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Frederic Raphael and Kenneth McLeish, List of Books [1981]

47 entries: 40 monographical, 7 otherwise

Unranked—arranged alphabetically by author, except no. 3, which appears to have been mistakenly placed ahead of no. 4

This list is just a small part of List of Books, which, despite its title, consists of many short lists, defined by genre and other categorizations. However, the editors each chose 25 books to take with them on a "desert island holiday" (not so morbid as the common tendency to assume that the listmaker is stranded on a desert island). With a few choices overlapping, this list is the result.

  1. Aeschylus

  2. Oresteia
    The House of Atreus
    458 B C—Greek


  3. Edward Albee

  4. Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf?
    1962—English

  5. David Attenborough

  6. Life on Earth
    1975; book accompanying television series of the same name—English

  7. Aristophanes

  8. Thesmophoriazousai
    411 B C—Greek

  9. Jane Austen

  10. Emma
    originally anonymously published 1815—English

  11. Hector Berlioz

  12. Memoires de Hector Berlioz Comprenant ses Voyages en Italie, en Allemagne, en Russie et en Angleterre
    published in part in Journal des Débats and Le Monde Illustré; in its entirety, 1865—English

  13. Kenneth Burke
    A Grammar of Motives
    1945—English

    • Lord Byron

    Letters and journals of Lord Byron
    early Nineteenth Century—English

    • Constantine Cavafy

  14. Collected Poems
    1975—Greek

  15. Dante
    La Divina Commedia
    The Divine Comedy
    originally entitled La Commedia; written ca. 1308-21—Italian


    • John Donne

  16. Poems
    early Seventeenth Century—English

  17. Fyodor Dostoevsky

  18. Brat'â Karamazovy
    The Brothers Karamazov
    originally published serially 1880 in Rússkij Véstnik—Russian


  19. Gerard Durrell

  20. My Family and Other Animals
    1956—English

  21. Lawrence Durrell

  22. Reflections on a Marine Venus
    1953—English

  23. George Eliot

  24. Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life
    originally published serially Dec. 1871-Dec. 1872—English

  25. T S Eliot

  26. Four Quartets
    originally published in four volumes: Burnt Norton, in Collected Poems 1909-1935, 1936; East Coker, in the New English Weekly, 1940; The Dry Salvages, in the New English Weekly, 1941; Little Gidding, in the New English Weekly, 1942—English

  27. Gustave Flaubert

  28. Madame Bovary
    originally published serially Oct. 1856-Dec. 1856 in La Revue de Paris—French

  29. Ford Madox Ford

  30. Parade's End
    originally published in four volumes: Some Do Not..., 1924; No More Parades, 1925; A Man Could Stand Up, 1926; Last Post, 1928—English

  31. James George Frazer

  32. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion
    originally entitled The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion, published in two volumes, 1890; expanded and retitled 1900, in three volumes; expanded 1906-15, in 12 volumes; supplemental volume added for 1937 edition; distinct abridged versions, 1922, 1959, and 1994—English

  33. Edward Gibbon

  34. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
    originally published in six volumes: first, 1776; second-third, 1781; fourth-sixth, 1788—English

  35. Joseph Heller

  36. Catch-22
    1961—English

  37. David Hockney

  38. David Hockney
    1976—English

  39. Homer

  40. Odýsseia
    The Odyssey
    ca. Ninth-Eighth centuries B C—Greek


  41. Michael Innes

  42. Operation Pax
    The Paper Thunderbolt
    1951—English


  43. Randall Jarrell

  44. Pictures From an Institution
    1954—English

  45. Ben Jonson

  46. The Alchemist
    1610—English

  47. Franz Kafka

  48. Der Prozess
    The Trial
    1925—German


  49. John McCabe

  50. Laurel and Hardy
    1975; edited by Al Kilgore; includes filmography by Richard W Bann—English

  51. Mary McCarthy

  52. The Groves of Academe
    1951—English

  53. Michel de Montaigne

  54. Les Essais
    Essays
    originally published in three volumes: 1580, 1588, and 1595—French


  55. Vladimir Nabokov

  56. Pale Fire
    1962—English

  57. Friedrich Nietzsche
    Also Sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen
    Thus Spake Zarathustra
    originally published in four volumes, 1883-5—German


    • George Orwell

  58. Collected Essays
    1961—English

  59. Blaise Pascal

  60. Pensées
    Thoughts
    1669—French


  61. Marcel Proust

  62. À la Recherche du Temps Perdu
    In Search of Lost Time; In Remembrance of Things Past
    originally published in seven volumes, two of which originally published as two books each, 1913-27—French


  63. François Rabelais

  64. La Vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel
    originally published in five volumes: Les Horribles et Épouvantables Faits et Prouesses du Très Renommé Pantagruel Roi des Dipsodes, Fils du Grand Géant Gargantua, 1532; La Vie Très Horrifique du Grand Gargantua, Père de Pantagruel, 1534; Le Tiers Livre des Faicts et Dicts Héroïques du Bon Pantagruel, 1546; Le Quart Livre des Faicts et Dicts Héroïques du Bon Pantagruel, 1552; Le Cinquiesme et Dernier Livre des Faicts et Dicts Héroïques du Bon Pantagruel, 1564—French

  65. Jean Renoir

  66. Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Mon Père
    Renoir, My Father
    1962—French


  67. Steven Runciman
    A History of the Crusades
    1951—English

    • William Shakespeare

    Complete works
    late Sixteenth-early Seventeenth centuries—English

    • Isaac Bashevis Singer

  68. A Crown of Feather and Other Stories
    1973—Yiddish

  69. Stendhal

  70. Le Chartreuse de Parme
    The Charterhouse of Parma
    1839—French


  71. Wilfred Thesiger

  72. The Marsh Arabs
    1964—English

  73. Thucydides

  74. History of the Peloponnesian War
    early Fifth Century B C—Greek

  75. Leo Tolstoy
    Voyna i Mir"
    War and Peace
    originally entitled 1805, published in part, 1865 and 1867; retitled and published in its entirety, 1869—Russian


    • François Villon

  76. Poems
    Fifteenth Century—French

  77. Eric Walter White

  78. Stravinsky: The Composer and His Works
    1966—English

  79. Ludwig Wittgenstein

  80. Philosophische Untersuchungen
    Philosophical Investigations
    1953—German