All-Time Classics, According to Academics

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

About this list

The Commercial Appeal , 103 Books

This list contains several different pages/links:
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-commercial-appeal/141617077/
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-commercial-appeal/141617064/
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-commercial-appeal/141617235/
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-commercial-appeal/141617445/
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-commercial-appeal/141617490/

These selections were submitted by literature professors from a variety of different universities. Seven professors/experts contributed in total. Here are their names:
Evans Harrington, chairman of the Liberal Arts college at the University of Mississippi
Keneth Kinnamon, an English professor at the University of Arkansas
Ethel Pumphrey Stephens, chairman of the English department at the University of Arkansas
William Bennett, the United States Secretary of Education
Richard Wood, an English professor at Rhodes College
Robert Allen, an indepedant literature scholar
Joseph K. Davis, chairman of the English department at Memphis State University

This list was originally published in 1985 and was added to this site about 1 year ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
24 The Odyssey Homer -740 Greek Ancient greek
70 The Aeneid Virgil -19 Roman Latin
19 The Bible Unknown -1400 Jewish Hebrew, aramaic, greek
30 The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri 1308 Italian Italian
127 Paradise Lost John Milton 1667 British English
7 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 1851 American English
37 The Iliad Homer -750 Greek Ancient greek
8 Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes 1605 Spanish Spanish
12 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy 1869 Russian Russian
1 Ulysses James Joyce 1922 Irish English
317 The Poems of Robert Frost Robert Frost 1913 American English
110 The Canterbury Tales Geoffrey Chaucer 1400 British Middle english
80 Candide Voltaire 1759 French French
108 Walden Henry David Thoreau 1854 American English
285 Oresteia Aeschylus -458 Greek Ancient greek
106 Oedipus the King Sophocles -429 Greek Ancient greek
125 Antigone Sophocles -441 Greek Ancient greek
71 Hamlet William Shakespeare 1600 British English
131 King Lear William Shakespeare 1608 British English
96 Faust Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1808 German German
11 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky 1866 Russian Russian
3 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925 American English
111 The Waste Land T. S. Eliot 1922 British English
43 Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner 1936 American English
337 Romeo and Juliet William Shakespeare 1597 British English
20 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert 1857 French French
22 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain 1884 American English
18 The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky 1880 Russian Russian
383 Oedipus at Colonus Sophocles -401 Greek Ancient greek
220 The Republic Plato -379 Greek Ancient greek
26 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck 1939 American English
77 Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman 1855 American English
13 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen 1813 British English
300 The Life of Samuel Johnson James Boswell 1791 British English
812 Collected Poems of T.S. Eliot T. S. Eliot 1963 British English
2 In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust 1913 French French
195 An American Tragedy Theodore Dreiser 1925 American English
25 The Magic Mountain Thomas Mann 1924 German German
599 A Streetcar Named Desire Tennessee Williams 1947 American English
21 The Trial Franz Kafka 1925 Czech German
67 A Farewell to Arms Ernest Hemingway 1929 American English
62 The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway 1926 American English
17 The Lord Of The Rings J. R. R. Tolkien 1959 English English
145 Gargantua and Pantagruel Francois Rabelais 1532 French French
134 Tom Jones Henry Fielding 1749 British English
507 The Last of the Mohicans James Fenimore Cooper 1826 American English
876 Lysistrata Aristophanes -411 Greek Ancient greek
75 Essays Michel de Montaigne 1580 French French
121 Bleak House Charles Dickens 1852 British English
155 Macbeth William Shakespeare 1606 British English
38 Great Expectations Charles Dickens 1860 British English
188 A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens 1859 British English
74 The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne 1850 American English
6 Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell 1949 British English
324 Communist Manifesto Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels 1848 German German
1192 The Politics Aristotle -350 Greek Ancient greek
156 Poems of Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson 1890 American English
4 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger 1951 American English
229 Democracy in America Alexis de Tocqueville 1835 French French
851 Essays, First And Second Series Ralph Waldo Emerson 1841 American English
1546 Poems Of Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson 1847 American English
152 The Prince Niccolo Machiavelli 1532 Italian Italian
307 Medea Euripides -431 Greek Ancient greek
2199 Trojan Women Euripides -415 Greek Ancient greek
175 Metamorphoses Ovid 8 Roman Latin
667 The Book of Job Unknown -600 Israeli Hebrew
669 Beowulf Unknown 1000 Unknown Old english
1836 Grendel John Gardner 1971 American English
548 Le Morte d'Arthur Thomas Malory 1485 British Middle english
627 The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus Christopher Marlowe 1604 British English
211 The Tempest William Shakespeare 1623 British English
1066 Antony And Cleopatra William Shakespeare 1606 British English
3306 Henry IV, Part I William Shakespeare 1597 British English
3813 Henry IV, Part II William Shakespeare 1600 British English
984 Tartuffe Molière 1664 French French
2052 The Misanthrope Molière 1666 French French
40 Les Misérables Victor Hugo 1862 French French
47 David Copperfield Charles Dickens 1849 British English
117 Tess of the d'Urbervilles Thomas Hardy 1891 British English
133 Confessions Augustine 397 Roman Latin
2416 Lyrical Ballads William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1798 British English
341 The Human Comedy Honoré de Balzac 1830 French French
2274 Hedda Gabler Henrik Ibsen 1890 Norwegian Norwegian
90 Buddenbrooks Thomas Mann 1901 German German
479 Four Quartets T. S. Eliot 1943 British English
78 A Passage to India E. M. Forster 1924 British English
254 Gravity's Rainbow Thomas Pynchon 1973 American English
268 Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats William Butler Yeats 1933 Irish English
172 Man's Fate Andre Malraux 1933 French French
181 Light in August William Faulkner 1932 American English
1714 Go Down, Moses William Faulkner 1942 American English
107 Native Son Richard Wright 1940 American English
253 Look Homeward, Angel Thomas Wolfe 1929 American English
33 Catch-22 Joseph Heller 1961 American English
36 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 1952 American English
5 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez 1967 Colombian Spanish
257 Finnegans Wake James Joyce 1939 Irish English
5274 Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Tennessee Williams 1955 American English
1441 The Cantos Ezra Pound 1933 American English
1501 The Magician of Lublin Isaac Bashevis Singer 1960 Polish Yiddish
465 Collected Poems Wallace Stevens 1954 American English
2092 Mourning Becomes Electra Eugene O'Neill 1931 American English
428 Death Of A Salesman Arthur Miller 1949 American English