Great Books

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

About this list

A short list of essential works of the Western Canon, as selected scholar Anthony O'Hear.

This list was originally published in 2013 and was added to this site over 11 years ago.

Rank	Book	Authors	Year	Country	Language
37	The Iliad	Homer	-750	Greek	Ancient greek
24	The Odyssey	Homer	-740	Greek	Ancient greek
285	Oresteia	Aeschylus	-458	Greek	Ancient greek
125	Antigone	Sophocles	-441	Greek	Ancient greek
943	The Bacchae	Euripides	-405	Greek	Ancient greek
8511	Euthyphro	Plato	-399	Greek	Ancient greek
1156	Apology	Plato	-389	Greek	Ancient greek
7021	Crito	Plato	-389	Greek	Ancient greek
1647	Phaedo	Plato	-379	Greek	Ancient greek
70	The Aeneid	Virgil	-19	Roman	Latin
175	Metamorphoses	Ovid	8	Roman	Latin
133	Confessions	Augustine	397	Roman	Latin
30	The Divine Comedy	Dante Alighieri	1308	Italian	Italian
110	The Canterbury Tales	Geoffrey Chaucer	1400	British	Middle english
2450	Henry V	William Shakespeare	1600	British	English
71	Hamlet	William Shakespeare	1600	British	English
211	The Tempest	William Shakespeare	1623	British	English
8	Don Quixote	Miguel de Cervantes	1605	Spanish	Spanish
127	Paradise Lost	John Milton	1667	British	English
316	Pensées	Blaise Pascal	1670	French	French
1177	Phèdre	Jean Racine	1677	French	French
96	Faust	Johann Wolfgang von Goethe	1808	German	German