Subject

Literature

Epic, drama, poetry and fiction: the stories that have formed the imagination of the world.

Antiquityto AD 500

Middle Ages500–1450

The Beowulf Poet
Beowulf
8th century AD · From the Old English
Forthcoming
The Storytellers of the Thousand and One Nights
The Thousand and One Nights (Selections)
c. 900–1500 · From the Arabic
Forthcoming
Turold
The Song of Roland
11th century AD · From the Old French
Forthcoming
Abelard and Heloise
The Letters of Abelard and Heloise
c. 1132–1137 · From the Latin
Forthcoming
Omar Khayyam
The Rubaiyat
12th century AD · From the Persian
Forthcoming
The Nibelungenlied Poet
The Nibelungenlied
c. 1200 · From the Middle High German
Forthcoming
Kamo no Chōmei
An Account of My Hut
1212 · From the Japanese
Forthcoming
Rumi
The Divan of Shams of Tabriz (Selections)
1244–1273 · From the Persian
Forthcoming
Rumi
The Masnavi
1258–1273 · From the Persian
Forthcoming
Saadi
The Gulistan (The Rose Garden)
1258 · From the Persian
Forthcoming
Dante Alighieri
La Vita Nuova (The New Life)
c. 1294 · From the Italian
Forthcoming
Dante Alighieri
The Divine Comedy
c. 1308–1321 · From the Italian
Forthcoming
Yoshida Kenkō
Essays in Idleness
c. 1330–1332 · From the Japanese
Forthcoming
Petrarch
The Canzoniere (Selections) and The Ascent of Mont Ventoux
1336–1374 · From the Italian
Forthcoming
Giovanni Boccaccio
The Decameron
c. 1349–1353 · From the Italian
Forthcoming
Luo Guanzhong
Romance of the Three Kingdoms
14th century AD · From the Chinese
Forthcoming
Shi Nai'an
The Water Margin
14th century AD · From the Chinese
Forthcoming
Hafez
Poems of Hafez (Selections from the Divan)
14th century AD · From the Persian
Forthcoming
Geoffrey Chaucer
The Canterbury Tales (Selections)
c. 1387–1400 · From the Middle English
Forthcoming

Antiquityto AD 500

The Book of Songs (Selections)

The Iliad

The Odyssey

Theogony and Works and Days

Sappho and the Greek Lyric Poets

Solon: Poems and Lives

Aesop's Fables

The Oresteia and Prometheus Bound

The Theban Plays: Oedipus the King, Antigone, Oedipus at Colonus

Medea, The Bacchae, The Trojan Women

The Clouds, The Frogs, Lysistrata

Phaedrus

Zhuangzi

Poetics

Rhetoric

Records of the Grand Historian (Selected Annals and Biographies)

On the Nature of Things

Eclogues and Georgics

Odes and The Art of Poetry

The Aeneid

Metamorphoses

On the Sublime

A True Story and Dialogues of the Dead

The Golden Ass

The Panchatantra

Liezi

Shakuntala

Middle Ages500–1450

Beowulf

The Thousand and One Nights (Selections)

The Song of Roland

The Letters of Abelard and Heloise

The Rubaiyat

The Nibelungenlied

An Account of My Hut

The Divan of Shams of Tabriz (Selections)

The Masnavi

The Gulistan (The Rose Garden)

La Vita Nuova (The New Life)

The Divine Comedy

Essays in Idleness

The Canzoniere (Selections) and The Ascent of Mont Ventoux

The Decameron

Romance of the Three Kingdoms

The Water Margin

Poems of Hafez (Selections from the Divan)

The Canterbury Tales (Selections)

Renaissance1450–1600

The Praise of Folly

Utopia

The Book of the Courtier

Gargantua and Pantagruel (Books I and II)

The Essays

Journey to the West

Shakespeare: Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, and the Sonnets

17th century1600–1700

Don Quixote

Tartuffe, The Misanthrope and The Miser

Maxims

Paradise Lost

Selected Poems and The Answer to Sor Filotea

The Narrow Road to the Deep North

The Enlightenment1700–1800

Robinson Crusoe

Persian Letters

Gulliver's Travels

Candide

Dream of the Red Chamber (Chapters 1–80)

Emile (Selections) and Reveries of the Solitary Walker

Three Hundred Tang Poems

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

The Sorrows of Young Werther

Confessions

19th century1800–1900

Faust, Part One

Pride and Prejudice

Frankenstein

The Captain's Daughter and Selected Poems

The Overcoat, The Nose and Other Stories