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Reading Rat

Read Me What to read, 1826-1850 The books that we re-read the oftenest are not always those that we admire the most; we choose and revisit them for many and various reasons, as we choose and revisit human friends. --Robert Louis Stevenson

< 1801-1825 | 1851-1875 >

Annotations: One star: to Five stars: (rating) - Etext: (etexts) - Reference: (references) - Criticism: (criticism) - (note) - (comment)

Earlier Mid-19th Century

G. F. B. RIEMANN (Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann, 1826-1866) Etext: Mathematical Papers Reference: History of Mathematics archive | Clay Mathematics Institute Criticism: Weblog
The Hypothesis of Geometry (1867)

Walter BAGEHOT (1826-1877) Etext: The Online Books Page Reference: The Economist [Roger] Kimball says he would be quoted more if people were not afraid of mispronouncing the name--it is Ba'-jet. --Richard John Neuhaus, While We're At It, The Public Square, First Things, February 2003, p. 74
The English Constitution (1867)

SHCHEDRIN (Mikhail Yevgrafovich Saltykov, 1826-1889) Etext: The Online Books Page
The Golovlovs (Gospoda Golovlyovy 1876) tracing the fifteen years of decay and corruption within a family of country nobles. The hypocrite Porfiri (Judas or Iudenshka) has become an eponymous figure in Russia, just as have Tartuffe in France and Uriah Heep in England. --Philip Ward, A Lifetime's Reading (1982) p. 190

John Hanning SPEKE (1827-1864) Etext: The Online Books Page
Discovery of the Source of the Nile (1863)

James Augustus GRANT (1827-1892)
A Walk Across Africa (1863)

Joseph, 1st Baron LISTER (1827-1912) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: Downs
On the Antiseptic Principle in the Practice of Surgery (1867)

Frank A. HASKELL (1828-1864)
The Battle of Gettysburg (1863)

Dante Gabriel ROSSETTI (1828-1882) Etext: The Online Books Page Reference: The Complete Writings and Pictures; A Hypermedia Research Archive
One star: The King's Tragedy
One star: Sonnets (1880)

Nikolay CHERNYSHEVSKY (1828-1889)
What Is to Be Done?

Jules VERNE (1828-1905) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: Downs
From the Earth to the Moon (1865)

Henrik IBSEN (1828-1906) Etext: The Online Books Page Reference: Centre for Ibsen Studies Criticism: Weblog | Downs | Fadiman | Van Doren | Ward
One star: Brand (1866)
One star: Peer Gynt (1867)
One star: The Pillars of Society (1877)
Three stars: A Doll's House (1879) [W]ell-nigh perfect in its rendering of the young wife Nora who leaves her husband and shuts the door behind her--a famous door that no one forgets. --Mark Van Doren, The Great Ideas Today 1969, p. 282
One star: Ghosts (1881)
One star: An Enemy of the People (1882)
One star: The Wild Duck (1884)
One star: Hedda Gabler (1884) She is a Medea of the North, with no children to kill but with two men to hurt--her husband and the author whose manuscript she burns--before she ends the play by shooting herself: good riddance to all but divine rubbish. --Mark Van Doren, The Great Ideas Today 1969, p. 282
One star: The Master Builder (1892)
One star: When We Dead Awaken (1899)
Emperor and Galilean
The Lady from the Sea

George MEREDITH (1828-1909) Etext: The Online Books Page
Poems
The Egoist

Leo Nikolayovich TOLSTOY (1828-1910) Etext: Reference: Criticism: Weblog Criticism: Fadiman | Rexroth | Van Doren | Ward
Childhood, Boyhood and Youth (1853)
Four stars: War and Peace (1869) What was originally intended as a story of family life, set against the background of the conflict between Russia and Napoleanic France, became a great historical novel, including a philosophy of history. --Seymour Cain, Imaginative Literature II: From Cervantes to Dostoevsky (1962), p. 171 ...one can see Tolstoy trying to catch in a network of abstract concepts the multifarious, tidal flow of his own novelistic imagination, within which his characters, acting in the belief that they are distinctive, self-driven individuals, reveal themselves to be subject to internal and external forces over which they have little or no control. --Dan Jacobson, Less a Wheel than a Wave, London Review of Books, 11 May 2006, p. 11
One star: Anna Karenina (1878)
Twenty-three Tales (1881)
The Death of Ivan Illych (1886)
One star: A Confession (1888)
The Kingdom of God is Within You (c. 1894) full title: The Kingdom of God is Within You; or, Christianity Not as a Mystical Teaching but as a New Concept of Life
What Is Art? (1897) In War and Peace, Anna Karenina, and Resurrection, he pushes his characters about with the greatest conceivable brusqueness in order to prove his thesis, and exhorts his readers to accept his interpretations of their movements. He even admits in What Is Art? that he thinks this the proper way for an artist to behave. --Rebecca West, in Charlotte Bronte, from The Great Victorians (1932), in The Essential Rebecca West, p. 436
Critical Essay on Shakespeare
The Kreutzer Sonata
On Life
Religion and Morality
What is Religion?
The Cossacks
The Power of Darkness
Short Novels

Emily DICKINSON (1830-1886) Etext: Reference: Criticism: Weblog Criticism: Van Doren Humor: Yellow Rose of Emily (#17)
Two stars: Complete Poems (1960) Her style is terse to the limit; she lights landscapes, actual or imagined, temporal or eternal, as lightning does. --Mark Van Doren, The Great Ideas Today 1969, p. 286 No reader of Emily can be so insensitive as to leave this extraordinary woman (who could be relentlessly sarcastic on occasion) and her poetry without a sense of exhilaration. --Philip Ward, A Lifetime's Reading (1982) p. 17 ... probably no poet of comparable reputation has been guilty of so much unpardonable writing... --Yvor Winter, quoted in 'No Laughing Matter,' by Brad Letihauser, New York Review of Books, September 21, 2000, p. 70

Christina Georgina ROSSETTI (1830-1894) Etext: The Online Books Page
One star: Goblin Market and Other Poems (1847-93)

James Clerk MAXWELL (1831-1879) Etext: The Online Books Page In 1864, James Clerk Maxwell wrote down the complete set of equations that govern electromagnetic fields and showed that waves propagate in them, just as sound waves propagate in air. --Stephen M. Barr, Faith and Quantum Theory, First Things, March 2007, p. 21
Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (1873)

Nikolai Semyonovich LESKOV (1831-1895) Criticism: Ward
Selected Tales (1856-58)

Paul du CHAILLU (1831-1903) Etext: The Online Books Page
Equatorial Africa (1861)

Julius Wilhelm Richard DEDEKIND (1831-1916)
Essays on the Theory of Numbers (1924)

Louisa May ALCOTT (1832-1888) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: Boynton
Little Women

Lewis CARROLL (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson 1832-1898) Etext: Reference: Criticism: Weblog An ounce of Lewis Carroll is in my opinion worth a ton of his contemporaries sermons ... --Philip Ward, A Lifetime's Reading (1982) Introduction
Two stars: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) In 'Alice' four worlds meet, worlds that he knew either consciously or intuitively. ... They are the worlds of childhood, dream, nonsense, and logic. Their strange interaction gives 'Alice' its complexity, and, more important, its strange reality. --Clifton Fadiman, The Lifetime Reading Plan (1960), p. 99 The images of 'Alice in Wonderland' are unforgettable; we can hardly get them out of our heads. (Partly this is because of John Tenniel's wonderful illustrations for the original edition ... .) --Charles Van Doren, The Joy of Reading (1985) p. 87
Two stars: Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1871) The two books make up one great fantasy, and it is hard to keep them apart in the memory. In fact, it is not worth trying to do so. --Charles Van Doren, The Joy of Reading (1985) p. 88

Horatio ALGER, Jr. (1832-1899) Etext: The Online Books Page Reference: Roach
Ragged Dick, or, Street Life in New York (1867)

Wilhelm WUNDT (1832-1920) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: Boeree
Physiological Psychology (1880)
Outline of Psychology (1896)

Bysshe VANOLIS (James Thomson, 1834-1882)
The City of Dreadful Night (1874)

Sir John Robert SEELEY (1834-1895) Etext: The Online Books Page
Ecce Homo (1865)

William MORRIS (1834-1896) Etext: The Online Books Page
A Dream of John Ball (c. 1885)
Early Romances
Poems
The Earthly Paradise
The Well at the World's End
News from Nowhere

Ernst Heinrich HAECKEL (1834-1919) Etext: The Online Books Page
The Evolution of Man (1874)
The Riddle of the Universe (1901)

One star: Kalevala (1835) Etext: Criticism: Weblog Criticism: Ward

Samuel BUTLER (1835-1902) Etext: The Online Books Page
Erewhon (1872)
The Way of All Flesh (1903)

Giosue CARDUCCI (1835-1907)
Hymn to Satan
Barbarian Odes
Rhymes and Rhythms

Mark TWAIN (Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910) Etext: Criticism: Weblog Criticism: Fadiman | Van Doren 'Mark Twain' is a slang phrase used on the river to mean 'two fathoms deep' and indeed Clemens wrote his best work on and around the Mississippi. --Philip Ward, A Lifetime's Reading (1982) p. 13
Letter from New York to the [San Francisco] Alta California (May 28, 1867)
The Facts Concerning the Recent Resignation (1867)
The Innocents Abroad (1869) manages to be simultaneously amused and appalled, and by things that are mostly just appalling. --Algis Valiunas, Encountering Islam, Claremont Review of Books, Spring 2007, p. 35 deflated American illusions about the [Middle East] region and, mordantly, about themselves. --Harvey Sicherman, A Thousand and One Nights, review of 'Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present' by Michael B. Oren, Claremont Review of Books, Fall 2007, p. 22
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) The first manuscript submitted to the publisher typewritten. --Tom Goldstein and Jethro K. Lieberman, 'The Lawyer's Guide to Writing Well' (1989)
Remarkable Gold Mines (letter to New York Post 1880) Criticism: Wimberly
Four stars: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) ...all modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called 'Huckleberry Finn'. --Ernest Hemingway
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889)
Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar (from The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson 1894)
Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894)
Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar (in Following the Equator 1897)
The Disappearance of Literature (1900)
Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven (1909)
The Mysterious Stranger (1916)
Notebook (1936)
Complete Short Stories (anthology 1956)
Life as I Find It (anthology 1961)
Number Forty-Four: The Mysterious Stranger (1969)
The Devil's Racetrack: Mark Twain's "Great Dark" Writings: The Best from 'Which Was the Dream?' and 'Fables of Man' (anthology, John S. Tuckey, ed. 1980)
Concerning the Jews (1985)

Mendele Mokher SEFORIM
The Travels and Adventures of Benjamin the Third

Gustavo Adolfo BECQUET (1836-1870)
Poems

W. S. GILBERT (Sir William Schwenck Gilbert, 1836-1911) Etext: Reference: Criticism: Weblog
Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan
Bab Ballads

Walter PATER (1839-1894) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: Kimball | Auchincloss
Studies in the History of the Renaissance
Appreciations
Imaginary Portraits
Marius the Epicurean

Algernon Charles SWINBURNE (1837-1909) Etext: The Online Books Page
Atalanta in Calydon (1865)
Letters

William Dean HOWELLS (1837-1920) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: Tuttleton
The Rise of Silas Lapham
A Modern Instance

J. J. THOMSON (Joseph John Thomson, 1837-1921) Reference: AIP
Conduction of Electricity Throught Gases (1903)

W. E. H. LECKY (1838-1903) Etext: The Online Books Page
History of European Morals (1869)
Rise and Influence of Rationalism in Europe (1865)

Henry ADAMS (1838-1918) Etext: The Online Books Page Reference: Globe Trotter Criticism: Fadiman | Van Doren | Ward
History of the United States of America from 1801 to 1817 (1889-91)
One star: Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres (1904)
Two stars: The Education of Henry Adams (1907)
Degradation of the Democratic Dogma (1919)

Henry GEORGE (1839-1897) Etext: Reference: Weblog Criticism: Downs
Progress and Property (1879) Subtitled: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions, and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth; the Remedy

Josiah Willard GIBBS (1839-1903) Criticism: Downs | Holton and Sopka
On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances (1876-1878)
Elementary Principles of Statistical Mechanics (1902) full title: Elementary Principles of Statistical Mechanics, Developed with Especial Reference ot the Rational Foundation of Thermodynamics

Charles Sanders PEIRCE (1839-1914) Reference: Arisbe | Studies Criticism: Oakes (pronounced 'purse') --Summer Classics 2003 Catalog, St. John's College, Sante Fe, New Mexico
Evolutionary Love
The Fixation of Belief
How to Make Our Ideas Clear
The Red and the Black
What Pragmatism Means
Chance, Love, and Logic (1923) Peirce, the son of mathematician Benjamin Peirce, was especially interested in symbolic representations of logic. --Byron E. Wall, 'John Venn, James Wood and the Chair of Mental Philosophy and Logic at the University of Cambridge, Journal of the History of Ideas, January 2007, p. 148
Collected Papers (1931-1934)

Emile ZOLA (1840-1902) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: Buss | Ward
Therese Raquin (1867) deals with a married woman and her lover, the shadowy Laurent, who determine to murder Camille Raquin in order to live together openly. But Camille's paralyzed old mother gradually becomes aware of what has happened... --Philip Ward, A Lifetime's Reading (1982) p. 34
One star: L'Assommoir (1877) ...Gervaise Macquart comes to Paris with her lover Lantier and their two children. Lantier deserts her, but she marries Coupeau and starts a laundry on borrowed money. For a while all goes well, but then Coupeau has an accident, and spends most of his time (and the housekeeping money) in the drinking-shop of the title. --Philip Ward, A Lifetime's Reading (1982) p. 34
Nana (1880)
One star: Germinal (1885) ...Gervaise's son Etienne loses his job in Lille and finally obtains employment in the coal-mines. Ethienne forms a friendship with the Russian nihilist Suvarin and together they incite the miners to strike for bearable living conditions. --Philip Ward, A Lifetime's Reading (1982) p. 34

William SUMNER (1840-1910)
Folkways (1907)
The Challenge of Facts
Socialism

Alfred Thayer MAHAN (1840-1914) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: Downs the geopolitical theorist who coined the term 'Middle East'. --Harvey Sicherman, A Thousand and One Nights, review of 'Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present' by Michael B. Oren, Claremont Review of Books, Fall 2007, p. 22
The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783 (1890)

Giovanni VERGA (1840-1922) Criticism: Ward He poured his genius into many bottles, haphazardly it sometimes seems. Only in the one he initially most despised, the short and shamelessly regional novella, did it yield its full and explosive flavor. --Tim Parks, The New York Review of Books, January 11, 2001, p. 48
One star: The House by the Medlar (1881)
One star: Little Novels of Sicily (1883)
One star: Mastro Don Gesualdo (1889)
The She-Wolf and Other Stories

Thomas HARDY (1840-1928) Etext: Reference: Criticism: Weblog Criticism: Fadiman | Van Doren | Ward
One star: Jude the Obscure (1895)
Two stars: Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891)
One star: Selected Poems His theory of life was bleak, but his account of it in song and story--he is rich in examples of both--is warm and wonderful. He is most at home in mist and gloom, and then, lo, in brilliant sun. His verse is crabbed and peculiar; but once we are accustomed to his voice it is something we want to keep on hearing. --Mark Van Doren, The Great Ideas Today 1969, p. 286-287
One star: The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886)
One star: The Return of the Native (1878)
The Well-Beloved
The Woodlanders
Far from the Madding Crowd

W. H. HUDSON (1841-1922) Etext: The Online Books Page
The Naturalist in La Plata (1892) Etext: Project Gutenberg

Oliver Wendell HOLMES, Jr. (1841-1935) Etext: The Online Books Page
The Common Law (1881)
Collected Legal Papers (1921)

Sidney LANIER (1842-1881) Etext: The Online Books Page
One star: The Revenge of Hamish
Channel Firing
Hap
Let Me Enjoy

Stephane MALLARME (1842-1898) Criticism: Simon
Selected Poetry and Prose

William JAMES (1842-1910) Etext: Reference: Criticism: Weblog Criticism: Fadiman | Van Doren
One star: The Principles of Psychology (1891) James is the founder of *functionalism* in psychology. --V. J. McGill, Biology, Psychology, and Medicine (1963), p. 254 He always remained faithful ... to the observed world as he saw it, and especially to facts which, however unusual, had a bearing on the life and aspirations of the individual. --Seymour Cain, Philosophy (1963), p. 279
Letter to B. P. Blood (June 28, 1896)
One star: The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
The Moral Equivalent of War (1906) The psychological realism of Luther, Edwards, and other Protestant theologians--whose analysis of conversion, James thinks, can hardly be surpassed by modern psychologists--does not mean that religion should be replaced by psychology. It means only that psychological understanding has been part of religion all along. --Christopher Lasch, 'The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics' (1991), p. 285
Two stars: Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907)
One star: Four Essays from The Meaning of Truth (1907)
A Pluralistic Universe (1909)
Some Problems of Philosophy (1911)
Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912)
Great Men and Their Environment
Is Life Worth Living?
On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings
Remarks at the Peace Banquet
The Sentiments of Rationality
Stanford's Ideal Identity
The Will to Believe

Ambrose BIERCE (1842-1914) Etext: The Online Books Page
Collected Writings

Jose Maria ECA DE QUIERIOZ [or QUIRIOS] (1843-1900) Criticism: Ward
The Sin of Father Amaro (1875)
Dragon's Teeth (1878)
One star: The Maias (1888) Criticism: Riding | Wood

Frederick W. H. MYERS (1843-1901) Etext: The Online Books Page
Human Personality (1903)

Robert KOCH (1843-1910) Criticism: Downs
The Etiology of Tuberculosis (1882)

Henry JAMES (1843-1916) Etext: The Online Books Page | Great Books and Classics Reference: Guardian: Authors | Guide to Web Sites Criticism: Weblog | Fadiman | Van Doren | Ward
Daisy Miller (1878) [H]as for its heroine an American girl, beautiful, innocent, and willful, who goes through Europe without any other thought than that she should behave there as she had behaved at home in Schenectady: her own mistress, free to see whom she pleases and to say whatever is in her mind. Her death from Roman fever is no punishment for this; rather, it is the accidental consequence of a rash visit one night to the Colosseum with a beautiful young man of Rome against whom she had been warned. --Mark Van Doren, The Great Ideas Today 1969, p. 292
Two stars: The Portrait of a Lady (1881)
The Bostonians (1886)
The Princess Casamassima (1886)
One star: The Turn of the Screw (1898) It is a study of evil in the form of a ghost story--a ghost story unless the governess who tells it has imagined it all. Opinions differ as to this; but the evil, whether outside the governess's mind or in it, is real enough for horror of immense dimensions. --Mark Van Doren, The Great Ideas Today 1969, p. 293
The Awkward Age (1899)
The Wings of the Dove (1902)
Two stars: The Ambassadors (1903)
One star: The Golden Bowl (1904)
The American Novels and Stories (anthology 1947)
Short Novels and Tales Reference: Wikipedia

Benito PEREZ GALDOS (1843-1920) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: Ward Spain's Dickens --Maria Elena de las Carreras-Kuntz, 'Luis Bunuel's Quarrel With the Church', Crisis, November 1999 p. 23
Nazarin (1895)
Halma (1895)
Misericordia (1897)
One star: Fortunata y Jacinta (1886-87)

Gerard Manley HOPKINS (1844-1889) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: Short | Russello | Ward
One star: Carrion Comfort
One star: God's Grandeur
One star: Pied Beauty
One star: Thou Art Indeed Just, Lord

Paul VERLAINE (1844-1896) Etext: The Online Books Page | A. S. Kline
Selected Poems

Friedrich Wilhelm NIETZSCHE (1844-1900) Etext: Reference: Criticism: Humor: Weblog Criticism: Downs | Fadiman | Ward You would not like Nietzsche, sir. He is fundamentally unsound. --Jeeves to Bertie Wooster in 'Jeeves Takes Charge'
Two stars: Beyond Good and Evil (1886)
One star: Toward a Genealogy of Morals (1887) Criticism: Reno
Two stars: Also sprach Zarathustra (1892)
The Antichrist (1895)
One star: The Will to Power (1895)
Ecce Homo (1908)
The Birth of Tragedy
The Gay Science or Joyful Wisdom [Die froehliche Wissenschaft]
Human, All-Too-Human
Twilight of the Idols

Anatole FRANCE (1844-1924) Etext: The Online Books Page
Penguin Island
Thais

Robert BRIDGES (1844-1930) Etext: The Online Books Page
Poems

Tristan CORBIER (1845-1875)
Les Amours jaunes

Georg CANTOR (1845-1918)
Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers (1915)

Bram STOKER (1847-1912) Etext: The Online Books Page
Dracula

Georges SOREL (1847-1923)
Reflections on Violence (1908)

Vilfredo PARETO (1848-1923) Etext: Virginia ...the Pareto criterion: ...state of affairs A is more efficient than state of affairs B if it leads to an improvement for one of the parties without harming any of the other affected parties; Pareto optimality occurs when no further gains can be achieved from trade. --Samuel Estreicher, 'In Praise of Theory', The Green Bag, Autumn 2006, p. 55
The Mind and Society (1916)

Auguste FOREL (1848-1931)
The Senses of Insects (1900)

William E. HENLEY (1849-1903) Etext: The Online Books Page
England, My England

Sarah Orne JEWETT (1849-1909) Etext: The Online Books Page
The Country of the Pointed Firs and Other Stories

August STRINDBERG (1849-1912) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: Ward Humor: Bradley and Bewley
One star: To Damascus
One star: Miss Julie
One star: The Father
One star: The Dance of Death Criticism: Sandall
One star: The Ghost Sonata
One star: A Dream Play

Max Simon NORDAU (1849-1923) Etext: The Online Books Page
Degeneration (1893)

Ivan Petrovich PAVLOV (1849-1936) Criticism: Downs
One star: Conditioned Reflexes (1927) full title: Conditioned Reflexes: an Investigation of the Physiological Activity of the Cerebral Cortex

Guy de MAUPASSANT (1850-1893) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: Ward His people are of many kinds: peasants, priests, soldiers, merchants, clerks, prostitutes--every kind, it would seem. But all of them are driven, as their creator also is while he works out the ironies of their lives; for irony is his matter, as intensity is his manner. --Mark Van Doren, The Great Ideas Today 1969, p. 291
One star: Short Stories

Robert Louis STEVENSON (1850-1894) Etext: The Online Books Page | Project Gutenberg Reference: Raleigh Criticism: Downing
The New Arabian Nights (1882)
Treasure Island (1883)
Kidnapped (1886)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)
The Master of Ballantrae (1889)
Weir of Hermiston (1896)
Essays (1906)

Edward BELLAMY (1850-1898) Etext: The Online Books Page Reference: Wood Criticism: Downs
Looking Backward, 2000-1887 (1888)

Pierre LOTI (Louis-Marie-Julien Viaud 1850-1923) Etext: The Online Books Page
The Desert (1894)

< 1801-1825 | 1851-1875 >



Revised April 25, 2008.

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