1001 Books: You Must Read Before You Die

by Boxall, Peter

  First Published | 1668

  Original Title | Der abenteuerliche Simplicissimus

  Pseudonym | German Schleifheim von Sulsfort

  Unlike Cervantes’ Don Quixote (with which this fascinating novel might be contrasted), The Adventurous Simplicissimus remains a relatively undiscovered gem of a picaresque novel. Indeed, it is a mystery why this portrait of a war-torn Europe nearly 400 years ago has not been “optioned” as a major Hollywood movie or Broadway musical.

  Perhaps the first truly native German novel, it tells the partly autobiographical tale of a farm boy caught up in the Thirty Years War (1618–48), when lawless troopers laid the German countryside to waste and the population was decimated by battle, murder, famine, and fire. Grimmelhausen was only a child when he was caught up by warring Hessian and Croatian troops. As the boy narrator, he pulls no punches as he describes his family and other hapless peasants being captured and tortured by marauding mercenaries. The boy fails to understand the grim tableaux of extreme violence, rape, and pillage going on around him but nevertheless describes everything he sees with an engaging, ribald wit.

  Laid out in episodic chapters, Simplicus’s misadventures are engrossing and his descriptions of warfare are particularly gripping, not unlike a war reporter’s dispatches. Farther, his occasional forays into fantasy and philosophy (this at a time when witchcraft, soothsaying, and prophecy were very much to the fore) brim with historical interest. JHa

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  PRE-1800

  The Princess of Clèves

  Marie-Madelaine Pioche de Lavergne, Comtesse de La Fayette

  Dates | b. 1634 (France), d. 1693

  First Published | 1678

  First Published by | C. Barbin (Paris)

  Original Title | La Princesse de Clèves

  “The Duc de Nemours was a masterpiece of Nature.”

  This profound story of a forbidden love that is enflamed and then resisted until it dies an unnatural death takes place in the court of Henry II of France during the last years of his reign (c. 1558). The young heroine of the title enters a society in which the adulterous love affairs of the powerful and beautiful constitute the only important action. Determined to protect the princess from this world even as she introduces her to it, her mother agrees to an early marriage with the Prince of Clèves whom the princess respects but cannot love passionately. She then falls deeply in love with the Duc de Nemours, the most sought after man at court, who returns her favors. Their love is never consummated, nor is it determined by accident or fate; it is both encouraged and resisted in the course of a series of scandalous scenes of intimacy and betrayal that were themselves received as a literary scandal by La Fayette’s own society, not merely because they were regarded as implausible, but because of their evident singularity of purpose.

  In one scene, Nemours, aware that the Princess is watching, steals a portrait of her belonging to her husband. Nemours watches the Princess’ reaction, noting that she does nothing to intervene. In a second, the Princess confesses to her husband that she is in love with another man, while Nemours, that man, looks on unobserved and listens to her confession. In a third, Nemours, spied on by a servant of her husband, follows the Princess to her country house, where he sees her contemplating a picture in which he is represented. All of these scenes provoke overwhelming and unresolvable turmoil in the Princess but offer the modern reader an experience of compelling narrative and emotional complexity. JP

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  PRE-1800

  Oroonoko

  Aphra Behn

  Lifespan | b. 1640 (England), d. 1689

  First Published | 1688

  First Published by | W. Canning (London)

  Full Title | Oroonoko; or, The Royal Slave

  “He had nothing of barbarity in his nature . . .”

  The order of the original title indicates the direction of the narrative: from fictional romantic beginnings in the west African country of Coramantien, to the hero’s enslavement, to the subsequent events in Surinam that Behn herself may very well have witnessed during the 1660s. The movement chronicled by the title chronicles also suggests the importance of Behn’s text to the history of the novel, as well as its interest for modern readers.

  Oroonoko is a noble warrior-prince, the grandson of the king, with whom he clashes over the beautiful Imoinda, Oroonoko’s lover and the object of the king’s jealous and impotent affections. In revenge for the lovers’ persistence, the king sells Imoinda as a slave, while Oroonoko is betrayed into slavery. The two lovers meet again in Surinam, where they are renamed Clemene and Caesar. Anxious to be free, Caesar persuades the slaves to revolt against their tormentors; the slaves are caught and Caesar is whipped almost to death. Clemene is now pregnant and, fearing that their child will also become a slave, they make a murder-suicide pact that concludes in tragedy, though not quite as Caesar had envisaged.

  Behn’s extended short story gives a uniquely participatory role to the narrator, who is not only an “eyewitness” to many of the events she recounts as “true history,” but refers to herself as an actor in the story. As a female, however, she is unable to save Oroonoko from the “obscure world” he has fallen into. The result is an oddly skewed general uncertainty that is still profoundly affecting: exotic romance mixes with an acute account of the slave trade and, in Surinam, the relations between the local Carib Indians, the English plantation owners, the slaves, and the Dutch. Historical, readerly, and authorial consciousness are here joined. JP

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  PRE-1800

  Robinson Crusoe

  Daniel Defoe

  Lifespan | b. 1660 (England), d. 1731

  First Published | 1719, by W. Taylor (London)

  Full Title | The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner, Written by Himself

  The first edition of the novel was published as the memoirs of a mariner, with no mention of the name of the actual author.

  John Hassall produced this cover image for a 1908 edition of Robinson Crusoe, designed primarily to appeal to children.

  Robinson Crusoe is thought by many to be the first English novel. It has haunted the literary and critical imagination since its publication, returning in guise after guise: in The Swiss Family Robinson; in Luis Bunuel’s 1954 film The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, in Robert Zemeckis’s 2000 movie Castaway; in J. M. Coetzee’s novel Foe. The novel presents the reader with a fundamental, and fascinating, scenario. The prolonged and intense solitude of Robinson, shipwrecked on a desert island, strips him of the tools that have enabled him to live, returning him to a naked confrontation with the essential problems of his existence, including his personal connection with God, his relationship with the natural world that surrounds him, and with civilization as he knew it. In the vast silence even words begin to desert him. He tries to keep a diary in order to stay in touch with his civilized self, but as time goes by the small supply of ink that he salvages from the shipwreck starts, inevitably, to fail. He waters the ink down so that it might last him a little longer, but the words that he writes become fainter and fainter, until they disappear altogether, leaving the pages of Robinson’s diary as blank as his horizon.

  This encounter with total solitude does not lead Robinson to madness, to silence, or to despair. Rather, Robinson discovers in his enforced solitude the basis for a new kind of writing, and for a new kind of self-consciousness. Just as he fashions new tools for himself from the materials that he has at hand, so too does he invent a new way of telling himself the story of his life and of his world. It is this newly forged narrative form that Robinson bequeaths to a world on the brink of Enlightenment, the narrative form in which we continue, even now, to tell ourselves the stories of our lives. PB

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  PRE-1800

  Love in Excess

  Eliza Haywood

  Lifespan | b. 1693 (England), d
. 1756

  First Published | 1719

  First Published by | W. Chetwood (London)

  Full Title | Love in Excess; or, The Fatal Enquiry

  Eliza Haywood’s three-volume tale recounts the experiences of one Count D’elmont as he finds—and loses—his way along the often treacherous path to romantic and sexual fulfillment. Part the dashing hero and part the profligate rake, through the fault of others as well as his own, D’elmont becomes enmeshed in a series of compromising relationships. D’elmont’s devotion to the lovely Melliora is the object of dispute throughout, and when this relationship is not directly under threat from such ambitious women as Alovisa, D’elmont himself indirectly threatens it through his participation in a range of complex ménages à trois. Letters intended to circulate privately between lovers are continuously intercepted, and lovers are farcically substituted to comic and tragic effect. However, as the title of the piece suggests, it is not long before D’elmont and others learn the importance of romantic moderation in a world otherwise characterized by passionate excess. When he replaces the mercenary marital ambitions of his early years with the mature embracing of conjugal affection, the hero eventually chooses his spouse based upon moderation, fidelity, and reserve.

  Along with Robinson Crusoe, Love in Excess was one of the most popular early eighteenth-century novels. Haywood’s frank treatment of desire and sexual passion renders her a key figure in the feminine tradition of amatory fiction that runs from Aphra Behn to Delarivier Manley and beyond. DT

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  PRE-1800

  Moll Flanders

  Daniel Defoe

  Lifespan | b. 1660 (England), d. 1731

  First Published | 1722, by W. Chetwood (London)

  Full Title | The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

  Appearing three years after Defoe’s most famous work, Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders stands as one of the important precursors to the modern novel. Narrated in the first person, it is the autobiography of Moll Flanders. Moll leads an eventful life, which includes travel with gypsies, five marriages, incest, prostitution, and twelve years as one of London’s most notorious and successful thieves. When she is finally caught, she escapes the death sentence with the help of a minister who encourages her to repent her evil ways. Transported to Virginia with one of her husbands, she buys her freedom, sets up as a planter, and increases her amassed wealth with the income from a plantation. In her old age, she returns to England, where she resolves to spend the rest of her years in penitence for the life she has led.

  Defoe paints an unforgettable picture of the seamy underside of England. A masterful gold digger, conniver, and survivor, Moll exploits her formidable talents to evade poverty. The novel’s power lies in the force and attraction of Moll’s character, which catches the reader’s imagination and sympathy. But it also lies in the delightfully subversive moral of the tale that seems not to be that wickedness will be punished, but rather that one can live a profligate life and not only get away with it, but in fact prosper from it too. JSD

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  PRE-1800

  Gulliver’s Travels

  Jonathan Swift

  Lifespan | b. 1667 (Ireland), d. 1745

  First Published | 1726, by B. Motte (London)

  Full Title | Travels Into Several Remote Nations of the World, by Lemuel Gulliver

  A page from Swift’s manuscript of Gulliver’s Travels displays a clear and disciplined hand at the service of a lucid brain.

  Self-consciously superior, Gulliver enjoys terrifying the Lilliputians with a demonstration of English firepower.

  Everyone knows at least something about Gulliver’s Travels. Variously read and rewritten as a children’s story, a political satire, a travel text, an animated film, and a BBC television series, Swift’s perennial classic has been bowdlerized, added to, argued over, and adapted, but remains a constant presence in any widely accepted canon of English Literature.

  The narrative follows the adventures of innocent abroad, Lemuel Gulliver, from misguided youth, through the distorting mirrors of Lilliput and Brobdignag, onto the more enigmatic islands of Laputa, Balnibarbi, Glubbdubdrib, Luggnagg, and Japan, followed by the crucially important land of the Houyhnhms and the Yahoos. Swift masterfully inserts such locations into the blank spaces of eighteenth-century maps (actually included in the first edition) and follows the conventions of the contemporary travel narrative with such precision that the real and the fantastical coalesce. Our only guide is Gulliver, whose unwavering confidence in the superiority of the Englishman and of English culture is slowly and inevitably picked apart by the assorted characters he encounters on his travels—some minute, some huge, some misguided, some savage, others guided entirely by reason. All offer comments to and perspectives on Gulliver, which force readers to question their own assumptions. It is a satire that may have lost some of its immediate political force, but one that still has a sting in its tail for us today, made all the more effective as Swift stages the climax of the tales within the bounds of the English nation-state. The vehemence with which Gulliver eschews the company of his fellows for his horses is an image that will remain with readers forever—for it is here that it becomes clear that he is not the main target of the satire. We are. MD

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  PRE-1800

  A Modest Proposal

  Jonathan Swift

  Lifespan | b. 1667 (Ireland), d. 1745

  First Published | 1729

  First Published by | S. Harding (Dublin)

  Pseudonym | Isaac Bickerstaff

  The full title of A Modest Proposal is A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burden to Their Parents, Or the Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public. The title is long but Swift’s propagandizing pamphlet is as succinct and excoriating a work of satire as is possible to conceive. Penned after its author returned to Dublin to become Dean of St. Patrick’s, the work expresses in equal measure contempt for English policy in Ireland and for Irish docility in taking it. A prolific writer, political journalist, and wit, Swift was skilled at transforming outrage to glacial irony.

  The proposal here is anything but modest: Irish children can become less burdensome to their families and the state by being eaten by the rich. Children might become quality livestock for poor farmers. Young children, Swift suggests, are “nourishing and wholesome” whether they are “stewed, roasted, baked, or broiled,” while older, less obviously tasty offspring might be spared for breeding purposes. The advantages of Swift’s proposal include reducing the numbers of “Papists,” providing much-needed funds for the peasantry, boosting national income, and stimulating the catering trade. Swift also satirizes the callousness of the English protestant absentee landowners whose economics value mercantilism ahead of labor power. While, across his oeuvre, Swift is notoriously complicated in his politics, in this memorable pamphlet, we find him at his savage best. DH

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  PRE-1800

  Joseph Andrews

  Henry Fielding

  Lifespan | b. 1707 (England), d. 1754

  First Published | 1742, by A. Millar (London)

  Full Title | The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews, and of his Friend Mr. Abraham Adam

  Joseph Andrews actually begins as a “sequel” to Shamela, Fielding’s short burlesque of Richardson’s sensationally popular Pamela. However, it quickly surpasses the original, displaying Fielding’s progress toward an original fictional voice and technique, and revealing his moral preoccupation with the question of “good nature” as the basis for real virtue.

  In a comic inversion of typical gender roles, Joseph (Pamela’s brother and a servant in the Booby household) virtuously resists the lustful advances of Mrs. Booby, not because he lacks masculine vigor (unthinkable for a Fielding hero), but because he faithfully loves the beautiful Fanny Goodwill. When
he is dismissed by his frustrated mistress, Joseph embarks on a picaresque series of adventures with Parson Abraham Adams, who overshadows Joseph as the most vigorous presence in the novel. Adams’ virtue is matched by his naivety, continually entangling him and his companions in difficulties that test his good nature. Nabokov, among others, noted the cruelty of Joseph Andrews; Fielding seems to relish placing his virtuous heroes and heroines in compromising positions. The foolishness and eccentricity of both the Parson and Joseph, however, are vindicated by their physical and moral courage, their loyalty, and their benevolence—the comic morality of Don Quixote is an obvious model. Fielding manipulates the conventions of romance to bring about a happy ending, with a wink to his readers to acknowledge its artificiality. RH

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  PRE-1800

  Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus

  J. Arbuthnot, J. Gay, T. Parnell, A. Pope, J. Swift

  Lifespan | births from 1667, deaths from 1745

  Born | Ireland, Scotland, England

  Full Title | Memoirs of the Extraordinary Life, Works, and Discoveries of Martin Scriblerus

  “Ye gods! annihilate but space and time, And make two lovers happy.”

  The seventeen short chapters of the Memoirs of Scriblerus, finalized by Pope, offer a series of narratives that originated in a project begun in 1713, and continued at informal meetings of the Scriblerus Club, which met in the lodgings occupied by Dr. Arbuthnot in St. James’s Palace. The club began to break up with the departure of Swift from London, and completely disbanded with the Queen’s death in 1714. The project was, however, continued by correspondence, making early use of the recently established postal service.