Have You Read 100 Great Books?

This is one of the 743 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.

About this list

The Jasper Lee Company, 102 Books

The book Have You Read 100 Great Books? by The Jasper Lee Company, particularly the revised and expanded 1950 edition, is a curated collection of numerous book lists compiled by various authorities on literature. The primary purpose of the book was to provide readers with a guide to some of the greatest books, particularly those that are enjoyable and stimulating for the general public.

The process of creating the final list involved several steps:

Collection of Lists: The Jasper Lee Company gathered numerous lists of great books from eminent authorities, including public libraries, scholars, and notable literary figures. These lists were varied, coming from different sources, including libraries, academic institutions, and individual authors.

Master List: From these collected lists, the company created a "master" list of 1,500 works, eliminating any duplications.

Final List of 100: From this master list of 1,500 books, they selected a final list of 100 great books that they deemed most enjoyable and accessible for the average reader. This final selection represents a consensus of mid-20th-century opinion on what constituted great literature.

The book also includes detailed information about the sources of these lists, highlighting how different libraries and authorities contributed to the selection process. The final list of 100 books, though derived from the broader collection of 1,000 to 1,500 works, represents the editorial judgment of those involved in the publication of the book. The selection process was not strictly objective but was influenced by the preferences and opinions of the editors and contributors at the time. The book is noted for its broad approach to curating literature, reflecting the tastes and literary standards of the mid-20th century.

Who voted:
Since this aggregates 26 different lists, I am going to assume at least 26 people helped make this list

This list was originally published in 1950 and was added to this site almost 2 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
381 The Education of Henry Adams Henry Adams 1907 American English
310 Winesburg, Ohio Sherwood Anderson 1919 American English
133 Confessions Augustine 397 Roman Latin
312 Meditations Marcus Aurelius 161 Roman Greek
12 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen 1813 British English
1161 Essays Francis Bacon 1597 British English
228 Father Goriot Honoré de Balzac 1835 French French
11177 The Pilgrimage Of Western Man Stringfellow Barr 1949 American English
8054 The Rise Of American Civilization Charles A. Beard, Mary Ritter Beard 1927 American English
3288 Looking Backward, 2000 1887 Edward Bellamy 1888 American English
390 The Old Wives' Tale Arnold Bennett 1908 British English
19 The Bible Unknown -1400 Jewish Hebrew, aramaic, greek
2313 Lavengro George Borrow 1851 British English
303 The Life of Samuel Johnson James Boswell 1791 British English
15 Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë 1847 British English
7649 The Flowering of New England Van Wyck Brooks 1936 American English
5995 A History Of Greece To The Death Of Alexander The Great John Bagnell Bury 1900 British English
449 Way of All Flesh Samuel Butler 1903 British English
160 My Antonia Willa Cather 1918 American English
1933 Autobiography Benvenuto Cellini 1728 Italian Italian
8 Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes 1605 Spanish Spanish
109 The Canterbury Tales Geoffrey Chaucer 1400 British Middle english
5995 The Children Of The Sea Joseph Conrad 1897 British English
180 On the Origin of Species Charles Darwin 1859 British English
69 Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe 1719 British English
541 Discourse on Method Rene Descartes 1637 French French
275 The Pickwick Papers Charles Dickens 1836 British English
185 U.S.A. Trilogy John Dos Passos 1930 American English
18 The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky 1880 Russian Russian
205 The Complete Sherlock Holmes Arthur Conan Doyle 1927 British English
486 Adam Bede George Eliot 1859 British English
6124 The Dance Of Life Havelock Ellis 1923 British English
850 Essays, First And Second Series Ralph Waldo Emerson 1841 American English
2916 Discourses Of Epictetus Epictetus -108 Greek Greek
4573 History Of Art Elie Faure 1919 French French
404 The Federalist Papers Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay 1787 American English
135 Tom Jones Henry Fielding 1749 British English
21 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert 1857 French French
1672 Penguin Island Anatole France 1908 French French
703 The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin 1791 American English
1140 The Golden Bough James George Frazer 1890 British English
830 The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Edward Gibbon 1776 British English
4475 The Private Papers Of Henry Ryecroft George Gissing 1903 British English
96 Faust Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1808 German German
118 Tess of the d'Urbervilles Thomas Hardy 1891 British English
73 The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne 1850 American English
623 The Histories of Herodotus Herodotus -450 Greek Ancient greek
344 Leviathan Thomas Hobbes 1651 British English
24 The Odyssey Homer -740 Greek Ancient greek
1046 Green Mansions W. H. Hudson 1904 British English
40 Les Misérables Victor Hugo 1862 French French
1340 The Principles of Psychology William James 1890 American English
6716 The Mysterious Universe James Jeans 1930 British English
973 The Poems of John Keats John Keats 1817 British English
4488 Soldiers Three Rudyard Kipling 1888 British English
2162 Essays Charles Lamb 1823 British English
8248 Round Up Ring Lardner 1929 American English
2375 Notebooks Leonardo da Vinci 1883 Italian Italian
254 Babbitt Sinclair Lewis 1922 American English
5995 Geological Evidences Of The Antiquity Of Man Charles Lyell 1863 British English
152 The Prince Niccolo Machiavelli 1532 Italian Italian
547 Le Morte d'Arthur Thomas Malory 1485 British Middle english
1476 An Essay on the Principle of Population Thomas Robert Malthus 1798 British English
326 Das Kapital Karl Marx 1867 German German
295 Of Human Bondage W. Somerset Maugham 1915 British English
591 Stories of Guy de Maupassant Guy de Maupassant 1880 French French
7 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 1851 American English
1670 The Ordeal Of Richard Feverel George Meredith 1859 British English
2365 The Autobiography Of John Stuart Mill John Stuart Mill 1873 British English
1188 The Spirit Of The Laws Montesquieu 1748 French French
222 Thus Spake Zarathustra Friedrich Nietzsche 1883 German German
852 Mc Teague Frank Norris 1899 American English
5995 The Oxford Book Of English Verse Arthur Quiller-Couch 1900 British English
1415 Rights of Man Thomas Paine 1791 British English
2874 The Diary of Samuel Pepys Samuel Pepys 1825 British English
388 The Complete Works of Plato Plato -387 Greek Ancient greek
98 The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe 1902 American English
145 Gargantua and Pantagruel Francois Rabelais 1532 French French
2279 The Cloister and the Hearth Charles Reade 1861 British English
86 All Quiet on the Western Front Erich Maria Remarque 1928 German German
4073 The Life Of Jesus Ernest Renan 1863 French French
1185 Jean Christophe Romain Rolland 1904 French French
526 The Social Contract Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1762 French French
300 Ivanhoe Sir Walter Scott 1819 British English
3284 Candida George Bernard Shaw 1898 Irish English
4649 Man And Superman George Bernard Shaw 1903 British English
129 First Folio William Shakespeare 1623 British English
181 The Jungle Upton Sinclair 1906 American English
372 Ethics Baruch de Spinoza 1677 Dutch Latin
26 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck 1939 American English
65 Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift 1726 British English
977 The History Of Henry Esmond William Makepeace Thackeray 1852 British English
648 Summa Theologica Thomas Aquinas 1274 Italian Latin
3285 On Being And Essence Thomas Aquinas 1256 Italian Latin
110 Walden Henry David Thoreau 1854 American English
13 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy 1869 Russian Russian
655 A Study of History Arnold J. Toynbee 1934 British English
22 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain 1884 American English
6585 Benjamin Franklin Carl Van Doren 1938 American English
80 Candide Voltaire 1759 French French
1482 Tono Bungay H. G. Wells 1909 British English
76 Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman 1855 American English