Harold Bloom's The Western Canon

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

About this list

The Western Canon (Book) by Harold Bloom, 1498 Books

The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages is a 1994 book about Western literature by the American literary critic Harold Bloom, in which the author defends the concept of the Western canon by discussing 26 writers whom he sees as central to the canon.
The Western Canon includes four appendices listing works that Bloom at the time considered canonical, stretching from the earliest scriptures to Tony Kushner's Angels in America. Bloom later disowned the list, saying that it was written at his editor's insistence and distracted from the book's intention.
In adding this list, I did expand certain titles into multiple books, and combined some, since some are single short stories. This was a difficult list to add since there are so many books.

This list was originally published in 1994 and was added to this site over 2 years ago.

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Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
7861 World Enough And Time Robert Penn Warren 1950 American English
7216 Selected Poems Robert Penn Warren 1944 American English
7216 Selected Poems Delmore Schwartz 1938 American English
8473 Collected Poems Weldon Kees 1960 American English
576 Complete Poems Elizabeth Bishop 1969 American English
11508 Collected Poems John Berryman 1989 American English
619 The Sheltering Sky Paul Bowles 1949 American English
9185 Complete Poems Randall Jarrell 1969 American English
8473 The Maximus Poems Charles Olson 1960 American English
8473 Poems Of Charles Olso Charles Olson 1960 American English
8607 Poems Of Robert Hayden Robert Hayden 1962 American English
7656 Poems Of Robert Lowell Robert Lowell 1946 American English
6764 The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke Theodore Roethke 1966 American English
9550 Straw For The Fire Theodore Roethke 1972 American English
7216 Permit Me Voyage James Agee 1934 American English
456 Let Us Now Praise Famous Men James Agee 1941 American English
9358 Selected Poems Jean Garrigue 1971 American English
10139 New & Selected Things Taking Place May Swenson 1978 American English
11278 In Other Words May Swenson 1987 American English
9116 Bending The Bow Robert Duncan 1968 American English
10072 New And Collected Poems Richard Wilbur 1988 American English
9930 Collected Poems Richard Eberhart 1976 American English
8827 Harlem Gallery M. B. Tolson 1965 American English
11278 Seasons On Earth Kenneth Koch 1987 American English
7565 Selected Poems Frank O'Hara 1974 American English
11393 Collected Poems James Schuyler 1988 American English
8066 The Price Of A Ticket James Baldwin 1985 American English
2733 Seize The Day Saul Bellow 1956 American English
280 The Adventures of Augie March Saul Bellow 1953 American English
298 Herzog Saul Bellow 1964 American English
680 The Stories of John Cheever John Cheever 1978 American English
7810 Bullet Park John Cheever 1969 American English
36 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 1952 American English
109 In Cold Blood Truman Capote 1966 American English
1458 The Ballad of the Sad Cafe Carson McCullers 1951 American English
118 The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers 1940 American English
350 The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor Flannery O'Connor 1971 American English
3426 The Violent Bear It Away Flannery O'Connor 1960 American English
362 Wise Blood Flannery O'Connor 1952 American English
14 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov 1955 American English
72 Pale Fire Vladimir Nabokov 1962 American English
1530 Myra Breckinridge Gore Vidal 1968 American English
5575 Lincoln Gore Vidal 1984 American English
7967 The Long March William Styron 1952 American English
4 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger 1951 American English
600 Nine Stories J. D. Salinger 1953 American English
8473 Ceremony In Lone Tree Wright Morris 1960 American English
10856 The Stories Bernard Malamud 1983 American English
1718 The Fixer Bernard Malamud 1966 American English
2260 Advertisements for Myself Norman Mailer 1959 American English
2731 The Executioner's Song Norman Mailer 1979 American English
8023 Ancient Evenings Norman Mailer 1983 American English
6236 The Cannibal John Hawkes 1949 American English
8739 Second Skin John Hawkes 1964 American English
561 The Recognitions William Gaddis 1955 American English
3459 The Glass Menagerie Tennessee Williams 1944 American English
599 A Streetcar Named Desire Tennessee Williams 1947 American English
7772 Summer And Smoke Tennessee Williams 1948 American English
428 Death Of A Salesman Arthur Miller 1949 American English
7216 Children Of Darkness Edwin Justus Mayer 1929 American Unknown
8215 Stories In An Almost Classical Mode Harold Brodkey 1989 American English
363 The Left Hand Of Darkness Ursula K. Le Guin 1969 American English
924 Where I'm Calling From Raymond Carver 1988 American English
10751 Spanking The Maid Robert Coover 1982 American English
364 White Noise Don DeLillo 1985 American English
2337 Libra Don DeLillo 1988 American English
10139 Running Dog Don DeLillo 1978 American English
3199 Mao II Don DeLillo 1991 American English
1173 Little, Big John Crowley 1981 American English
4101 Aegypt John Crowley 1987 American English
11195 Love And Sleep John Crowley 1994 American English
9743 Tatlin! Guy Davenport 1974 American English
10558 The Early Motion James Dickey 1981 American Unknown
10856 The Central Motion James Dickey 1983 American English
838 The Book of Daniel E. L. Doctorow 1971 American English
7876 World's Fair E. L. Doctorow 1985 American English
8728 The Living End Stanley Elkin 1979 American English
5421 In the Heart of the Heart of the Country William H. Gass 1968 American English
6257 Omensetter's Luck William H. Gass 1966 American English
2018 Riddley Walker Russell Hoban 1980 British English
9276 Angels Denis Johnson 1983 American English
7643 Fiskadoro Denis Johnson 1985 American English
968 Jesus' Son Denis Johnson 1992 American English
197 Blood Meridian Cormac McCarthy 1985 American English
1089 Suttree Cormac McCarthy 1979 American English
8166 Child Of God Cormac McCarthy 1973 American English
2303 Ironweed William Kennedy 1983 American English
10856 The Albany Cycle William Kennedy 1983 American English
260 Song of Solomon Toni Morrison 1977 American English
1513 The Women of Brewster Place Gloria Naylor 1982 American English
685 Them Joyce Carol Oates 1969 American English
182 The Moviegoer Walker Percy 1961 American English
1885 Little Disturbances Grace Paley 1959 American English
455 V Thomas Pynchon 1963 American English
441 The Crying of Lot 49 Thomas Pynchon 1966 American English
254 Gravity's Rainbow Thomas Pynchon 1973 American English
9185 Envy, Or Yiddish In America Cynthia Ozick 1969 American English
9917 The Messiah Of Stockholm Cynthia Ozick 1987 American English
1281 Mumbo Jumbo Ishmael Reed 1972 American English
241 Portnoy's Complaint Philip Roth 1969 American English
9743 My Life As A Man Philip Roth 1974 American English
6580 Zuckerman Bound Philip Roth 1985 American English
10263 Solo Faces James Salter 1979 American English
1197 Light Years James Salter 1975 American English
2954 Dog Soldiers Robert Stone 1974 American English
1965 A Flag For Sunrise Robert Stone 1981 American English
1213 The Floating Opera John Barth 1956 American English
6503 The End Of The Road John Barth 1958 American English
1422 The Sot-Weed Factor John Barth 1960 American English
9743 Alphabetical Africa Walter Abish 1974 American English
8854 How German Is It Walter Abish 1980 American English
12385 Eclipse Fever Walter Abish 1993 American English
11278 I Am The Dust Under Your Feet Walter Abish 1987 American English
2058 Sixty Stories Donald Barthelme 1981 American English
2309 The Dead Father Donald Barthelme 1975 American English
3436 On Wings Of Song Thomas M. Disch 1979 American English
7579 The Mosquito Coast Paul Theroux 1981 American English
2192 The Witches Of Eastwick John Updike 1984 American English
681 Cat's Cradle Kurt Vonnegut 1963 American English
9647 Forgetting Elena Edmund White 1973 American English