Classics Revisited

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

About this list

Kenneth Rexroth, 56 Books

Selected by Kenneth Rexroth for his book Classics Revisited, a volume of brief, radiant essays discussing 60 key books that are for him "basic documents in the history of the imagination." According to Wikipedia, Rexroth was an American poet, translator, and critical essayist.

This list was originally published in 1968 and was added to this site about 1 year ago.

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Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
285 Oresteia Aeschylus -458 Greek Ancient greek
1550 Njal's Saga Iceland 1280 Icelandic Old norse
512 The Golden Ass Apuleius 158 Roman Latin
313 Meditations Marcus Aurelius 161 Roman Greek
178 The Flowers of Evil Charles Baudelaire 1857 French French
669 Beowulf Unknown 1000 Unknown Old english
1923 The Conquest Of Gaul Gaius Julius Caesar -51 Roman Latin
371 History of My Life Giacomo Casanova 1822 Italian French
110 The Canterbury Tales Geoffrey Chaucer 1400 British Middle english
2078 The Major Plays Anton Chekhov 1964 Russian Russian
6138 Poems Of Du Fu Du Fu 759 Chinese Classical chinese
8342 The Poems Of Li Po Li Po -750 Chinese Classical chinese
18 The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky 1880 Russian Russian
2801 Collected Plays Of Euripides Euripides -405 Greek Ancient greek
134 Tom Jones Henry Fielding 1749 British English
116 A Sentimental Education Gustave Flaubert 1869 French French
830 The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Edward Gibbon 1776 British English
264 The Epic Of Gilgamesh Unknown -2100 Multiple Akkadian
1924 Pages From The Goncourt Journal Edmond de Goncourt 1887 French French
624 The Histories of Herodotus Herodotus -450 Greek Ancient greek
37 The Iliad Homer -750 Greek Ancient greek
14138 Haiku Mary Dawson Hughes 1970 Unknown English
6242 Volpone Ben Jonson 1607 British English
6099 The History of Rome Livy -27 Roman Latin
1053 The Kalevala Elias Lönnrot 1835 Finnish Finnish
405 De Rerum Natura Lucretius 55 Roman Latin
152 The Prince Niccolo Machiavelli 1532 Italian Italian
548 Le Morte d'Arthur Thomas Malory 1485 British Middle english
324 Communist Manifesto Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels 1848 German German
667 The Book of Job Unknown -600 Israeli Hebrew
75 Essays Michel de Montaigne 1580 French French
881 Utopia Thomas More 1516 British Latin
130 The Tale of Genji Murasaki Shikibu 1001 Japanese Classical japanese
554 Satyricon Petronius 65 Roman Latin
8334 The Last Days Of Socrates Plato -399 Greek Ancient greek
220 The Republic Plato -379 Greek Ancient greek
334 Parallel Lives Plutarch 100 Greek Greek
1244 The Travels of Marco Polo Marco Polo 1300 Italian Old french
145 Gargantua and Pantagruel Francois Rabelais 1532 French French
2241 Collected Poems Arthur Rimbaud 1898 French French
900 The Poems of Sappho Sappho -569 Greek Ancient greek
211 The Tempest William Shakespeare 1623 British English
125 Antigone Sophocles -441 Greek Ancient greek
106 Oedipus the King Sophocles -429 Greek Ancient greek
383 Oedipus at Colonus Sophocles -401 Greek Ancient greek
42 The Red and the Black Stendhal 1830 French French
1834 Histories Cornelius Tacitus 100 Roman Latin
596 The History of the Peloponnesian War Thucydides -410 Greek Ancient greek
12 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy 1869 Russian Russian
22 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain 1884 American English
323 Mahabharata Vyasa -400 Indian Sanskrit
10534 Mediaeval Latin Lyrics Helen Waddell 1929 Unknown English
1326 The Compleat Angler Izaak Walton 1653 British English
4482 The Duchess Of Malfi John Webster 1623 British English
77 Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman 1855 American English
484 Dream of the Red Chamber Cao Xueqin 1754 Chinese Chinese