What Harvard Professors Think Greatest Books Ever: Top 20 List (1977)

This is one of the 759 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.

About this list

The Boston Globe (Newspaper), 21 Books

Harvard Professors in in the 1970s list their favorite books of all time. Reprinted in the Boston Globe

This list was originally published in 1977 and was added to this site over 2 years ago.

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Cover of 'War and Peace' by Leo Tolstoy

War and Peace

Cover of 'The Sun Also Rises' by Ernest Hemingway

The Sun Also Rises

Ernest Hemingway

Cover of 'Communist Manifesto' by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels

Communist Manifesto

Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels

Cover of 'Paradise Lost' by John Milton

Paradise Lost

Cover of 'The Sound and the Fury' by William Faulkner

The Sound and the Fury

William Faulkner

Cover of 'Great Expectations' by Charles Dickens

Great Expectations

Charles Dickens

Cover of 'Herzog' by Saul Bellow

Herzog

Cover of 'The Poems of Robert Frost' by Robert Frost

The Poems of Robert Frost

Cover of 'Hamlet' by William Shakespeare

Hamlet

William Shakespeare

Cover of 'The Republic' by Plato

The Republic

Cover of 'The Bible' by Unknown

The Bible

Cover of 'Walden' by Henry David Thoreau

Walden

Henry David Thoreau

Cover of 'The Brothers Karamazov' by Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Brothers Karamazov

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Cover of 'Ulysses' by James Joyce

Ulysses

Cover of 'The Divine Comedy' by Dante Alighieri

The Divine Comedy

Dante Alighieri

Cover of 'Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats' by William Butler Yeats

Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats

William Butler Yeats

Cover of 'The Stranger' by Albert Camus

The Stranger

Cover of 'Madame Bovary' by Gustave Flaubert

Madame Bovary

Gustave Flaubert

Cover of 'The Iliad' by Homer

The Iliad

Cover of 'The Odyssey' by Homer

The Odyssey

Cover of 'Moby-Dick' by Herman Melville

Moby-Dick

Herman Melville