Choice of Books by Sir John Lubbock (1896)
Lubbock's list was first published in 1886. I have
transcribed the version published in 1896 and noted changes made by
the time it was reprinted in 1930.
"I drew up the list, not as that of the hundred best
books, but, which is very different, of those which have been most
frequently recommended as best worth reading."
— Sir John Lubbock, 1890
For more about this list and Lubbock's part in starting
the Great Books Movement, see "Where Did
the Great Books Come From Anyway?" by W. B. Carnochan,
Stanford Humanities Review, 6:8 (1998).
Frequently Asked Questions
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to find out who wrote this list. If you don't like the selections in
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This list may not include your favorite author, but
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List of 100 Books
Works by Living Authors are omitted.
- The Bible
- The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius
- Epictetus
- [Seneca (added in 1930 edition)]
- Aristotle's Ethics
- Analects of Confucius
- St. Hilaire's "Le Bouddha et sa religion"
- Wake's Apostolic Fathers
- Thos. à Kempis' Imitation of Christ
- Confessions of St. Augustine (Dr. Pusey)
- The Koran (portions of)
- Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus
- Comte's Catechism of Positive Philosophy [omitted in 1930 edition]
- Pascal's Pensées
- Butler's Analogy of Religion
- Taylor's Holy Living and Dying
- Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress
- Keble's Christian Year
- Plato's Dialogues; at any rate, the Apology, Crito, and Phædo
- Xenophon's Memorabilia
- Aristotle's Politics
- Demosthenes' De Corona
- Cicero's De Officiis, De Amicitia, and De Senectute
- Plutarch's Lives
- Berkeley's Human Knowledge
- Descartes' Discours sur la Méthode
- Locke's On the Conduct of the Understanding
- Homer
- Hesiod
- Virgil
- Maha Bharata { Epitomized in Talboys Wheeler's
- Ramayana {
History of India, vols. i and ii.
- The Shahnameh
- The Nibelungenlied
- Malory's Morte d'Arthur
- The Sheking [i.e., Shih Ching]
- Kalidasa's Sakuntala or The Lost Ring
- Æschylus' Prometheus
- Sophocles' Œdipus
- Euripides' Medea
- Aristophanes' The Knights and Clouds
- Horace
- Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (perhaps in Morris' edition; or if
expurgated, in C. Clarke's, or Mrs. Haweis')
- Shakespeare
- Milton's Paradise Lost, Lycidas, Comus, and the shorter poems
- Dante's Divina Commedia
- Spenser's Fairie Queen
- Dryden's Poems [omitted in 1930 edition]
- Scott's Poems
- Wordsworth (Mr. Arnold's selection)
- Pope's Essay in Criticism
- Essay on Man
- Rape of the Lock
- Burns
- Byron's Childe Harold
- Gray
- [Tennyson's Idylls and smaller poems (added in 1930 edition)]
- Herodotus
- Xenophon's Anabasis and Memorabilia
- Thucydides
- Tacitus' Germania
- Livy
- Gibbon's Decline and Fall
- Hume's History of England
- Grote's History of Greece
- Carlyle's French Revolution
- Green's Short History of England
- Lewes' History of Philosophy
- Arabian Nights
- Swift's Gulliver's Travels
- Defoe's Robinson Crusoe
- Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield
- Cervantes' Don Quixote
- Boswell's Life of Johnson
- Molière
- Schiller's William Tell
- Sheridan's The Critic, School for Scandal, and The Rivals
- Carlyle's Past and Present
- Bacon's Novum Organum
- Smith's Wealth of Nations (part of)
- Mill's Political Economy
- Cook's Voyages
- Humboldt's Travels
- White's Natural History of Selborne
- Darwin's Origin of Species
- Mill's Logic
- [Ruskin, Selection from the writings of (added in 1930 edition)]
- Bacon's Essays
- Montaigne's Essays
- Hume's Essays [omitted in 1930 edition]
- Macaulay's Essays
- Addison's Essays
- Emerson's Essays
- Burke's Select Works
- Smiles' Self-Help
- [Ruskin's Modern Painters (added in 1930 edition)]
- Voltaire's Zadig and Micromegas
- Goethe's Faust and Autobiography
- Thackeray's Vanity Fair
- Dickens' Pickwick
- Lytton's Last Days of Pompeii
- George Eliot's Adam Bede
- Kingsley's Westward Ho!
- Scott's Novels
Source: Lubbock, Sir John. The Choice of
Books. Philadelphia: Henry Altemus, 1896. © 1896 by Henry
Altemus. (Reprinted, with a few changes, in: The Rt. Hon. Lord Avebury
[Sir John Lubbock]. The Pleasures of
Life. London: Macmillan, 1930.)
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