Claire Watts (ClW) is a writer and a freelance editor with a degree in French from the University of London. She also runs her local school library.
Manuela Wedgwood (MWd)
Andreea Weisl-Shaw (AW) is originally from Romania. She studied French and Spanish at Trinity College, Cambridge, England, where she is now completing a PhD in Medieval French and Spanish Literature. She has recently been appointed Fellow and College Lecturer in Spanish at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
Gabriel Wernstedt (GW)
Juliet Wightman (JW) has taught English Studies at the University of Stirling for several years. Her research focuses closely on language and violence, making particular reference to Renaissance literature and drama.
Ilana Wistinetzki (IW) received an MPhil degree in classical Chinese literature from Yale University in 2000. She then went on to teach modern Hebrew at both Yale and Beijing universities.
Tara Woolnough (TW) lives and works in London. She obtained a degree in Classics, and an MA. She now works as an editor and writer in book publishing.
Marcus Wood (MW)
PRE 1800
Contents
The Thousand and One Nights
The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter
The Tale of Genji
Romance of the Three Kingdoms
The Water Margin
The Golden Ass
Tirant lo Blanc
La Celestina
Amadis of Gaul
The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes
Gargantua and Pantagruel
The Lusiad
Monkey: A Journey to the West
Unfortunate Traveller
Thomas of Reading
Don Quixote
The Travels of Persiles and Sigismunda
The Conquest of New Spain
The Adventurous Simplicissimus
The Princess of Clèves
Oroonoko
Robinson Crusoe
Love in Excess
Moll Flanders
Gulliver’s Travels
A Modest Proposal
Joseph Andrews
Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus
Pamela
Clarissa
Tom Jones
Fanny Hill
Peregrine Pickle
The Female Quixote
Candide
Rasselas
Julie; or, The New Eloise
Émile; or, On Education
The Castle of Otranto
The Vicar of Wakefield
Tristram Shandy
A Sentimental Journey
The Man of Feeling
Humphry Clinker
The Sorrows of Young Werther
Evelina
Reveries of a Solitary Walker
Dangerous Liaisons
Confessions
The 120 Days of Sodom
Anton Reiser
Vathek
Justine
A Dream of Red Mansions
The Adventures of Caleb Williams
The Interesting Narrative
The Mysteries of Udolpho
Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship
The Monk
Camilla
Jacques the Fatalist
The Nun
Hyperion
PRE-1800
The Thousand and One Nights
Anonymous
Original Title | Alf laylah wa laylah
Original Language | Arabic
First Published | c. 850
Source | from Hazar Afsanah (A Thousand Tales)
The binding from a 1908 edition of the Nights stylishly captures the exoticism that attracted Westerners to tales of the East.
The tales that make up the collection known to us as The Thousand and One Nights are some of the most powerful, resonant works of fiction in the history of storytelling. The tales, told over a thousand and one nights by Sheherazade to King Shahryar, include foundational narratives such as “Sinbad,” “Aladdin,” and “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.” These stories have an uncanny capacity to endure. But while the tales of The Thousand and One Nights are remarkable for their familiarity and their currency, perhaps their most important legacy is the concept of narrative itself that emerges from them.
It is in the Nights that an underlying, generative connection is fashioned between narrative, sex, and death—a connection that has remained at the wellspring of prose fiction ever since. King Shahryar is in the unseemly habit of deflowering and killing a virgin on a nightly basis, and the Nights opens with Sheherazade lining up to be the king’s next victim. Determined not to meet with such a fate, Sheherazade contrives to tell the king stories; in accordance with her plan, they prove so compelling, so erotic, so luscious and provocative, that at the end of the night, he cannot bring himself to kill her. Each night ends with a tale unfinished, and each night the king grants her a stay of execution, so that he might hear the conclusion. But the storytelling that Sheherazade invents, in order to stay alive, is a kind of storytelling that is not able to end, that never reaches a climax. Rather, the stories are inhabited by a kind of insatiable desire, an open unfinishedness that keeps us reading and panting, eager for more, just as King Shahryar listens and pants. The eroticism of the tales, their exotic, charged texture, derives from this desirousness, this endless trembling on the point both of climax, and of death. PB
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PRE-1800
The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter
Anonymous
Original Language | Japanese
First Published | 10th century
Alternate Title | The Tale of Princess Kaguya
Original Title | Taketori Monogatari
The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter is referred to in The Tale of Genji as the “ancestor of all romances.” It is also the oldest surviving Japanese work of fiction. There are various theories regarding the exact date of its writing, but it is believed to have appeared late in the ninth century or early in the tenth century. Yasunari Kawabata, one of Japan’s finest modern novelists, unveiled his modern re-telling in 1998.
The story is of Kaguya-hime, an exceptionally beautiful princess who was found by an old bamboo cutter when only a baby. Her beauty takes possession of the men of Japan and, in an attempt to see her married, her bamboo-cutter guardian chooses five suitors for her. The coldhearted Kaguya-hime, unwilling to marry, sets these suitors impossible tasks. The largely devious suitors use their money and position to try to convince the princess that they have completed their tasks. One prince sets a team of workers to work day and night to make the princess a golden branch; another pays a man in China to find a robe that will not burn.
Each incidence of failure provides a proverb. An ill-starred adventure is “plum foolish” because the grand counselor, on failing to bring a dragon’s jewel back to the princess, replaces his eyes with stones that look like plums. Masayuki Miyata’s illustrations of the Kawabata version are wonderful and almost warrant a reading of the book alone. OR
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PRE-1800
The Tale of Genji
Murasaki Shikibu
Lifespan | b. c. 973 (Japan), d. c. 1014
First Published | 11th century
Original Language | Japanese
Original Title | Genji Monogatari
The Tale of Genji is the earliest work of prose fiction still read for pleasure by a substantial audience today. Written at least in part by Murasaki Shikibu, a woman at the imperial court at Kyoto, its loose structure revolves around the love life of an emperor’s son, the handsome, cultured Genji. The young man undergoes complex emotional and sexual vicissitudes, including involvement with the mother-figure Fujitsubo and with Murasaki, whom he adopts as a child and who becomes the true love of his life. Forced into exile as the result of a politically ill-judged sexual adventure, Genji returns to achieve wealth and power, then, grieving after Murasaki’s death, retires to a temple. With Genji sidelined, the book mov
es on to a darker portrayal of the succeeding generation, before ending apparently arbitrarily—opinions differ as to whether the work is unfinished or deliberately inconclusive.
The Tale of Genji opens a window upon a distant, exotic world—the aestheticized, refined court life of medieval Japan. In this lies much of its enduring appeal. Fiction works its magic to bridge the historical, cultural, and linguistic gulf between Murasaki’s world and our own. Much may be lost in translation, but modern readers are charmed to identify with familiar emotions in such a remote context, and fascinated when characters’ responses and attitudes prove startlingly unexpected. RegG
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PRE-1800
Romance of the Three Kingdoms
Luó Guànzhong
Lifespan | b. c. 1330 (China), d. 1400
First Published | 14th century
Original Language | Chinese
Original Title | Sanguó Yanyì
Romance of the Three Kingdoms is one of the four foundational classic novels of Chinese literature. Spanning over a hundred years of Chinese history (184–280), this epic saga of the last days of the Hàn dynasty is a compilation of history and legend based on ancient storytelling traditions. It is attributed to a fourteenth-century scholar, Luó Guànzhong, who combined the many extant sources and stories into a continous capitivating epic.
The story begins with the outbreak of the rebellion against Emperor Líng led by a Taoist wizard, Zhang Jiao, and ends with the fall of Hàn (220) and the founding of the Jin dynasty. Much of the action takes place within the rival kingdoms of Wei, Shu, and Wu inhabited by magicians, monsters, powerful warlords, and legendary immortal heroes fighting for control over China. With its gripping plot, its classic heroes and villains, intricate intrigues, and spectacular battle scenes, the Romance is a literary masterpiece and can be considered the Chinese equivalent of The Illiad. The book has been translated into many languages, including French, English, Spanish, and Russian. The novel remains one of the most popular books in East Asia, cherished for its traditional wisdom, fantastic fairy tales, historical detail, and insights into war strategy. As a popular Korean proverb says: “One can discuss life after reading Romance of the Three Kingdoms.” JK
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PRE-1800
The Water Margin
Shi Nai’an & Luo Guanzhong
Lifespan | b. c. 1296 (China), d. c. 1370
First Published | 1370
Alternate Title | Outlaws of the Marsh
Original Title | Shuihu Zhuàn
This novel is loosely based on exploits of the early twelth-century bandit Song Jiang and his group of outlaws. The text passed through centuries of professional storytelling and was edited, expanded, and revised before being printed in differing versions, the earliest surviving consisting of 120 chapters and dating from the early sixteenth century. This not only explains the textual inconsistency of the work, but also makes the exact dating and attribution of authorship impossible.
The first part of the novel describes in varying detail how the 108 heroes are brought together at their stronghold in the Liangshan marshes under their leader Song Jiang. United by their respect for the emperor who is misled by corrupt officials, the outlaws adhere to a strict code of chivalry: robbing the rich while helping the poor and showing fierce loyalty to their sworn brothers. In the latter part of the novel, the outlaws are granted an imperial amnesty and they help to suppress an uprising, a feat during which most of the outlaws are killed.
Although at times extremely violent and misogynous by today’s standards, the novel captivates the reader’s imagination through its multi-dimensional characters and the lively, colorful language. Read as a glorification of peasant revolution, the novel was eulogized in post-1949 China and was a favorite of Mao Zedong. FG
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PRE-1800
The Golden Ass
Lucius Apuleius
Lifespan | b. c. 123 (Madauros, modern Algeria), d. 170
First Published | 1469
First Published by | C. Sweynheim & A. Pannartz
Original Title | Metamorphoses
This illustration by Jean de Bosschere, from a 1923 edition of The Golden Ass, shows a woman being attacked with a firebrand.
Written in the second century, The Transformations of Lucius Apuleius of Madaura, more commonly known as The Golden Ass, is the only Latin novel to survive in its entirety. Its style is racy, boisterous, and irreverent, as was the mode of professional storytellers of the time, but ultimately the story is a moral one.
The Golden Ass recounts the often ludicrous adventures of Lucius, a young member of the Roman aristocracy who is obsessed with magic, and who is accidentally turned into an ass. In his new guise, he witnesses and shares the misery of the slaves and destitute freemen who, like Lucius, are reduced to little more that animals by the treatment of their wealthy owners.
The book is the only surviving work of literature from the ancient Greco-Roman world that examines first-hand the conditions of the lower classes. Despite its serious subject matter, the tone is bawdy and sexually explicit, as Lucius spends time in the company of bandits and eunuch priests, witnesses adulterous wives, and is called upon to have intercourse with a beautiful woman. It is also a work that examines the contemporary religions of the time. In the final chapters of the book, Lucius is eventually turned back into a man by the goddess Isis. Lucius is subsequently initiated in the mystery cults of Isis and Osiris, and dedicates his life to them. At this point the rowdy humor of the earlier segments of the novel is exchanged for equally powerful and beautiful prose. The Golden Ass is a precursor to the literary genre of the episodic picaresque novel, in which Voltaire, Defoe, and others have followed, and its entertaining mixture of magic, farce, religion, and mythology make for a compelling read. LE
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PRE-1800
Tirant lo Blanc
Joanot Martorell
Lifespan | b. 1413 (Spain), d. 1468
First Published | 1490
First Published by | Nicolou Spindeler (Valencia)
Original Language | Catalan
Cervantes wrote that this novel of chivalry was “a treasury of enjoyment and a mine of recreation.” Joanot Martorell managed to combine his real-life experience as a knight with literary sources (such as Ramón Llull, Boccaccio, and Dante), enriching the whole with a fertile imagination that was nonetheless true to life. Consequently, Tirant lo Blanc is a vindication of chivalry and a literary corrective to the fiction, prone to fantasy, that glorified it. Realistic incidents of war and love predominate over shorter imaginary episodes, such as that of the maiden turned into a dragon.
Tirant himself is forged from the iron of the legendary knights, but his victories are the result of his skill as a strategist, his wisdom, and his fortitude, not of superhuman qualities. So he is thrown from his horse, he becomes exhausted, and he suffers wounds. His itinerary traces the actual geography of England, France, Sicily, Rhodes, and Constantinople, and the military campaigns are historical ones, such as the blockade of the island of Rhodes in 1444 and the attempt to reconquer Constantinople.
Today the novel retains its freshness due to its humor and the mischievous sensuality of many episodes: for example, a scene in which the maiden Plaerdemavida sends Tirant to the bed of his beloved Carmesina so that he can caress her as much as he likes. Plaerdemavida puts her head between the two of them so that the princess thinks that it is her servant who is lying next to her. DRM
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PRE-1800
La Celestina
Fernando de Rojas
Lifespan | b. c. 1465 (Spain), d. 1541
First Published | 1499
First Published by | Fadrique de Basilea (Burgos)
Original Language | Spanish
The title of the earliest editions of this book, The Comedy or Tragicomedy of Calisto
and Melibea, referred to two young lovers, but very soon it was replaced by La Celestina, which is the name of an old witch who gives Melibea a magic potion that makes her fall in love with Calisto. The enigmas of the text do not end there. Its author, Fernando de Rojas, a scholar of Jewish descent, declared that he was continuing an incomplete, anonymous work, and this appears to be true. Indeed, all this mystery contributes to the profound impression made by the piece, which was read with passion and treated as common property.
The work has a theatrical arrangement designed to be read aloud (in public and in private), but not to be performed: it is what is known as a humanistic comedy. But the freedom and frankness of its dialogs, the psychological penetration of its many characters, the variety of its moods (from the educated and sophisticated to the very coarse), meant that this masterpiece influenced the emerging novel form much more than it did the theatre. Although it is proclaimed as a moral work, about illicit love and its punishments, as well as the evils of witchcraft and ambition, the book reveals a bitter perception of human nature and, often, a profound nihilism. Cervantes, who read it closely, accurately summed it up in a famous couplet with the last syllables missing: “A book of divine truth, if more of the human was hidden.” JCM
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PRE-1800
1001 Books: You Must Read Before You Die Page 5