All About the Great Books
If you’ve been around the homeschooling world for a while, you’ve likely heard the phrase “Great Books,” especially in the context of classical education. But what are the Great Books? I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I heard this phrase for years without really understanding what it meant; I assumed it meant books that are really good, as in, “Death Comes to the Archbishop is a really great book!” While the Great Books are in fact… well, great books, I was surprised to discover that the phrase meant much more than that!
In this article, we will learn about the Great Books and why they are called “Great,” and provide a list of the great books by historical period.
What are the Great Books?
The Great Books are typically discussed in the context of a classical curriculum. A classical curriculum is a highly literary method of education that focuses on languages, literature, and history. Because classical curricula emphasize the humanities, they are typically organized around a core of texts known as the “Great Books.” These works are so-named because they are considered fundamental to Western civilization; they encapsulate the basic ideas of the West and have been instrumental in shaping the development of our culture. They are, therefore, like a “canon” of Western literature, a series of texts which preserve and transmit the most essential ideas of the West. In terms of content, they span the gamut from history to literature, science to philosophy, politics to poetry.
List of the Great Books
There is no authoritative list of the Great Books. While some titles are universally agreed upon (the works of Shakespeare, for example), others are contested. Some lists take the Great Books up to the 20th century, while others consider the 20th century too recent to determine what work will have enduring merit.
Mortimer Adler made a famous compilation in the 1940s and 50s, but many contemporary classical education programs discard large portions of Adler’s list because of the space it gives to post-modern and minimalist works, like Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. The point is that a Great Books list is something inherently subjective. So, as you read, take this list with a grain of salt; every list is different, and everyone will think specific titles belong or don’t belong. For the sake of this article, I have tried to focus on more universally acknowledged works.
Also, as most homeschoolers using a classical curriculum are doing so for its literary emphasis (as opposed to math and science), I am omitting works of theoretical mathematics (such as Euclid’s Elements, Ptolemy’s Almagest, and Newton’s Principia) which are likely to be inaccessible to most homeschool teens anyway.
We should also note that many works, while not appearing on most Great Books lists, have a special status among Catholics in particular. For example, the writings of Flannery O’Connor and G.K. Chesterton seldom appear on Great Books lists because they are most appreciated within Catholic circles. I have chosen to adopt titles that are generally agreed upon in broader circles, so works that may be considered specifically Catholic classics are also omitted. However, I will address specifically Catholic classic works in a future article.
Ancient and Classical World
The Epic of Gilgamesh
The Hebrew Old Testament
Homer, The Iliad
Homer, The Odyssey
The works of the Four Greek Playwrights (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes)
Plato’s Dialogues (especially the Republic)
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics
Herodotus, Histories
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War
Xenophon, Anabasis
Julius Caesar, Gallic Wars
Virgil, Aeneid
Plutarch, Parallel Lives
Ovid, Metamorphoses
Tacitus, Germania and Histories
Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History
Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy
St. Augustine, Confessions and City of God
The Middle Ages
St. Benedict, Rule
St. Gregory the Great, Dialogues
St. Bede, History of the English Church and People
Beowulf
The Song of Roland
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Arabian Nights
Chrétien de Troyes, Arthurian Romances
Marco Polo, The Travels
Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica
Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ
William Langland, Piers Plowman
Everyman
Renaissance, Reformation, and Early Modern
Erasmus, In Praise of Folly
Christopher Marlowe, Dr. Faustus
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
St. Thomas More, Utopia
William Shakespeare (basically everything)
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
John Milton, Paradise Lost
John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress
Francois Rabelais,Gargantua and Pantagruel
Montaigne, Essays
Francis Bacon, Novum Organum
Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy and Discourse on Method
Blaise Pascal, Pensees
St. John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel
Jacques Bousset, Funeral Orations
James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
Modern and American
Ben Frankin, Autobiography
Hamilton, Jay, et. al., The Federalist Papers
Georgw Washington, Farewell Address
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Sense and Sensibility
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities
Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas debates
Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Frederick Douglass, Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass, American Slave
Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Herman Melville, Moby Dick
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov
Willa Cather, Death Comes to the Archbishop
T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
George Orwell, 1984 and Animal Farm
Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity and The Chronicles of Narnia
Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
Helpful Resource
The Great Books offer a window into the foundational ideas of Western civilization, spanning history, literature, philosophy, and more. Understanding and exploring these texts can be both enriching and intimidating, especially if you’re new to classical education. Thankfully, Homeschool Connections provides a fantastic resource with our online literature courses, led by expert instructors who bring several of these timeless works to life for high school students.
If you’re interested in diving deeper into the classics and bringing the Great Books into your homeschool, check out our online courses and start your journey today!
What are your thoughts on this topic? To continue the discussion, join me and other homeschooling parents at our Homeschool Connections Community or our Facebook group!
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