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Read Me What to read, 1876-1900

< 1851-1875 | 1901-1925 >

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Late 19th Century

Antoine de SAINT-EXUPERY (1900-1944) A pilot is downed upon the sand. His plane has crashed; he is trying to repair it. Hot, thirsty, hungry, he sees a very small person, dressed like a prince, walking toward him. The small person speaks, the pilot responds, and they are soon friends. --Charles Van Doren, The Joy of Reading (1985) p. 369
The Little Prince (1943) Criticism: Benjamin Ivry essay
Written for children 'because adults don't understand anything', this story of a downed aviator and his friend, a prince from a far-off star, has surface beauty, emotional profundity. --Raphael and McLeish

Wolfgang PAULI (1900-1958) Reference: Nobel Prize
Theory of Relativity (Relativitatstheorie 1921)
The General Principles of Wave Mechanics (Die allgemeinen Prinzipien der Wellenmechanik 1933)

George SEFERIS (1900-1971) Etext: Poem Hunter Etext: Reference: Poetry International Web
Collected Poems (1981)

Theodosius DOBZHANSKY (1900-1975)
One star: Genetics and the Origin of Species (1937)

Jacques PREVERT (1900-1977)
Paroles (1946)

Basil BUNTING (1900-1985) Etext: Poem Hunter | Academy of American Poets Criticism: Don Share essay
Collected Poems (1985)

Gilberto FREYRE (1900-1987)
The Masters and the Slaves (1933)
The Mansions and the Shanties (1936)
Order and Progress (1959)

V. S. PRITCHETT (1900-1997) Criticism: Benjamin Schwarz review | Joseph Epstein review

Nathalie SARRAUTE (1900-1999) Reference: Authors' Calendar
The Planetarium (1959)
The Use of Speech (L’Usage de la parole 1980)

Hart CRANE (1899-1932) Etext: Academy of American Poets | Poem Hunter Criticism: Eric Ormsby review essay
Complete Poems and Selected Letters and Prose (1966) Criticism: Colm Toibin review

Benjamin PERET (1899-1959) Etext: two poems
From the Hidden Storehouse: Selected Poems (1981)

Ernest HEMINGWAY (1899-1961) {H]e showed for all time--contrary to the Romantic notion of creativity--that economic comfort and good health are conducive to writing ... --Gabriel Garcia Marquez, The New York Times Book Review, July 26, 1981 Criticism: post
Two stars: The Sun Also Rises (1926) Inspired by 'The Sun Also Rises', hundreds of young Americans appeared in Paris lugging typewriters and dreams. --Robert Messenger, A dime store Jane Austen, The New Criterion, March 2007, p. 23
One star: A Farewell to Arms (1929) Only those who have not realized that Hemingway's cruelty is of the surface could be surprised he made childbirth the tragic climax of this novel and his tragic ending the loss of both child and mother. --Edwin Berry Burgum, 'Hemingway's Development', New Masses, November 22, 1938
One star: The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (1938)
That consciousness of technique is unquestionably the reason Hemingway won't achieve glory with his novels, but will with his more disciplined short stories. --Gabriel Garcia Marquez
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) One trouble is it isn't a novel at all but rather a series of short stories, some of them excellent ... imbedded in a mixture of sentimental love scenes, too much talk, rambling narrative sequences, and the rather dull interior monologues by Jordan. --Dwight Macdonald, Hemingway's Unpolitical Political Novel, Partisan Review, January-February 1941
It is a fine title, and an apt one, for this is a book filled with the imminence of death, and the manner of man's meeting it. That is as it should be; this is a story of the Spanish war. But in it Hemingway has struck universal chords, and he has struck them vibrantly. --J. Donald Adams
The Old Man and the Sea (1952)
The Garden of Eden (1986)

Friedrich HAYEK (1899-1992) Criticism: post For Hayek, ... the economist's problem is to explain how this wildly dispersed knowledge can produce a coordinated scheme of activity, which, if it 'were to be brought about deliberately, would require a knowledge on the part of the directing mind which no single person can possess.' Here, in a nutshell, is the Austrian case against central planning. --Greg Hill, 'Don't shoot the messenger: Caldwell's Hayek and the insularity of the Austrian project', Critical Review, Vol. 17, Nos. 1-2, p. 76 portrayed capitalism as a spontaneous system that unleashes more human potential than governments can control... --Stephen H. Webb, New Theology, Old Economics, First Things, April 2007, p. 12
The Road to Serfdom (1944) Reference: Publication History In the negative part of Professor Hayek's thesis there is a great deal of truth. It cannot be said too often--at any rate it is said not nearly often enough--that collectivism is not inherently democratic, but, on the contrary, gives to a tyrannical minority such powers as the Spanish Inquisition never dreamed of. --George Orwell, review, 1944
Shatters the myth that the totalitarianisms 'of the Left' and 'of the Right' stem from differing impulses. --Mark Helprin
The Constitution of Liberty (1960) Thoughtful reflections on the conditions and limitations of liberty in the modern world, written by a deeply cultured Austrian who found his home in the Anglo-Saxon world. The 'Summa' of classical political economy in our century. --The Intercollegiate Review, The Fifty Worst (and Best) Books of the Century, Fall 1999 http://www.isi.org/journals/ir/50best_worst/index.html
A great re-statement for this century of classical liberalism by its greatest modern exponent. --John O'Sullivan

LAU Shaw (Lao She 1899-1966)
Rickshaw (1979)

Yury OLESHA (1899-1966)
Envy (1927)

KAWABATA Yasunari (1899-1972)
The Snow Country (Yukiguni 1947)
The Thousand Cranes (Senbazuru 1949-51)
Beauty and Sadness (Utsukushisa to Kanashimi to 1964)

Elizabeth BOWEN (1899-1973) Criticism: Richard Tillinghast essay
Collected Stories (1980)

Miguel Angel ASTURIAS (1899-1974) Reference: Nobel Prize
Men of Maize (Hombres de maiz 1949)

G. B. EDWARDS (1899-1976)
The Book of Ebenezer Le Page (1981)

Vladimir NABOKOV (1899-1977) Etext: The Online Books Page Reference: Times Topics Criticism: post An uprooted victim of violent revolution, a scientist and scholar, he wandered across two continents and wrote, in two languages, subtly sophisticated, exquisitely stylish, and teasingly elusive books. --Jeffrey Myers, 'Shade's Shadow', The New Criterion, May 2006 p. 31
One star: Lolita (1959)
A beautiful novel-of-authenticity, fusing romantic and empirical sensibilities... --Ricard D. Parker
One star: Pale Fire (1962)
The imagery is superb; it is like dreaming in Color-Vision. The story is ridiculous, poignant, and enchanting, but it opens up a world of the imagination that becomes more real than the real world. --Gordon R. Willey
Speak, Memory (1967)
Russian novelist writes of his childhood in a wealthy, pre-Revolutionary family--a never forgotten dream of happiness irretrievably snatched away. --Raphael and McLeish
Ada or Ardor: a Family Chronicle (1969)

Allen TATE (1899-1979)
Collected Poems (1970)

John H. VAN VLECK (1899-1980) Reference: Nobel Prize
The Theory of Electric and Magnetic Susceptibilities (1932)

Henri MICHAUX (1899-1984)
Selected Writings (1990)

E. B. WHITE (Elwyn Brooks White 1899-1985) Criticism: post
Is Sex Necsssary? (1929, with James THURBER)
Charlotte's Web (1952)
What the book is about is friendship on earth, affection and protection, adventure and miracle, life and death, trust and treachery, pleasure and pain, and the passing of time. --Eudora Welty
The Elements of Style (1959, with William STRUNK) Criticism: Jennifer Balderama review
If only every writer would remember just one of Strunk & White's wonderful injunctions: 'Omit needless words.' Omit needless words. --Abigail Thernstrom
Essays of E. B. White (1978) Bookseller: Levenger
His mesmerized devotion to the objects of his affection-his family, the female sex, his farm, the English language, Manhattan, the sea, America, Maine, and freedom, in descending order-is movingly absolute. --David Gelernter

Jorge Luis BORGES (1899-1986) Etext: Three late poems Criticism: post
One star: Ficciones (1944)
One star: The Aleph and Other Stories (El Aleph 1949)
One star: Dreamtigers (1960)
One star: A Personal Anthology (Antologia personal 1961)
Two stars: Labyrinths (1962)

Leonie ADAMS (1899-1988) Etext: Academy of American Poets | Taverner's Koans | Kiran Krishna
Poems: A Selection (1954)

Federico Garcia LORCA (1898-1936) You, on the foundation of the ancient Spanish form of the romance, along with Juan Ramon and Machado, created another style, strange and strong, at once both a support and a crown for the old Castilian tradition. --Rafael Alberti, 'Words for Federico Garcia Lorca', New Masses, January 11, 1938 And in Madrid he acquired the habit, ingrained in the city's cafe intellectuals, of talking knowledgeably about books he hadn't read. -- David Gilmour, 'The New York Review of Books' November 4, 1999 p. 43
One star: Gypsy Ballads (Romancero Gitano 1928)
One star: Blood Wedding (Bodas de sangre 1933)
One star: Yerma (1934)
One star: Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias (Llanto por Ignacio Sanchez Mejias 1935)
One star: The House of Bernarda Alma (La casa de Bernarnda Alma 1936)
One star: Selected Poems (1941)

Bertolt BRECHT (1898-1956) Criticism: post
an epic satirist never far from the morality play, though his great gifts as a poet are constantly breaking through his Marxist ideological straitjacket. --Philip Ward
The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper 1928)
One star: The Good Woman of Szechuan (Der gute Mensch von Sezuan 1936)
Galileo (Leben des Galilei 1943)
One star: Mother Courage and Her Children ((Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder 1941)
One star: The Caucasian Chalk Circle (Der kaukasische Kreidekreis 1949)
Poems (2000)

Suryakant Tripathi NIRALA (1898-1961)
A Season on the Earth: Selected Poems, (David Rubin, trans., 1977)

C. S. LEWIS (1898-1963) Reference: Touchstone | Douglas Gresham fan site | Dave Armstrong fan site Criticism: post
Out of the Silent Planet (1938); Perelandra (1943); That Hideous Strength (1943)
The Abolition of Man (1947) Preferable to Lewis's other remarkable books simply because of the title, which reveals the true intent of liberalism. --The Intercollegiate Review, The Fifty Worst (and Best) Books of the Century, The Intercollegiate Review, Fall 1999 http://www.isi.org/journals/ir/50best_worst/index.html
How modern philosophies drain meaning and the sacred from our lives. --Richard Brookhiser
Mere Christianity (1952) based on radio talks of 1941–1944
The most influential book of the most influential Christian apologist of the century. --Richard John Neuhaus

Erich Maria REMARQUE (1898-1970)
All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)
the senselessness of trench warfare in World War I, and the accompanying degradation of the human spirit. --Nicolaas Bloembergen

Vicente ALEIXANDRE (1898-1984) Reference: Authors' Calendar
A Longing for the Light: Selected Poems (1979)

Melvin B. TOLSON (1898-1966)
Harlem Gallery (1965)

Will DURANT (1885-1981) and Ariel DURANT (1898-1981)
The Story of Civilization (12 vol., 1935-1967)

John B. WHEELWRIGHT (1897-1940)
Collected Poems (1983)

Georges BATAILLE (1897-1962)
Blue of Noon (Le Bleu du ciel 1957)

William FAULKNER (1897-1962) Reference: William Faulkner: American Writer Criticism: post
William Faulkner's writings revealed to me the complexity of the Southern tradition--of guilt, revenge and repentence. --D. Quinn Mills
Sartoris (1929) [I]ntroduces the two families that will always figure in the series: the Sartorises and the Snopeses, who represent respectively the top and the bottom of Jefferson society. --Mark Van Doren, The Great Ideas Today 1969, p. 306
Three stars:The Sound and the Fury (1929) Etext: Saskatchewan
One star: As I Lay Dying (1930) The story is of the trip to Jefferson in a mule wagon with Addie and her coffin properly displayed. --Mark Van Doren, The Great Ideas Today 1969, p. 308
Sanctuary (1931)
One star: Light in August (1937)
The locale is again the 'deep South'; and the characters include the white trash of which he has drawn such relentless portraits, plain folk of a better strain, whites of a higher order, Negroes, of for the subject of his most detailed attention a poor white with a probable mixture of Negro blood. --J. Donald Adams
Absalom, Absalom! (1937)
The saga of Sutpen and his family, and Quentin Compson's attempt to come to terms with it, embody all the tensions in Southern and indeed American history--race, sex, regionalism, the individual and community, etc.--as well as basic epistemological questions. --Elizabeth McKinsey
If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem (The Wild Palms 1939)
The Hamlet (1940)
One star: The Bear (from Go Down Moses 1942)

C. N. HINSHELWOOD (Sir Cyril Norman Hinshelwood, 1897-1967) Reference: Nobel Prize
The Kinetics of Chemical Change in Gaseous Systems (1923)

Louise BOGAN (1897-1970)
The Blue Estuaries: Poems 1923-1968 (1968)

Tarjei VESAAS (1897-1970) Etext: The Online Books Page
The Ice Palace (1963)
The Boat in the Evening (1971)

Thornton WILDER (1897-1975) Reference: The Thornton Wilder Society
The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927)
One star: Our Town (1938)
The Skin of Our Teeth (1942)
The Matchmaker (1954)

George Wilson KNIGHT (1897-1985)
The Wheel of Fire (1930)
The Burning Oracle (19390

Louis ARAGON (1897-1986) Reference: Authors' Calendar | Wolfgang Babilas fan site
Selected Poems

Kenneth BURKE (1897-1993)
Counter-statement (1931)
A Rhetoric of Motives (1961)

Ole Edvart ROLVAAG (1896-1931)
Giants in the Earth (1927)

F. Scott FITZGERALD (1896-1940) Etext: The Online Books Page
This Side of Paradise (1920)
One star: Tender Is the Night (1924) John Updike bounces this kind of response back into the work itself. 'As so often in Fitzgerald,' he writes, 'we have only the afterglow of a dream to see by.' --Geoff Dyer, 'Fitzgerald's Afterglow', The American Scholar, Spring 2001, p. 138
Two stars: The Great Gatsby (1925) Criticism: William Voegeli review
Fitzgerald's lyric masterpiece tells us about the dreams, desires and heartbreaks that 'float in the wake' (to use a good Fitzgeraldian phrase) of the search for money and power. The whole narrative is also pervaded by the ever-present concern for social class and status that lay--and still lies--just below the surface of American life. --Gordon R. Willey
Babylon Revisited and Other Stories (1960)

Antonin ARTAUD (1896-1948) Reference: Arnaud Hubert fan site
Selected Writings (1976)

Giuseppe Tomasi, Principe di LAMPEDUSA (1896-1957) Criticism: post Fittingly for a chronicler of decay, Lampedusa was himself the last of his line -- the last Prince of Lampedusa, the tiny Italian island between Malta and the African coast, today better-known as a staging post for would-be illegal immigrants than as an outpost of European civilization standing sentinel over the Barbary Coast. --Derek Turner, 'Lampedusa's The Leopard,' The Salisbury Review, Summer 2005, p. 33
One star: The Leopard (1958) Social disintegration, the failure of revolution, a sterile and unchanging South are evident on every page of the novel. --Edward Said, 'Thoughts on Late Style,' London Review of Books, August 5, 2004, p. 5

Edwin Justus MAYER (1896-1960)
Children of Darkness (1930)

Tristan TZARA (1896-1963)
Seven Dada Manifestos (1924)

Andre BRETON (1896-1966) Criticism: Stephen Schwartz essay
The Manifestoes of Surrealism (Les Manifestes du surrealisme 1955)
Poems (1982)

John DOS PASSOS (1896-1970) Etext: The Online Books Page
U.S.A. (1938): The 42nd Parallel (1930); Nineteen Nineteen (1932); The Big Money (1936)
...'Nineteen Nineteen' came quite early in the wave of revisionism and disillusion with World War I that reached these shores well before the Depression. --Reginald Phelps

Jacob GLATSTEIN (1896-1971)
Selected Poems (1972)

Eugenio MONTALE (1896-1981)
Montale's poetry, like his prose, followed no program, but hewed closely to the shifts of his inner life. Nevertheless, at various points in his career the critics were eager to link his work with this or that school, most often with 'hermeticism'--the movement that espoused the aesthetic of difficulty and veiled reference. --Sven Birkerts
Cuttlefish Bones: Poems (1925)
The Occasions: Poems (Le occasioni 1939)
Selected Essays (1978)
The Storm and Other Things (1978)
The Second Life of Art (1982)
Otherwise: Last and First Poems (1984)
Poems (1985)

Andrei PLATONOV (1895-1951)
The Foundation Pit (Kotlovan 1929–1930)

Paul ELUARD (Eugene Emile Paul Grindel 1895-1952)
Selected Poems (1946)

Mikhail ZOSHCHENKO (1895-1958) Reference:
Nervous People and Other Satires (1963)

Jean GIONO (1895-1970)
The Horseman on the Roof (Le Hussard sur le toit 1951)

Edmund WILSON (1895-1972) Reference: Classic & Commercial Criticism: post
To the Finland Station (1940) full title: To the Finland Station: A Study in the Writing and Acting of History
The best single book on Karl Marx and Marx's place in modern history. --Arthur Herman
The Shores of Light (1956)
Patriotic Gore (1962)
A careful reader of American literature works to restore our past. --The Intercollegiate Review

David JONES (1895-1974)
One star: In Parenthesis (1937)
One star: Anathemata (1955) Criticism: W. H. Auden review

Robert GRAVES (1895-1985)) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: Robert Richman review
Good-Bye to All That (1929)
Argument about which is the finest set of British memoirs of World War I stops here. Post-war pages tell of T.E. Lawrence, friends in Oxford and Bloomsbury, marriage, children--and divorce in 1929, when he went to live abroad. --Raphael and McLeish
I, Claudius (1934)
King Jesus (1946)
One star: Collected Poems (1965)

LIN Yutang (1895-1976) Criticism: post
One star: The Importance of Living (1938)
One of those rare books which enchants while it enlightens, 'The Importance of Living' is written lightly yet with extraordinary insight. --Philip Ward

Susanne K. LANGER (1895-1985)
Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling (3 vol. 1967-1982)

Joseph ROTH (1894-1939) Criticism: Anthony Heilbut review | Nadine Gordimer review | Jeffrey Eugenides review
The Radetzky March (Radetzkymarsch 1932)
The principal characters are silent and solitary; they move under an enormous mass of empty sky. At the center of 'The Radetzky March' is, finally, not so much family or individuality as the whirring of time in the lives of men (women are almost entirely excluded). --Sven Birkerts

Isaac Emmanuelovich BABEL (1894-1941) Reference: Wikipedia
One star: Collected Stories (1994) These stories, like so much of Russian literature, question what seems to be the prime faith of intellectuals, that truth is to be found in extreme situations--the idea that everyday life is hopelessly banal, bourgeois, and deceitful, that reality is only authentic where things are starkest. --Gary Saul Morson, The New Criterion, January 2002, p. 63

Marina Ivanova TSVETAYEVA (1894-1941) Etext: The Online Books Page
One star: Selected Poems (1974)

Bibhutibhusan BANERJI (1894-1950)
Pather Panchali ("Song of the Road" 1929)

Louis-Ferdinand CELINE (Louis-Ferdinand Destouches 1894-1961)
Journey to the End of the Night (Voyage au bout de la nuit 1932)

James THURBER (1894-1961) Criticism: F. H. Buckley review | Robert Gottlieb review
Is Sex Necsssary? (1929, with E. B. WHITE)
My Life and Hard Times (1933)
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1939)

E. E. CUMMINGS (1894-1962) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: Eric Miles Williamson review
Complete Poems (1960)
Some of his sentimentality, his easy lyric sweetness I enjoy in the way one enjoys a rather commonplace composer's half-sweet, half-cloying melodies, but much if it is straight ham, straight corn. --Randall Jarrell

Aldous HUXLEY (1894-1963) Etext: The Online Books Page | Bibliomania Reference: Authors' Calendar | Matthew A. fan site Criticism: post
Antic Hay (1923)
Point Counter Point (1928)
One star: Brave New World (1932) Criticism: David Pearce essay
He has satirized the imminent spiritual trustification of mankind, and has made rowdy and impertinent sport of the World State whose motto shall be Community, Identity, Stability. --John Chamberlain
Collected Essays (1958)

Norbert WIENER (1894-1964)
Cybernetics (1948) Criticism: William L. Lawrence review
full title 'Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine'
The Human Use of Human Beings (1950)
Along with technical developments that made them [computers and robotics] possible, there developed a profound theory on information and control. This book is a milestone in the documentation and translation of that theory for the general reader. --S. James Adelstein

Jean TOOMER (1894-1967)
Cane (1923)

Mark VAN DOREN (1894-1972)
Selected Poems (1954)

Joseph H. WOODGER (1894-1981) Reference: see Brauckmann and Kull
Biological Principles (1929)

J. V. FOIX (1894-1987) Etext: two poems Criticism: Patricia J. Boehne essay
When I Sleep, Then I See Clearly: Selected Poems (1988)

Wilfred OWEN (1893-1918) Etext: The Online Books Page
Collected Poems (1965)

Vladimir Vladimirovich MAYAKOVSKY (1893-1930)
One star: The Bedbug and Selected Poetry (1975)

Israel Joshua SINGER (1893-1944)
Yoshe Kalb (1932)
The Brothers Ashkenazi (1937)

Carles RIBA (1893-1959)
Poems (1970)

Herbert READ (1893-1968)
The Contrary Experience: Autobiographies (1963)
One star: The Green Child (1935)

MAO Tse-Tung (1893-1976) Etext: The Online Books Page Reference: Marxists Internet Archive Criticism: post ...he must be accounted the most evil man who ever lived, of whom we have detailed knowledge, without any redeeming qualities whatsoever. --Paul Johnson, 'The Human Race', The New Criterion, November 2006, p. 13
Anyone not taking account of the nation's leader during the decades of the Communist era will risk a myopic view of world events. --Philip Ward
Quotations from Chairman Mau Tse-tung (1961)
Selected Works (1977)

AKUTAGAWA Ryunosuke (1892-1927) Etext: The Devil and Tobacco
Rashomon and other stories (1915)

Cesar VALLEJO (1892-1938)
Spain, Take This Cup from Me (Espana, aparte de mi este calize 1939)
One star: Selected Poems (1981)

Walter BENJAMIN (1892-1940) Reference: Walter Benjamin Research Syndicate
Illuminations: Essays and Reflections (1968)
What prevents Benjamin's vision of the situation from being entirely hopeless (as it is in Kafka) is the belief that the scattered pieces still possess some residual attraction for one another, that the original reality can theoretically be rediscovered. --Sven Birkerts
1940 Survey of French Literature Etext: New Left Review (May-June 2008)

Bruno SCHULZ (1892-1942)
The Street of Crocodiles (1936; Sklepy Cynamonowe "Cinnamon Shops")
Sanitorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (1988; Sanatorium Pod Klepsydra)

Pedro SALINAS (1892-1951)
My Voice Because of You (1976; La voz a ti debida)

Konstantin PAUSTOVSKY (1892-1968)
The Story of a Life (1946-64)

Ivy COMPTON-BURNETT (1892-1969)
A God and his Gifts (1963)

Reinhold NIEBUHR (1892-1971) Criticism: post ...argued that democracy cannot be defended by appealing to Enlightenment rationalism or faith in historical progress but only by a hard-headed appreciation of 'original sin.' --Daniel J. Mahoney, The Public Interest, Fall 2001, p. 120 Niebuhr, who has come into fashion again among liberals intent on devising a third way between neoconservatives and antiwar Democrats, supported the cold war struggle against the Soviet Union but warned against wallowing in American righteousness. --Jacob Heilbrun, A Question of Character, review of 'Hard Call' by John McCain with Mark Salter, The New York Times Book Review, September 9, 2007, p. 26
The Nature and Destiny of Man (1941-1943) Niebuhr is often categorized as a 'Christian realist' about worldly affairs and as 'Neo-orthodox' in his theological view of man. The second claim comes from his insistence that contrary to Pollyannaish liberal Protestants, man is indeed sinful and unlikely to do good just because the welfare state has helped him out of poverty. Niebuhr's politics are called 'realist' because he argued, eloquently and at length, that our pious worries about geopolitics leading to injustice and complicity with evil should not impede us from making hard-nosed political desisions in a cruel world. --Daniel P. Moloney, Crisis, July/August 2002, p. 47
A biting critique of secular thought and a persuasive and inspiring exposition of man's Christian destiny. --The Intercollegiate Review

Pearl BUCK (1892-1973) Criticism: post
The Good Earth (1931)
Its powerful presentation of some basic cultural differences was a valuable way to be introduced to the importance of seeing and respecting different cultures and values, of accepting cultural differences and of acknowledging the value of other perspectives. --Matina Horner

J. R. R. TOLKIEN (1892-1973) Etext: The Online Books Page Reference: Tolkien Society | The Catholic Imagination Criticism: post
One star: The Hobbit (1937)
Hobbits are small, home-loving creatures; Bilbo's uncharacteristic expedition with the dwarfs to find dragon treasure leads, among other things, to finding the fateful ring which, in later (adult) 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy, leads his nephew Frodo to the edge of Mordor and the destruction of its dark powers. --Raphael and McLeish
One star: The Lord of the Rings (1954-1956)
The hero, Frodo Baggins, belongs to a race called hobbits, who may be only three feet high, have hairy feet and prefer to live in underground houses, but in their thinking and sensibility resemble very closely those arcadian rustics who inhabit so many British detective stories. --W. H. Auden

Ivo ANDRIC (1892-1975) Reference: Nobel Prize
The Bridge on the Drina (1945)

Hugh MACDIARMID (1892-1978)
Complete Poems 1920-1976 (1978)

Rebecca WEST (1892-1983) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: Carl Rollyson essay | Richard Tillinghast essay
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1942)
For its writing, not for its historical accuracy. --Michael Kelly

Louis DE BROGLIE (1892-1987) Criticism: Davis Associates essay If waves (such as light) can act like paricles, then perhaps particles (such as electrons) can act like waves. --Stephen M. Barr, Faith and Quantum Theory, First Things, March 2007, p. 21
Investitgations on Quantum Theory (Recherches sur la theorie des quanat 1924)

Jorge GUILLEN (1893-1984)
Guillen on Guillen: The Poetry and the Poet (1976)

J. P. MARQUAND (1892-1960) Criticism: Jonathan Yardley essay
H. M. Pulham, Esquire (1941)

Archibald MACLEISH (1892-1982)
The Human Season, Selected Poems 1926-1972 (1972)

Osip Emilievich MANDELSTAM or MANDELSHTAM (1891-1938)
One star: Selected Poems (1967)
What we get, in English, is at best a kind of camera obscura rendering of a phenomenon that is densely textured, quick with allusion, and that derives its internal propulsion from the intransmissible word itself. --Sven Birkerts

Mikhail BULGAKOV (1891-1940)
One star: The Master and Margarita (c. 1930's)

Zora Neale HURSTON (1891-1960) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: post ...belongs in the same category with that of William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway of enduring American literature. --Saturday Review, quoted by Linton Weeks, Washington Post, in Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, January 6, 2002, p. 5E
One star: Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)
Janice's self-knowledge, tenacity and humor, as well as her story, make her one of the more memorable characters in American fiction. --Elizabeth McKinsey

Par LAGERKVIST (1891-1974)
Barabbas (1950)
Evening Land/Aftonland (1953)

After 1890, however, the inherited cultural and social continuum disolved, thereby diminishing certainties about the purpose of human endeavor. --Oscar Handlin, 'The Unmarked Way,' The American Scholar, Summer 1996, p. 337

Isaac ROSENBERG (1890-1918)
Collected Poems (1974)

Karel CAPEK (1890-1938) Criticism: Patricia Hampl essay
R. U. R. (Rossumovi univerzalni roboti 1920; Rossum's Universal Robots)
War with the Newts (Valka s mloky 1936)

Boris PASTERNAK (1890-1960) Etext: Twenty-two poems Criticism: post
Selected Poems (1946)
One star: Doctor Zhivago (1957)
...includes a panoramic view of Russian history during the first thirty years of the twentieth century, a classic love story, and philosophical and religious observations on questions of life, morals, and power which inevitably drew attention to the inadequacies of Marxism as a way of life, and to the bloody events during and after the Russian Revolution that led to the emasculation under Stalinism of intellectual and artistic activity. --Philip Ward

R. A. FISHER (1890-1962)
The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection (1930)

Katherine Anne PORTER (1890-1980)
Collected Stories (1965) Criticism: Eric Ormsby review

Adolf HITLER (1889-1945) Etext: Hitler Historical Museum Humor: The Daily Hitler Criticism: post
Mein Kampf (1925-27)
Nothing is lacking in that book; the blood and land, the living space, the Jew as the eternal enemy, the Germans who embody 'the highest form of humanity on earth', the other countries openly regarded as the instruments of German domination. --Primo Levi

Ludwig WITTGENSTEIN (1889-1951) Etext: The Online Books Page Reference: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Criticism: post For Wittgenstein, as for Hegel, reality lay precisely in other people and other things, that is, outside the self whose own reality they underwrite. --Robert Grant, The Salisbury Review, Summer 2001, p. 45 Wittgenstein countered Descartes’ dualism, after all, by observing that the philosophical question he was most famous for — *how do I know that I am?* — contained the seeds of its destruction in the very phrasing: Only by *presupposing* a community of language believers, Wittgenstein argued, could this question about radical oneness make sense. --Mary Eberstadt, 'How the West Really Lost God', Policy Review, June & July 2007
One star: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung 1921) Reference: Contents
A terse summation of the analytic method of the analytic school in philosophy, and a heroic leap beyond it. --Jeffrey Hart
Philosophical Investigations (1953) Reference: Lois Shawver essay
In a century littered with ill-considered arguments about the linguistic "construction of reality," this landmark of the later Wittgenstein stands in a wholly different category. --The Intercollegiate Review

E. P. HUBBLE (1889-1953)
The Realm of the Nebulae (1936)

Pierre REVERDY (1889-1960)
Selected Poems (1991)

Jean COCTEAU (1889-1963) Criticism: John Bentley Mays essay
Les enfant terribles (1929)
The Infernal Machine (La Machine infernale 1934)

Anna AKHMATOVA (1889-1966) Etext: Poetry Lovers Page | Academy of American Poets
The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova (1990)

Conrad AIKEN (1889-1973) Etext: The Online Books Page | Poetry Archive | Academy of American Poets
Collected Poems 1916-1970 (1970)

Taha HUSAYN (1889-1973)
An Egyptian Childhood (1932)

Arnold TOYNBEE (1889-1975) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: Frederick D. Wilhelmsen essay
A Study of History (1934-1961) The proletariats are 'softened' (in Toynbee's phrase) by their imitation of the manners and morals of a dominant elite. But when a society begins to falter, the imitation proceeds largely in the opposite direction: the dominant elite is coarsened by its imitation of proletarian manners. --Notes & Comments, The New Criterion, March 2001 p. 2
Made the possibility of a divine role in history respectable among serious historians. --The Intercollegiate Review
Civilization on Trial (1948)
Radio Debate (1948)
An Historian's Approach to Religion (1956; Gifford Lectures, University of Edinburgh, 1952-1953)

Martin HEIDEGGER (1889-1976) Criticism: Leland de la Durantaye essay | Adam Kirsch review | Simon Blackburn review | Glenn W. Most essay | Robert Sokolowski review | Simon Blackburn review | Berel Lang review | William E. Hughes essay | Denis Dutton essay
Being and Time (1962)
A seminal thinker, notwithstanding his disgraceful error of equating National Socialism with the experience of 'Being.' --Jeffrey Hart

Harry Elmer BARNES (1889-1968)
A History of Historical Writing (2nd Ed., 1962)

Katherine MANSFIELD (Kathleen Murry 1888-1923) Etext: The Online Books Page Reference: Birthplace Criticism: post
The Short Stories (1945) And I was jealous of her stories--the only writing I have ever been jealous of. --Virgina Woolf, quoted by Patrical Hampl, 'The Relics of Saint Katherine', The American Scholar, Summer 2001, p. 139

Eugene O'NEILL (1888-1933) Etext: The Online Books Page Reference: eO'Neill | Tao House | National Historic Site Reference: Criticism: post
One star: The Emperor Jones (1921)
One star: Desire Under the Elms (1924)
Lazarus Laughed (1925)
One star: Mourning Becomes Electra (1931) ... the success of 'Mourning Becomes Electra's' three closely linked plays had shown him what had been missing from his earlier work, or at least only weakly present--a sense of history, of time at work on America. --Thomas Flanangan, 'Master of the Misbegotten', 'New York Review of Books' October 5, 2000 p. 14
Two stars: The Iceman Cometh (1946) 'The Iceman Cometh' is indeed made of ice or iron; it is full of will and fanatic determination; it appears to have been written at some extreme temperature of the mind. --Mary McCarthy, quoted from 1946 'New Yorker' review, by Thomas Flanangan in 'Master of the Misbegotten', 'New York Review of Books' October 5, 2000 p. 14
Three stars: Long Day's Journey into Night (1956) Criticism: Damien Jaques review
Essentially, 'Long Day's Journey into Night' is not so much a tale as O'Neill's remorseless attempt to tell the blunt truth about his family as a matter of artistic conscience. --Brooks Atkinson

Fernando PESSOA (1888-1935)
One star: Selected Poems (1971)
One star: Always Astonished: Selected Prose (1988)
One star: The Book of Disquiet (1991)
One star: The Keeper of the Sheep (1997)
One star: Poems of Fernando Pessoa (1998)

Umberto SABA (Umberto Poli 1888-1957)
Poems (1911)
Stories and Recollections (1993)

H. LEIVICK (Leivick Halpern 1888-1962)
The Golem (Der Golem 1919)

Edith HAMILTON (1867-1963)
Mythology (1940)

RAMON Gomez de la Serna (1888-1963)
Gregurias. Seleccion, 1910-1960 (1960, edited by Philip Ward)
A greguria is defined by Ramon as 'humour + metaphor' and was chosen because--among other reasons--it is used by farmers to describe the squealing of piglets chasing a sow. --Philip Ward

T. S. ELIOT (Thomas Stearns Eliot, 1888-1965) Etext: The Online Books Page | Bartleby Criticism: post
Selected Essays (1932) Shaped the literary taste of the mid-century. --Jeffrey Hart, The 100 Best Non-Fiction Books of the Century, National Review, May 3, 1999
Here, one of the century's foremost literary innovators insists that innovation is only possible through an intense engagement of tradition. --The Intercollegiate Review
Two stars: Collected Plays (1962)
Three stars: Collected Poems, 1909-1962 (1963) For twenty years I’ve stared my level best To see if evening—any evening—would suggest A patient etherised upon a table; In vain. I simply wasn’t able. --C.S. Lewis His attempt in fact was to restore the greatest tradition of all, the tradition that forces poetry in any age to face the spirit of that age and reflect it without loss or blur. --Mark Van Doren, The Great Ideas Today 1969, p. 290
Eliot's use [in 'Four Quartets'] of the garden as metaphor, his juxtaposition of nature's time and human time, struck a deep resonance. --Anne Whiston Spirn

S. Y. AGNON (Shmuel Yosef Halevi Czaczkes, 1888-1970) Reference: Nobel Prize | Authors' Calendar Criticism: Vyas
In the Heart of the Seas (1948)
Twenty-one Stories (1970)

Giuseppe UNGARETTI (1888-1970)
The Buried Harbour: Selected Poems (1970)
Selected Poems (1975)

John Crowe RANSOM (1888-1979) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: Tillinghast
Selected Poems (1963)

Georg TRAKL (1887-1914)
Selected Poems (1968)

Edwin MUIR (1887-1959) Criticism: Richman
Collected Poems (1965)

Ruth BENEDICT (1887-1948) Etext: The Online Books Page
Patterns of Culture (1934)

Erwin SCHROEDINGER (1887-1961) Humor: Randy F. and Cecil Adams correspondence
One star: What Is Life? The Physical Aspects of the Living Cell (1943)
invited biologists to think of life in more purely physical terms. --Edward O. Wilson
Statistical Thermodynamics (1946)
Nature and the Greeks (1954)

Charles Galton DARWIN (1887-1962)
The Next Million Years (1952)

Robinson JEFFERS (1887-1967)
Selected Poems (1965)

Marianne MOORE (1887-1972) Etext: The Online Books Page
One star: "Poetry" (from Observations 1924) Criticism: Robert Pinsky essay
One star: "Marriage" (from Observations 1924)
The Complete Poems (1981) Criticism: William Logan review | Frank Kermode review

J. HUXLEY (1887-1975)
Evolution: The Modern Synthesis (1942)

St.-John PERSE (Marie-Rene-Auguste-Alexis Leger, 1887-1975)
One star: Anabasis (Anabase 1924)
One star: Birds (1966)
One star: Exile and Other Poems (1949)

Pierre-Jean JOUVE (1887-1976)
Despair Has Wings: Selected Poems (2007)

Samuel Eliot MORISON (1887-1976)
The Oxford History of the United States (1963)

Henri ALAIN-FOURNIER (Henri-Alban Fournier, 1886-1914)
Le Grand Meaulnes (1913)

Ronald FIRBANK (1886-1926)
Five Novels: The Artificial Princess (1915); Valmouth (1919); The Flower Beneath The Foot (1923); Prancing Nigger or Sorrow in Sunlight (1925); Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli (1926);

Moshe-Leib HALPERN (1886-1932)
In New York (1982; In Nyu-York 1954)

Hermann BROCH (1886-1951)
The Sleepwalkers (Die Schlafwandler 1932)
One star: The Death of Virgil (Der Tod des Vergil 1945)
Hugo von Hofmannsthal and His Time (Hofmannsthal und seine Zeit 1974)

Gottfried BENN (1886-1956)
Selected Poems (1970)

H. D. (Hilda Doolittle 1886-1961) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: Robert Gottlieb review
Selected Poems (1988)

Karl POLANYI (1886-1964)
The Great Transformation (1944)

TANIZAKI Junichiro (1886-1965)
One star: The Makioka Sisters (1943-48)

Velimir KHLEBNIKOV (1885-1922)
The King of Time: Selected Writings of the Russian Futurian (1990)

D. H. LAWRENCE (David Herbert Lawrence 1885-1930) Etext: The Online Books Page Reference: The Literature Network Criticism: post T. S. Eliot and Wyndham Lewis, to name only two, attacked the lyric fiction of Lawrence precisely because of the moral polemic embodied in it. --Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud (1966) p. 191 In literature too there is an attempt to return man to Paradise after an obvious Fall. D. H. Lawrence would reintegrate man through sex... --Fulton J. Sheen, 'Winning Converts' Rev. John O'Brien, ed., quoted in 'This Rock' September 1999, p. 40
some of his books undoubtedly seem, consciously or not, to stress the element of sex. --Henry James Forman
Two stars: Sons and Lovers (1913)
The Rainbow (1915) Criticism: James Wood review
Two stars: Women in Love (1921)
Studies in Classic American Literature (1923)
Complete Poems (1964)
Collected Stories (1994)

Dino CAMPANA (1885-1932)
Orphic Songs and Other Poems (1991)

Ring LARDNER (Ringgold Lardner 1885-1933) Etext: The Online Books Page
You Know Me Al (1916)
The Young Immigrants (1920)
Haircut and Other Stories (1925)

Sinclair LEWIS (1885-1951) Etext: The Online Books Page Reference: The Sinclair Lewis Society | Facebook [T]he most celebrated American novelist never to have written a great work of literature... --Alan Wolfe, 'The Opening of the Evangelical Mind' in 'The Atlantic Monthly' October, 2000 p. 58
Main Street (1920) The publication of 'Main Street' ranks with that of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' as one of the few literary events in American history that proved to be a political and social event as well. --Jane Smiley, New York Times Book Review, January 20, 2002, p. 10
One star: Babbitt (1922) How often have the privileged taken to their bosoms the writers who execrated them! The Babbitts of America were to a great extent responsible for the success of Sinclair Lewis. --Raymond Aron, The Opium of the Intellectuals (1957), p. 212
Arrowsmith (1925)
The perfect young man's book: a vision of a pure life devoted to the search for scientific truth, above money grubbing and hypocrisy. --Edward O. Wilson
Elmer Gantry (1927)
Dodsworth (1929)
It Can't Happen Here (1935)

Elinor WYLIE (1885-1951) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: Carrie fan site
Last Poems (1982)

Hermann WEYL (1885-1955) Reference: The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive
Space, Time, Matter (Raum, Zeit, Materie 1918)
Group Theory and Quantum Mechanics (Gruppentheorie und Quantenmechanik 1928)

Ernst Robert CURTIUS (1885-1956)
European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (1948)

Isak DINESEN (Karen Christence Dinesen, Baroness Blixen-Finecke, 1885-1962) She had a magic way of endowing people with powers--beauty, clairvoyance, passion--undreamed of by the realists who surrounded her. Her world is cool, strangely lighted, and somehow perfect. --Mark Van Doren, The Great Ideas Today 1969, p. 295
The Roads Around Pisa (1934)
One star: Seven Gothic Tales (1937)
Winter's Tales (1942)

Niels BOHR (1885-1964)
On the Constitution of Atoms and Molecules (Philosophical Magazine 26:1–24 1913) Etext: BAFIZ
The Theory of Spectra and Atomic Constitution (1922)
Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge (1958)

Francois MAURIAC (1885-1970)
The Desert of Love (1949; Le Desert de l'amour 1925)
Therese (1928; Therese Desqueyroux 1927)
The Woman of the Pharisees (1946; La Pharisienne 1941)

Ezra POUND (1885-1972) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: post
One star: Personae: Collected Poems (1926)
One muat be thankful for what he is and realize that after years of ridicule from calf-brains he indubitably stands upon an eminence from which he must not be easily shaken. --Herbert S. Gorman
ABC of Reading (1934)
An epitome of the aging aesthetic movement that will be forever known as modernism. --Richard Brookhiser
The Pisan Cantos (1948)
Literary Essays (1968)
One star: The Cantos (1970)

Yevgeni Ivanovich ZAMYATIN (1884-1937) Reference: R. Kreuzer fan site
My (1924) Indeed, the ways by which the men and women in 'We' resist 'social engineering' and futuristic regimes are both enigmatic and engaging. --Thomas Galton Marullo, The Review of Politics, Summer 2003, pp. 466-467
...a nightmare of life in the distant future, when human beings are known by numbers and they live in the One State ruled by the so-called Benefactor. --Philip Ward

Angelos SIKELIANOS (1884-1951)
Selected Poems (1996)

Yahya Kemal BAYATLI (1884-1958)
Selected Poems (1965)

Eugene HERRIGEL (1884-1955)
Zen in the Art of Archery (1948)

Sean O'CASEY (1884-1964)
One star: Juno and the Paycock (1925)
One star: The Shadow of a Gunman (1925)
One star: The Plough and the Stars (1926)

Etienne GILSON (1884-1978)
The Unity of Philosophical Experience (1937)
The Arts of the Beautiful (1965)
Gilson (a noted and dependable critic) writes with grace and style not of pictures only, but of art in general. --Raphael and McLeish

Jaroslav HASEK (1883-1923)
One star: The Good Soldier Schweik (1920-23)
It is perhaps not a very great book. It gives me, however, a sense of comic relief when I am confronted with the arrogance of the powerful. --Dante Della-Terza

Franz KAFKA (1883-1924) Etext: The Online Books Page Reference: The Kafka Project Criticism: post Pam: Sex with you is really a Kafka-esque experience. Alvy Singer: Oh. Thank you. Pam: I mean that as a compliment. --'Annie Hall' (1977)
In the Penal Colony (1913)
One star: The Metamorphosis (Die Verwandlung 1915) What have I become? Uncertain, Gregor Samsa puts out some feelers. --David M. Bader, 'Haiku U.'
The Blue Octavo Notebooks [1917-1919]
Diaries [1910-1923]
Three stars: The Trial (1925) Criticism: Luhrssen
It belongs not with the many novels that horrify, but with the many fewer novels that terrify. --Louis Kronenberger
Two stars: The Castle (1926) Our paper work provides its symbol, but its essence is something more ethereal altogether, just as its moral, supposing it has one, is simpler than a child could say: When grace is given us we should know how to accept it and should not ask for proof that as a gift it is genuine. --Mark Van Doren, The Great Ideas Today 1969, p. 310
Amerika or Der Verschollene (1927)
Description of a Struggle (Beschreibung eines Kampfes 1936)
Wedding Preparations in the Country (Hochzeitsvorbereitungen auf dem Lande 1953)
Gesammelte Werke (1950-1958)
The Complete Stories (1971)
Parables, Fragments, Aphorisms

Austin Tappan WRIGHT (1883-1931) Reference: Wood
Islandia (1942)

Joseph SCHUMPETER (1883-1950) Reference: The Economist column Criticism: The Economist essay
Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (1942)
Schumpeter captured the essence of modern economic development with his focus on technological change and the 'creative destruction' that it brings about. ... --Jeffrey Sachs

John Maynard, 1st Baron KEYNES (1883-1946) Etext: The Online Books Page Reference: Archive for the History of Economic Thought Criticism: post
The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919) [Keynes said] 'Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist'. Yet for over eight decades...our world-historical view [of Versailles] has been influenced by the same defunct economist who promulgated the assertion. --Andrew Roberts, A History of the English Speaking Poeples Since 1900
The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1935-1936) This book did for Big Government what Rachel Carson's 'Silent Spring' did for the tse-tse fly. --The Fifty Worst (and Best) Books of the Century, The Intercollegiate Review, Fall 1999
Influential in suggesting that the business cycle can be modified by government investment and manipulation of tax rates --Jeffrey Hart

Mani LEIB (Mani Leib Brahinsky 1883-1953)
Selected Poems

Jose ORTEGA y Gasset (1883-1955)
Invertebrate Spain (1921) 'Spineless Spain' --ed. The cancer that was fatally undermining the fragile stability of Spanish society was, he claimed, the 'particularist' propensityof each Spanish individual or group to live purely for himself or itself, heedless of others, and as he put it, not to 'contar con los demas' (to have to deal with others). --Curtis Cate, 'How Vertebrate Is Spain,' The Salisbury Review, Spring 2005
One star: The Revolt of the Masses (1929)
Prophesied the 20th century's debauchery of democracy and science, the barbarism of the specialist, and the inevitable fatuity of public opinion. --George Gilder
Morbid Democracy Etext: Modern Age (Summer 1957)
Pedagogy and Anachronism Etext: Modern Age (Summer 1957)

Nikos KAZANTZAKIS (1883-1957)
The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel (1938)
Zorba the Greek (1946)
The Greek Passion (1948)

William Carlos WILLIAMS (1883-1963) Etext: Poets Criticism: post
Spring and All (1923)
Paterson (Book I 1946; Books I-V 1963)
Two stars: Collected Poems (Vol. 1 1988; Vol. 2 1989)

Sholem ASCH (Szulim Asz 1883-1953)
East River (1946)

James JOYCE (1882-1941) Etext: The Online Books Page Etext: Study: Bibliomania Criticism: Brian Phillips essay Humor: The Onion
One star: Dubliners (1914) Each story depicts a character's personal epiphany or sudden realization, and together these stories give the reader a comprehensive, general picture of Ireland at the time. --The Teaching Company
Small lives seen closely enough to disclose eternal truths. --Lloyd Weinreb
Two stars: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
Three stars: Ulysses (1922) Criticism: Joe Carter essay | Franz S. Klein essay | Tim Cavanaugh review takes place over the course of a single day--June 14, 1904--in Dublin, Ireland. --Joyce's 'Ulysses', The Teaching Company This happened with many of us: 'Ulysses' gradually--but with an effect of suddenness--became accessible. It was because in the interim we had been reading diluted Joyce in writers like Faulkner and so had got used to his ways, at second remove. --Mary McCarthy, 'Intellectual Memoirs: New York 1936-1938' (1993) p. 25 a turgid welter of schoolboy pornography --Edith Wharton To the uninitiated, it appeared that Mr. Joyce had taken some half million assorted words--many such as are not ordinarily heard in reputable circles--shaken them up in a colossal hat ... laid them end to end. --quoted in 'Time, Vol. 1, No. 1' by Dwight Macdonald, Partisan Review, April 1938
All of English literature in one book--compressed and mythologized through the language and vision of a unique modern artist. --Robert Brustein
One star: Finnegan's Wake (1939) It was the end product of an evolution that conceivably could be called tragic, since it culminated in a book from which most readers are shut out. --Mark Van Doren, The Great Ideas Today 1969, p. 297

Virginia WOOLF (1882-1941) Etext: The Online Books Page Reference: Virginia Woolf on Women and Fiction Criticism: post ... that poster girl for twentieth-century feminism, department of snobbish literary neurasthenia. --Roger Kimball, Gallimaufry & more: 'The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,' New Criterion, January 2005, p. 4
One star: Mrs. Dalloway (1925)
Clarissa's day, the impressions she gives and receives, the memories and recognitions which stir in her, the events which are initiated remotely and engineered almost to touching distance of the impervious Clarissa, capture in a definite matrix the drift of thought and feeling in a period, the point of view of a class, and seem almost to indicate the strength and weakness of an entire civilization. --John M. Crawford
Two stars: To the Lighthouse (1927)
It gets at the amazingly complex but ephemeral ideas and emotions that are there every second in everyone without ever telling you anything straight out. --Duncan Kennedy
One star: Orlando (1928)
Three Guineas (1928)
deftly examined the relationship between gender and social values in education and the professions, and the implications of this relationship for both individuals and society as a whole. --Constance Buchanan
One star: A Room of One's Own (1929)
In pointing to some of the connections between the poverty of women's institutions and the poverty of women's history, Woolf illuminates questions that we have not yet managed to resolve, and creates a new character--Shakespeare's sister--to live in our collective imagination. --Clarissa Atkinson
One star: The Waves (1931) I still think Woolf's 'The Waves' should get at least two stars :) --Timothy Burns
Between the Acts (1941)
The Letters of Virginia Woolf (edited by Nigel Nicolson, 6 vol., 1975-80)
The sheer verbal skill in these dashed-off letters is superb--and they are marvelously perceptive and penetrating. --Bernard Bailyn

A. S. EDDINGTON (1882-1944) Etext: The Online Books Page
The Internal Constitution of the Stars (1926)
The Nature of the Physical World (1928)
This was perhaps the most memorable of several books of popular science that both fired and helped to gratify my curiosity about the basis, bounds and inner workings fo physical reality. --Willard V. Quine

Jean GIRAUDOUX (1882-1944)
Four Plays (1958)
Ondine; Enchanted; Madwoman of Challot; Apollo of Bellac;

Sigrid UNDSET (1882-1949) Etext: The Online Books Page Reference: Nobel Prize | Authors' Calendar Criticism: post
Kristin Lavransdatter (1922)
This long tale of a formidible medieval Norsewoman who fought for her ideals, embodied as they were in her family and political allegiances, enthralled me as I pondered what the twentieth-century equivalent of her life as an American woman would be. --Patricia Albjerg Graham

P. W. BRIDGMAN (1882-1961) Reference: Nobel Prize
The Logic of Modern Physics (1927)

Jacques MARITAIN (1882-1973) Etext: The Online Books Page Reference: Jacques Maritain Association | Jacques Maritain Center
Introduction to Philosophy (Elements de philosophie 1920)
Theonas: Conversations of a Sage (1933; Theonas ou les entretiens d'un sage et deux philosophes sur diverses matieres inegalement actuelles. 1920)
Art and Scholasticism (1962; Art et scolastique 1920) attempted to direct philosophy's attention toward the good of the artistic product rather than the good of the artist or viewer. --Daniel B Gallagher, A Canterbury Tale, review of 'Grace and Necessity' by Rowan Williams, First Things, April 2007, p. 49
The Frontiers of Poetry (1962; Frontières de la poesie (1927)
Distinguish to Unite: or, The Degrees of Knowledge (1959; Distinguer pour unir: ou, les degres du savoir 1932)
Freedom in the Modern World (1935; Du regime temporel et de la liberte 1933)
True Humanism (1938); or Integral Humanism: Temporal and Spiritual Problems of a New Christendom (1968) (Humanisme integral: problemes temporels et spirituals d'une nouvelle chretiente 1936)
The Conquest of Freedom (in Freedom: Its Meaning 1940)
Scholasticism and Politics (with Mortimer J. Adler, 1940)
The Rights of Man and Natural Law (1943; Les droits de l'homme et la loi naturelle 1942)
Saint Thomas and the problem of evil (1942)

LU Hsun (Chou Shu-jen, 1881-1936) Etext: The Online Books Page
One star: Selected Works [abridged as Silent China: Selected Writings] (1973)

Juan Ramon JIMENEZ (1881-1958)
Invisible Reality: Poems (La realidad invisible 1917-1920, 1924)

Pierre TEILHARD DE CHARDIN (1881-1955) His ideas, when formularized, bear an uncomfortable resemblance to a baptized Herbert Spencer. --Kenneth Rexroth, More Classics Revisited (1989), p. 47
The Phenomenon of Man (1955) Criticism: Peter Medawar review

Guillaume APOLLINAIRE (1880-1918) Etext: Thracian Minorities Criticism: Marjorie Perloff review | Donald Lyons review According to Borges, the problem with Apollinaire's poetry is that 'not a single line allows us to forget the date it is written.' --Geoff Dyer, 'Fitzgerald's Afterglow', The American Scholar, Spring 2001, p. 139
Selected Writings (1971)

Aleksandr BLOK (1880-1921)
The Twelve and Other Poems (1970)

A. L. WEGENER (Alfred Lothar Wegener, 1880-1930) Reference: The Changing Earth Criticism: post
The Origin of Continents and Oceans (Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane 1915)

Lytton STRACHEY (1880-1932) Etext: The Online Books Page
Eminent Victorians (1918)
Elegant, mocking studies... . The book marks the beginning of the immense influence of Bloomsbury on modern British biography... . --Raphael and McLeish
Queen Victoria (1921)

Andrey BELY (1880-1934)
Petersburg (1916, 1922)

PREMCHAND (Dhanpat Ray Shrivastav, 1880-1936)
The Gift of a Cow (Godan (1936)
The World of Premchand: a selection of short stories (1969)

Oswald SPENGLER (1880-1936) Criticism: post
Decline of the West (1918) Nevertheless, Spengler's deterministic allegiance to the analogy between civilizations and organisms ultimately infuses his discussion with an air of unreality. Roger Kimball, The New Criterion, June 2002, p. 5

Robert MUSIL (1880-1942)
The Confusions of Young Torless (Die Verwirrungen des Zoglings Torless 1906)
we see Musil in his first attempts at the depiction of psychic reality, here as it is manifested in the growth process of a young man in an Austrian military school. --Sven Birkerts
One star: The Man Without Qualities (Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften 1930-43) Criticism: Roger Kimball review
The plot is, as it were, a coatrack, a pretext for the play of ideas. We don't read Musil for the story--we read him for his mental ferocity, his humor, and his uncanny grasp of the contradictions of the modern age. --Sven Birkerts

Richard H. TAWNEY (1880-1962)
The Acquisitive Society (1920)
Equality (1931)

LENIN (Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov, 1879-1924) Etext: The Online Books Page Reference: Marxist Internet Archive Criticism: Slavoj Zizek essay | Slavoj Zizek review If there'd been no Lenin, I'd have stayed a choirboy and seminarian... --Stalin There once was a Marxist called Lenin Who did two or three million men in --That's a lot to have done in But where he did one in That grand Marxist Stalin did ten in. --Robert Conquest, quoted in 'He Told Us So,' by David Pryce Jones, The New Criterion, February 2000, p. 69
What is to be Done? (1902) ...the work that made his name in every sense, since it was the first he signed 'Lenin.' --Martin Malia, New York Review of Books, November 1, 2001, p. 32
Imperialism (1917)
One star: The State and Revolution (1918)
To Lenin belongs the credit for formulating, for the first time, a corpus of Marxian political theory. --Robert B. Downs
Letter to American Workers (August 22, 1918)
Selected Works (1964)

Vachel LINDSAY (1879-1931) Etext: The Online Books Page
Collected Poems (1998)

Paul KLEE (1879-1940)
The Thinking Eye (1956)
The Nature of Nature (1970)

Miles FRANKLIN (Stella Miles Franklin 1879-1954) Etext: The Online Books Page
My Brilliant Career (1901)

Albert EINSTEIN (1879-1955) Etext: The Online Books Page | Lesikar Reference: Albert Einstein Online Criticism: post
The most important physicist since Newton. --Michael Lind
Two stars: Relativity, the Special and General Theory (Uber die Spezielle und die Allgemeine Relativitatstheorie 1905-15) ...after he finished his theory of general relativity, [Einstein] concluded that the gravitational potentials in that theory characterized the physical qualities of empty space and served as a medium that could transmit disturbances. He began referring to this as a new way to conceive of the ether. --Walter Isaacson, 'Einstein: His Life and Universe', p. 318 In a way, relativity has elaborated on the Copernican revolution--the idea that the Earth is no longer at the center of the universe. Relativity says there's no place or state of motion that is special --Richard Wofson, Time Travel, Tunneling, Tennis and Tea, 'Einstein's Relativity and the Quantum Revolution: Modern Physics for Non-Scientists' 2nd edition, Lecture 1, The Teaching Company
Sidelights on Relativity (1920-21)
Two stars: The Meaning of Relativity (1922)
The Method of Theoretical Physics (1933)
The Evolution of Physics (1938, with Leopold Infield [or Infeld] 1898-1968)
Autobiographical Notes 'Albert Einstein: Philosopher Scientist' in the 'Library of Living Philosophers' seried, edited by Arthur Schilpp (1949)

Wallace STEVENS (1879-1955) Etext: Academy of American Poets Reference: The Wallace Stevens Journal | Wikipedia | Hartford Friends and Enemies
Of course he had time to write poetry; he was house counsel! --Steve Cornelius, Attorney at Law
The Necessary Angel (1951)
Two stars: Collected Poems (1954)
Stevens thought of his poetry as a world, which, to distinguish it from the 'real' world, he called his mundo. --Frank Kermode
Opus Posthumous (1957)
The Palm at the End of the Mind (1972)
Selected Poems (2009) Criticism: Helen Vendler review

Nagai KAFU (1879-1959) Kafu's two loves were the French Naturalism of Zola (whom he translated into Japanese) and the Edo Culture that was disappearing as he was writing novels to celebrate the street life, the arts, and the teahouses and courtesans of the rapidly-changing capital. --Philip Ward, A Lifetime's Reading (1982) p. 37
Kafu's two loves were the French Naturalism of Zola (whom he translated into Japanese) and the Edo Culture that was disappearing as he was writing novels to celebrate the street life, the arts, and the teahouses and courtesans of the rapidly-changing capital. --Philip Ward
Kafu the Scribbler: the Life and Writings by Edward Seidensticker (1965)

E. M. FORSTER (Edward Morgan Forster 1879-1970) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: post
Howard's End (1910)
Two stars: A Passage to India (1924)
It conveys no more than his modus operandi to state that the book circles about a young Indian, Dr. Aziz, who is unjustly accused of attempted assault by a hysterical English girl and who therefore serves as a hinge from which both humanities--British and Indian--break. --Herbert S. Gorman

Edward THOMAS (1878-1917) Etext: The Online Books Page
Collected Poems (1920)

Eino LEINO (Armas Eino Leopold Lonnbohm, 1878-1926)
Helkavirsta (1903 Whitsongs, and 1916)

L. J. HENDERSON (1878-1942)
The Fitness of the Environment (1913)
The Order of Nature (1917)

Robert WALSER (1878-1956)
Selected Stories (2002)

Alfred DOBLIN (1878-1957)
Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929)

Martin BUBER (1878-1965) Criticism: post
I and Thou (1923)

Upton SINCLAIR (1878-1968) Etext: The Online Books Page
The Jungle (1906) Criticism: Christopher Hitchens review

Raymond ROUSSEL (1877-1933)
Locus Solus

Leon TROTSKY (Leib Davydovich Bronstein 1877-1940) Etext: The Online Books Page | Marxist Internet Archive Criticism: post Trotsky first applied the term 'national socialism' to Stalin's program of industrial autarky in 1930. --Michael Weiss, Stepson of the time, The New Criterion, March 2007, p. 35
Trotsky's failure as a leader came from his neglect, or more probably his inability, to create a machine of able and loyal lieutenants. --Eric Hoffer
The History of the Russian Revolution (1931-1933)

Frederick SODDY (1877-1956) Reference: Nobel
The Chemistry of the Radio Elements (1911)

Hermann HESSE (1877-1962) Etext: The Online Books Page Criticism: post
Narcissus and Goldmund (1930)
One star: The Glass Bead Game (Magister Ludi 1943)
Hesse postulates a province called 'Castalia' (in Greek myth, the Castalian Spring on Mount Parnassus is sacred to Apollo and the Muses), where the highest political office belongs to the sage Master of the Glass Bead Game, who personifies the serenity and aesthetic appreciation resulting from a life devoted to the refinement of mind and soul. --Philip Ward

Sir Muhammed IQBAL (1876-1938) Criticism: post
Asrar-i-Khudi ("Secrets of the Self" 1915)
this poem asserts the role of the individual over what seemed to Iqbal to be the false emphasis of the Sufis on mystical communion with the Divine. --A Guide to Oriental Classics
Rumuz-i-Bekhudi ("Hints of Selflessness" 1918)
This long Persian poem is a passionate expression of the bases of an ideal Islamic society. --A Guide to Oriental Classics

Sherwood ANDERSON (1876-1941) Etext: The Online Books Page Reference: Center
One star: Winesburg, Ohio (1919)
Death in the Woods (1933)

Max JACOB (1876-1944)
Selected Poems (1999)

David LINDSAY (1876-1945) Etext: The Online Books Page
A Voyage to Arcturus (1920)

George Macaulay TREVELYN (1876-1962)
History of England (1926)
While dramatic and narrowly political events are not neglected, the sharpest focus is reserved for the life of the people as a whole. --Clifton Fadiman

< 1851-1875 | 1901-1925 >



Revised Revised February 7, 2010.

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