heart of an adulteress and enumerate its contents with profound dispassion, the author of Madame Bovary was tried for "offenses against morality and religion." What shoc...
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The Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire
Les Fleurs du mal (English: The Flowers of Evil) is a volume of French poetry by Charles Baudelaire. First published in 1857 (see 1857 in poetry), it was important in the symbolist and modernist mo...
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Stories of Washington Irving by Washington Irving
Washington Irving (April 3, 1783 – November 28, 1859) was an American author, essayist, biographer, historian, and diplomat of the early 19th century. He is best known for his short stories "Rip Va...
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On Liberty by John Stuart Mill
On Liberty is a philosophical work by 19th century English philosopher John Stuart Mill, first published in 1859. To the Victorian readers of the time it was a radical work, advocating moral and ec...
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On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, published on Thursday 24 November 1859, is a seminal work of scientific literature considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology. Its full title...
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Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Great Expectations is written in the genre of "bildungsroman" or the style of book that follows the story of a man or woman in their quest for maturity, usually starting from childhood and ending i...
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Silas Marner by George Eliot
Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe is the third novel by George Eliot, published in 1861. An outwardly simple tale of a linen weaver, it is notable for its strong realism and its sophisticated tre...
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Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
Les Misérables is a novel by French author Victor Hugo and is widely considered one of the greatest novels of the 19th century. It follows the lives and interactions of several French characters ov...
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Essays of Henry David Thoreau by Henry David Thoreau
Philosopher, naturalist, poet and rugged individualist, Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) has inspired generations of readers to think for themselves, to follow the dictates of their own conscience a...
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Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
Fathers and Sons is an 1862 novel by Ivan Turgenev, his best known work. The fathers and children of the novel refers to the growing divide between the two generations of Russians, and the chara...
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Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
In 1862 Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a shy Oxford mathematician with a stammer, created a story about a little girl tumbling down a rabbit hole. Thus began the immortal adventures of Alice, perhaps th...
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Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
It is a murder story, told from a murder;s point of view, that implicates even the most innocent reader in its enormities. It is a cat-and-mouse game between a tormented young killer and a cheerful...
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Das Kapital by Karl Marx
Das Kapital: Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (German pronunciation: [das kapiˈtaːl]) (Capital, in the English translation) is an extensive treatise on political economy written in German by Karl Ma...
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War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Epic in scale, War and Peace delineates in graphic detail events leading up to Napoleon's invasion of Russia, and the impact of the Napoleonic era on Tsarist society, as seen through the eyes of fi...
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Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (French: Vingt mille lieues sous les mers) is a classic science fiction novel by French writer Jules Verne published in 1870. It tells the story of Captain Nem...
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Middlemarch by George Eliot
Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life is a novel by George Eliot, the pen name of Mary Anne Evans, later Marian Evans. It is her seventh novel, begun in 1869 and then put aside during the final i...
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The Possessed by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Possessed is an 1872 novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Though titled The Possessed in the initial English translation, Dostoevsky scholars and later translations favour the titles The Devils or Demon...
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The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain is an 1876 novel about a young boy growing up along the Mississippi River. The story is set in the fictional town of St. Petersburg, inspired by Hannibal,...
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Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Anna Karenina tells of the doomed love affair between the sensuous and rebellious Anna and the dashing officer, Count Vronsky. Tragedy unfolds as Anna rejects her passionless marriage and must endu...
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The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
The Return of the Native is Thomas Hardy's sixth published novel. It first appeared in the magazine Belgravia, a publication known for its sensationalism, and was presented in twelve monthly instal...
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A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen
A Doll's House is an 1879 play by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. Written one year after The Pillars of Society, the play was the first of Ibsen's to create a sensation and is now perhaps his mo...
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The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Dostoevsky's last and greatest novel, The Karamazov Brothers, is both a brilliantly told crime story and a passionate philosophical debate. The dissolute landowner Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov is mur...
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Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Traditionally considered a coming-of-age story, it is an adventure tale known for its superb atmosphere, character and action, and also a wry commentary on the ambiguity of morality—as seen in Long...
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The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
The story centres on Isabel Archer, an attractive American whom circumstances have brought to Europe. Isabel refuses the offer of marriage to an English peer and to a bulldog-like New Englander, to...
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The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of indivi...
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An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen
An Enemy of the people (original Norwegian title: En folkefiende) is an 1882 play by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. Ibsen wrote it in response to the public outcry against his play Ghosts, whic...
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Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain
Life on the Mississippi is a memoir by Mark Twain detailing his days as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River before and after the American Civil War.
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Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None (German: Also sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen) is a philosophical novel by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, composed in four ...
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The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle
At this there was bustling at the Sheriff's castle, and men ran hither and thither upon this business and upon that, while the forge fires of Nottingham glowed red far into the night like twinkling...
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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Revered by all of the town's children and dreaded by all of its mothers, Huckleberry Finn is indisputably the most appealing child-hero in American literature. Unlike the tall-tale, idyllic worl...
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Germinal by Émile Zola
Germinal is the thirteenth novel in Émile Zola's twenty-volume series Les Rougon-Macquart. Often considered Zola's masterpiece and one of the most significant novels in the French tradition, the no...
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The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Spawned by a nightmare that Stevenson had, this classic tale of the dark, primordial night of the soul remains a masterpiece of the duality of good and evil within us all.
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Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
Kidnapped is a historical fiction adventure novel by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson. Written as a "boys' novel" and first published in the magazine Young Folks from May to July 1886, th...
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Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche
Beyond Good and Evil (German: Jenseits von Gut und Böse), subtitled "Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future" (Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft), is a book by the German philosopher Friedrich N...
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The Father by August Strindberg
The Father (Swedish: Fadren) is a Naturalistic tragedy by Swedish playwright August Strindberg, written in 1887.
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Miss Julie by August Strindberg
Miss Julie (Swedish: Fröken Julie) is a naturalistic play written in 1888 by August Strindberg. It is set on Midsummer's Eve on the estate of a Count in Sweden. The young woman of the title is draw...
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Robert Browning's Poetry by Robert Browning
Works by modern and Victorian critics are presented together with poems from each stage of Browning's literary career.
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Hunger by Knut Hamsun
Hunger is a novel by the Norwegian author Knut Hamsun and was published in its final form in 1890. Parts of it had been published anonymously in the Danish magazine Ny Jord in 1888. The novel is ha...
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Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen
Hedda Gabler is a play first published in 1890 by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. The play premiered in 1891 in Germany to negative reviews, but has subsequently gained recognition as a classic ...
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Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson by Alfred Lord Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, FRS (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was Poet Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland during much of Queen Victoria's reign and remains one of the most popular Br...
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The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
When the Time Traveler courageously stepped out of his machine for the first time, he found himself in the year 802,700--and everything had changed. H.G. Wells's famous novel of one man's astonishi...
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Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
In 1895 Hardy’s final novel, the great tale of Jude the Obscure, sent shock waves of indignation rolling across Victorian England. Hardy had dared to write frankly about sexuality and to indict the...
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The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People is a play by Oscar Wilde. First performed on 14 February 1895 at the St James's Theatre in London, it is a farcical comedy in wh...
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The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
The Red Badge of Courage is an 1895 war novel by American author Stephen Crane. It is considered one of the most influential works in American literature. The novel, a depiction on the cruelty of t...
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Dracula by Bram Stoker
Dracula is an 1897 novel by Irish author Bram Stoker, featuring as its primary antagonist the vampire Count Dracula. Dracula has been attributed to many literary genres including vampire literat...
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Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand
Rostand's hero has become a figure of theatrical legend: Cyrano, with the nose of a clown and the soul of a poet, is by turns comic and sad, as reckless in love as in war, and never at a loss for w...
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The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
The Turn of the Screw, originally published in 1898, is a gothic ghost story novella written by Henry James. Due to its ambiguous content, it became a favourite text of academics who subscribe t...
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Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
The story details an incident when Marlow, an Englishman, took a foreign assignment from a Belgian trading company as a ferry-boat captain in Africa. Although Conrad does not specify the name of th...
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The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud
This book introduces Freud's theory of the unconscious with respect to dream interpretation. Dreams, in Freud's view, were all forms of "wish-fulfillment" — attempts by the unconscious to resolve a...
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Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann
Buddenbrooks was Thomas Mann's first novel, published in 1901 when he was twenty-six years old. It portrays the downfall (already announced in the subtitle, Decline of a family) of a wealthy mer...
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Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov
Three Sisters (Russian: Три сeстры, translit. Tri sestry) is a play by the Russian author and playwright Anton Chekhov, perhaps partially inspired by the situation of the three Brontë sisters.[1] I...
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Kim by Rudyard Kipling
Kim is an orphan, living from hand to mouth in the teeming streets of Lahore. One day he meets a man quite unlike anything in his wide experience, a Tibetan lama on a quest. Kim's life suddenly acq...
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The Ambassadors by Henry James
This dark comedy, one of the masterpieces of James' final period, follows the trip of protagonist Lewis Lambert Strether to Europe in pursuit of his widowed fiancée's supposedly wayward son. Streth...
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The Golden Bowl by Henry James
Set in England, this complex, intense study of marriage and adultery completes what some critics have called the "major phase" of James' career. The Golden Bowl explores the tangle of interrelation...
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Nostromo by Joseph Conrad
Edited with an introduction and notes by Martin Seymour-Smith. In his evocation of the republic of Costaguana, set amid the exotic and grandiose scenery of South America, Conrad reveals not only th...
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The Old Wives' Tale by Arnold Bennett
It deals with the lives of two very different sisters, Constance and Sophia Baines, following their stories from their youth, working in their mother's draper's shop, into old age. It is generally ...
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Penguin Island by Anatole France
Penguin Island (1908; French: L'Île des Pingouins) is a satirical fictional history by Nobel Prize–winning French author Anatole France.
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Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
Tragic story of wasted lives, set against a bleak New England background. A poverty-stricken New England farmer, his ailing wife and a youthful housekeeper are drawn relentlessly into a deep-rooted...
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Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
The novella Death in Venice was written by the German author Thomas Mann, and was first published in 1912 as Der Tod in Venedig. It was first published in English in 1925 as Death in Venice and Oth...
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Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence
Sons and Lovers is one of the landmark novels of the twentieth century. When it appeared in 1913, it was immediately recognized as the first great modern restatement of the oedipal drama, and it is...
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In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
Swann's Way, the first part of A la recherche de temps perdu, Marcel Proust's seven-part cycle, was published in 1913. In it, Proust introduces the themes that run through the entire work. The narr...
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Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters
Spoon River Anthology (1915), by Edgar Lee Masters, is a collection of short free-form poems that collectively narrates the epitaphs of the residents of a fictional small town of Spoon River, named...
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A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a semi-autobiographical novel by James Joyce, first serialized in The Egoist from 1914 to 1915 and published in book form in 1916. It depicts the formativ...
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The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams
The Education of Henry Adams records the struggle of Bostonian Henry Adams (1838-1918), in early old age, to come to terms with the dawning 20th century, so different from the world of his youth. I...
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My Antonia by Willa Cather
In Willa Cather's own estimation, My Antonia, first published in 1918, was "the best thing I've ever done." An enduring paperback bestseller on Houghton Mifflin's literary list, this hauntingly elo...
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Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
In this classic satire of small-town America, beautiful young Carol Kennicott comes to Gopher Prairie, Minnesota, with dreams of transforming the provincial old town into a place of beauty and cult...
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Ulysses by James Joyce
Ulysses chronicles the passage of Leopold Bloom through Dublin during an ordinary day, June 16, 1904. The title parallels and alludes to Odysseus (Latinised into Ulysses), the hero of Homer's Odyss...
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Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
When Babbitt was first published in 1922, fans gleefully hailed its scathing portrait of a crass, materialistic nation; critics denounced it as an unfair skewering of the American businessman. Spar...
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The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot
The Waste Land is a 434 line modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922. It has been called "one of the most important poems of the 20th century." Despite the alleged obscurity of the poem – i...
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Scepticism and Animal Faith by George Santayana
Scepticism and Animal Faith (1923) is a later work by Spanish-born American philosopher George Santayana. He intended it to be "merely the introduction to a new system of philosophy," a work that w...
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The Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke
Rilke's great cycle of ten elegies, perhaps his most profound poetic achievement, had its inception on the morning of January 21, 1912, but was interrupted by the First World War and not completed ...
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A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
A Passage to India is set against the backdrop of the British Raj and the Indian independence movement in the 1920s. The story revolves around four characters: Dr. Aziz, his British friend Cyril Fi...
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Billy Budd by Herman Melville
Billy Budd, Sailor is a novella by American writer Herman Melville, first published posthumously in London in 1924. Melville began writing the work in November 1888, but left it unfinished at his d...
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The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
The Magic Mountain is a novel by Thomas Mann, first published in November 1924. It is widely considered to be one of the most influential works of 20th century German literature.
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The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The novel chronicles an era that Fitzgerald himself dubbed the "Jazz Age". Following the shock and chaos of World War I, American society enjoyed unprecedented levels of prosperity during the "roar...
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The Trial by Franz Kafka
Written in 1914, The Trial is one of the most important novels of the twentieth century: the terrifying tale of Josef K., a respectable bank officer who is suddenly and inexplicably arrested and mu...
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Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Created from two short stories, "Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street" and the unfinished "The Prime Minister", the novel's story is of Clarissa's preparations for a party of which she is to be hostess. Wit...
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The Castle by Franz Kafka
The Castle is a novel by Franz Kafka. In it a protagonist, known only as K., struggles to gain access to the mysterious authorities of a castle who govern the village where he wants to work as a la...
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Autobiographies by W. B. Yeats
Autobiographies is made up of six autobiographical works that Yeats published in the mid 1930s. Together, they provide a fascinating insight into the first 58 years of his life. The work provides m...
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Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
Death Comes for the Archbishop is a 1927 novel by Willa Cather. It concerns the attempts of a Catholic bishop and a priest to establish a diocese in New Mexico Territory.
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To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
A landmark novel of high modernism, the text, centering on the Ramsay family and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland between 1910 and 1920, skillfully manipulates temporality and psycholog...
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A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
The novel is told through the point of view of Lieutenant Frederic Henry, an American serving as an ambulance driver in the Italian army during World War I.
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The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
The Sound and the Fury is set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County. The novel centers on the Compson family, former Southern aristocrats who are struggling to deal with the dissolution of their fa...
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As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
The book is told in stream of consciousness writing style by 15 different narrators in 59 chapters. It is the story of the death of Addie Bundren and her family's quest—noble or selfish—to honor he...
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The Waves by Virginia Woolf
The Waves, first published in 1931, is Virginia Woolf's most experimental novel. It consists of soliloquies spoken by the book's six characters: Bernard, Susan, Rhoda, Neville, Jinny, and Louis.[1]...
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The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
The moving story of the honest farmer Wang Lung and his selfless wife O-lan, in which the author presents a graphic view of a China when the last emperor reigned and the vast political and social u...
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Mourning Becomes Electra by Eugene O'Neill
Mourning Becomes Electra is a play cycle written by American playwright Eugene O'Neill. The play premiered on Broadway at the Guild Theatre on 26 October 1931 where it ran for 150 performances befo...
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Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats by W. B. Yeats
William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet, dramatist, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature.
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Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
Absalom, Absalom! is a Southern Gothic novel by the American author William Faulkner, first published in 1936. It is a story about three families of the American South, taking place before, during,...
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Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre
Sartre's greatest novel — and existentialism's key text — now introduced by James Wood. Nausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressio...
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The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Set during the Great Depression, the novel focuses on a poor family of sharecroppers, the Joads, driven from their home by drought, economic hardship, and changes in the agriculture industry. In a ...
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For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
It tells the story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to a communist guerilla unit during the Spanish Civil War. As an expert in the use of explosives, he is ...
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Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot
Four Quartets is a set of four poems written by T. S. Eliot that were published individually over a six-year period. The first poem, Burnt Norton, was written and published with a collection of his...
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The Plague by Albert Camus
A haunting tale of human resilience in the face of unrelieved horror, Camus' novel about a bubonic plague ravaging the people of a North African coastal town is a classic of twentieth-century liter...
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Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann
Doctor Faustus is a German novel written by Thomas Mann, begun in 1943 and published in 1947 as Doktor Faustus: Das Leben des deutschen Tonsetzers Adrian Leverkühn, erzählt von einem Freunde ("Doct...
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Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell
The story follows the life of one seemingly insignificant man, Winston Smith, a civil servant assigned the task of perpetuating the regime's propaganda by falsifying records and political literatur...
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Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas by Dylan Thomas
Dylan Marlais Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953) was a Welsh poet and writer whose works include the poems "Do not go gentle into that good night" and "And death shall have no dominion", th...
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East of Eden by John Steinbeck
A masterpiece of Biblical scope, and the magnum opus of one of America’s most enduring authors In his journal, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck called East of Eden "the first book," and indeed it ...
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The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
The Old Man and the Sea is one of Hemingway's most enduring works. Told in language of great simplicity and power, it is the story of an old Cuban fisherman, down on his luck, and his supreme ordea...
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Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
Waiting for Godot (pronounced /ˈɡɒdoʊ/) is a play by Samuel Beckett, in which two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait for someone named Godot. Godot's absence, as well as numerous other aspects...
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Two Essays on Analytical Psychology by Carl Gustav Jung
This volume from the Collected Works of C.G. Jung has become known as perhaps the best introduction to Jung's work. In these famous essays he presented the essential core of his system. This is the...
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A Fable by William Faulkner
A Fable is a novel written in 1954 by the American author William Faulkner, which won him both the Pulitzer prize and the National Book Award in 1955. Despite these recognitions, however, the novel...
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Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted ...
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The Poems of Robert Frost by Robert Frost
Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) was an American poet. His work was initially published in England before it was published in America. He is highly regarded for his realistic de...
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The Poetry of Ezra Pound by Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic who was a major figure of the early modernist movement. His contribution to poetry began with...
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The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery...
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The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
"My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer," the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky." Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering...
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