Literary Taste: How to Form It

Literary Taste: How to Form it is a long essay by Arnold Bennett, first published in 1909, with a revised edition by his friend Frank Swinnerton appearing in 1937. It includes a long list of recommended books, every item individually costed.

Both the essay and the list were very influential, although Bennett's decision to include only books originally written in English (along with a handful of Latin works) makes it extremely insular compared with most other attempts at compiling a literary canon.

Outline[]

The Aim
Your Particular Case
Why a Classic is a Classic
Where to Begin
How to Read a Classic (using Charles Lamb's Dream Children)
The Question of Style
Wrestling with an Author
System in Reading
Verse (Hazlitt's On Poetry in General, Isaiah ch. 40, Wordsworth's The Brothers, E. Browning's Aurora Leigh)
Broad Counsels

Library[]

Period IV only appears in the second edition by Swinnerton.

The symbol * denotes first edition only. The symbol † denotes second edition only.

Period I (to 1700)[]

Prose[]

Venerable Bede: Ecclesiastical History (Latin)
The Paston Letters†
Hugh Latimer: Sermons†
Sir Thomas Malory: Morte d'Arthur
Sir Thomas More: Utopia (Latin)
George Cavendish: Life of Cardinal Wolsey
Richard Hakluyt: Voyages
Richard Hooker: Ecclesiastical Polity
Francis Bacon: Essays and Advancement of Learning
Thomas Dekker (poet): The Gul's Horn-Book
Lord Herbert of Cherbury: Autobiography*
Thomas Lodge: Rosalynde
John Selden: Table Talk
Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan
James Howell: Familiar Letters
Sir Thomas Browne: Religio Medici, Urn Burial
Jeremy Taylor: Holy Living and Holy Dying
Izaak Walton: The Compleat Angler
John Bunyan: The Pilgrim's Progress
Sir William Temple: Essay on Gardens of Epicurus*
Dorothy Osborne: Letters to Sir William Temple†
John Evelyn: Diary
Samuel Pepys: Diary

Poetry[]

Beowulf
Everyman and other Interludes†
William Langland: Piers Plowman†
Geoffrey Chaucer
Nicolas Udall: Ralph Roister Doister
Edmund Spenser
Thomas Kyd: The Spanish Tragedy†
Robert Greene: The Tragical Reign of Selimus
Michael Drayton
Christopher Marlowe
William Shakespeare
Thomas Campion
Ben Jonson: plays
John Donne: poems and sermons
John Webster, Cyril Tourneur* and John Ford: plays
Philip Massinger: plays
Beaumont and Fletcher: plays
George Herbert: "The Temple"
Robert Herrick
Edmund Waller
Sir John Suckling
Abraham Cowley*
Richard Crashaw
Henry Vaughan
Samuel Butler: Hudibras
John Milton: Areopagitica, other essays, and poems
Andrew Marvell
John Dryden: Essay of Dramatick Poesie†, and poems
Thomas Percy: Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (ed.)
Arber's Anthologies*
John Marston, plays* (omitted from list because out of print)

Period II (1700-1800)[]

Prose[]

John Locke: Two Treatises of Government
Sir Isaac Newton: Principia*
Gilbert Burnet: History of His Own Time
William Wycherley: plays
William Congreve
Jonathan Swift: Gulliver's Travels, The Tale of a Tub; The Battle of the Books†
Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe, A Journal of the Plague Year
Joseph Addison and Sir Richard Steele: The Spectator
William Law: A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life
Colley Cibber: Autobiography†
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Letters
George Berkeley: A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge
Samuel Richardson: Clarissa
John Wesley: Journal
Henry Fielding: Tom Jones, Amelia, Joseph Andrews
David Hume: essays
Laurence Sterne: Tristram Shandy, A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy
Horace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto; Letters†
William Thomas Beckford: Vathek†
Samuel Johnson: Rasselas, Lives of the Poets
Tobias Smollett: Humphrey Clinker, Travels through France and Italy
Adam Smith: The Wealth of Nations
James Boswell: Life of Johnson
Oliver Goldsmith
Henry Mackenzie: The Man of Feeling
Sir Joshua Reynolds: Discourses on Art
Edmund Burke: Writings on France, Thoughts on the Present Discontents
Edward Gibbon: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; Autobiography†
Thomas Paine: The Rights of Man
Richard Brinsley Sheridan: plays
Fanny Burney: Evelina
Gilbert White: The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne
Arthur Young: Travels in France
Mungo Park: Travels
Jeremy Bentham: Introduction to the Principles of Morals*
Thomas Robert Malthus: An Essay on the Principle of Population
William Godwin: Caleb Williams*
Maria Edgeworth: Helen
Jane Austen
James Morier: Hadji Baba*

Poetry[]

Thomas Otway: Venice Preserved
Matthew Prior: Poems on Several Occasions
John Gay
Alexander Pope
Isaac Watts: hymns
James Thomson
Charles Wesley: hymns
Samuel Johnson
Oliver Goldsmith
Thomas Gray
William Collins
James Macpherson: Ossian*
Thomas Chatterton
William Cowper
George Crabbe
William Blake
William Lisle Bowles*
Hartley Coleridge*
Robert Burns

Period III (1800-1900)[]

Novelists[]

Sir Walter Scott: Waverley, The Heart of Midlothian, Quentin Durward, Redgauntlet, Ivanhoe, The Pirate†, The Antiquary†
Thomas Love Peacock
Mary Russell Mitford: Our Village
Michael Scott: Tom Cringle's Log
Frederick Marryat: The King's Own†, Mr Midshipman Easy
John Galt: Annals of the Parish, The Ayrshire Legatees
Susan Ferrier: Marriage
Douglas William Jerrold: Mrs Caudle's Curtain Lectures*
Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Last Days of Pompeii
Charles Lever: Harry Lorrequer
Harrison Ainsworth: Rookwood†, The Tower of London
George Borrow: Lavengro, The Romany Rye†, The Bible in Spain
Benjamin Disraeli: Sybil, Coningsby
William Makepeace Thackeray: Vanity Fair, The History of Henry Esmond, The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq.*, Roundabout Papers*
Charles Dickens
Charles Reade: The Cloister and the Hearth
Anthony Trollope: The Warden†, Barchester Towers, Framley Parsonage, The Last Chronicle of Barset†, Autobiography†
Charles Kingsley: Westward Ho!
Henry Kingsley: Ravenshoe
Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë; Anne Brontë†
Elizabeth Gaskell: Cranford, Mary Barton†, North and South†, The Life of Charlotte Bronte
George Eliot: Adam Bede, Silas Marner, The Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch†
George Whyte-Melville: The Gladiators
George Macdonald: Malcolm*, Sir Gibbie†
Wilkie Collins: The Woman in White, The Moonstone†
R. D. Blackmore: Lorna Doone
Samuel Butler: Erewhon, The Way of All Flesh†, Notebooks†
Laurence Oliphant: Altiora Peto*
Margaret Oliphant: Salem Chapel
Lewis Carroll: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass†
Joseph Henry Shorthouse: John Inglesant
Robert Louis Stevenson: Kidnapped (novel)†, The Master of Ballantrae, The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables†, Virginibus Puerisque
George Gissing: The Odd Women*, Thyrza†, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft†

Non-novelists[]

Charles Lamb
Walter Savage Landor: Imaginary Conversations, poems
Leigh Hunt: Autobiography†, Essays and Sketches
William Cobbett
William Hazlitt: Spirit of the Age*, The English Poets, The English Comic Writers, Table Talk†, The Plain Speaker†
Francis Jeffrey: Essays from The Edinburgh Review
Thomas de Quincey
Sydney Smith: Selected Papers*
George Finlay: Byzantine Empire*
John G. Lockhart: Life of Scott*
Agnes Strickland: Life of Queen Elizabeth*
Hugh Miller: Old Red Sandstone*
John Henry Newman: Apologia Pro Vita Sua
Lord Macaulay: History of England, Essays
A. P. Stanley: Memorials of Canterbury*
Thomas Carlyle: The French Revolution: A History, Cromwell, Sartor Resartus, Heroes and Hero-Worship, Latter-Day Pamphlets*
Charles Darwin: The Origin of Species, The Voyage of the Beagle
Alexander William Kinglake: Eothen
John Stuart Mill: Auguste Comte and Positivism*; Autobiography†, On Liberty†, Representative Government†
John Brown: Horae Subsecivae, Rab and his Friends*
Sir Arthur Helps: Friends in Council*
Mark Pattison: Life of Milton*
F. W. Robertson: On Religion and Life*
Benjamin Jowett: Interpretation of Scripture*
Alexander Smith: Dreamthorpe
Mary Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Women
George Henry Lewes: Principles of Success in Literature*, Life of Goethe†
Alexander Bain: Mind and Body
James Anthony Froude: Short Studies on Great Subjects
John Tyndall: Glaciers of the Alps
Sir Henry Maine: Ancient Law
John Ruskin: Seven Lamps of Architecture, Sesame and Lilies, The Stones of Venice
Herbert Spencer: First Principles, Essays on Education
Sir Richard Francis Burton: Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Mecca*, First Footsteps in East Africa†
John Hanning Speke: Sources of the Nile
Thomas Henry Huxley: Man's Place in Nature, Lectures and Lay Sermons
E. A. Freeman: Europe*
William Stubbs: Early Plantagenets*
Winwood Reade: The Martyrdom of Man†
Walter Bagehot: Lombard Street*, Literary Studies†
Walter Pater: Imaginary Portraits, Marius the Epicurean
Richard Holt Hutton: Cardinal Newman*
Richard Jefferies: The Story of My Heart†
Sir John Seeley: Ecce Homo
David Masson: Thomas de Quincey*
Sir George Trevelyan, 2nd Baronet: Life of Macaulay†
John Richard Green: A Short History of the English People
Sir Leslie Stephen: Pope*
Lord Acton: On the Study of History*
Mandell Creighton: 'The Age of Elizabeth*
Oscar Wilde†
F. W. H. Myers: Wordsworth*, Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death†
Mark Rutherford: Pages from a Journal†

Poets[]

William Wordsworth
Sir Walter Scott
Robert Southey
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
John Keats
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Lord Byron
Thomas Hood
James and Horace Smith: Rejected Addresses
John Keble: The Christian Year
George Darley
Thomas Lovell Beddoes
Thomas Moore
James Clarence Mangan
Winthrop Mackworth Praed
Robert Stephen Hawker: Cornish Ballads
Edward FitzGerald: Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
P. J. Bailey: Festus*
Arthur Hugh Clough
Lord Tennyson
Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning
P. B. Marston: Song-tide*
Aubrey Thomas de Vere: Legends of St Patrick*
Matthew Arnold: poems and essays
Coventry Patmore
Sydney Dobell*
Eric Mackay: Love-letters of a Violinist*
T. E. Brown
C. S. Calverley: Verses, Translations and Fly-Leaves
Edward Lear: A Book of Nonsense†
D. G. Rossetti
Christina Rossetti: "Goblin Market"
James Thomson: "The City of Dreadful Night"
Jean Ingelow
William Morris
Augusta Webster*
Gerard Manley Hopkins†
W. E. Henley
Francis Thompson

Period IV (1900-1935)†[]

Novelists and dramatists[]

George Meredith: The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, The Egoist, Evan Harrington, An Essay on Comedy, poems
Thomas Hardy: The Dynasts, Far from the Madding Crowd, Jude the Obscure, The Return of the Native, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, poems
Rudyard Kipling: The Jungle Book, Just So Stories, Plain Tales from the Hills, Many Inventions, The Day's Work, Soldiers Three, Barrack-Room Ballads
Henry James: Daisy Miller, The Spoils of Poynton, The Ambassadors
George Moore: Confessions of a Young Man, Esther Waters, The Brook Kerith
George Bernard Shaw: Plays Pleasant, Plays Unpleasant, Man and Superman, Saint Joan, The Apple Cart
Joseph Conrad: The Mirror of the Sea, Lord Jim, Youth
J. M. Barrie: The Admirable Crichton, Dear Brutus, Margaret Ogilvy, A Widow in Thrums
Allan Monkhouse: Mary Broome
Arthur Conan Doyle: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
W. W. Jacobs: Many Cargoes
H. G. Wells: The Time Machine, The Wheels of Chance, Short Stories, Tono-Bungay, The History of Mr Polly
Arnold Bennett: The Old Wives' Tale, Lord Raingo, Books and Persons, The Truth about an Author
John Galsworthy: The Forsyte Saga, plays
Somerset Maugham: Of Human Bondage, Ashenden, The Gentleman in the Parlour, plays (The Circle, The Constant Wife, The Bread-Winner)
Elizabeth von Arnim: Vera
Kenneth Grahame: The Wind in the Willows
Saki: The Unbearable Bassington
J. M. Synge: The Playboy of the Western World
Harley Granville-Barker: Waste, The Voysey Inheritance
Stanley Houghton: Hindle Wakes
St. John Greer Ervine: The Wayward Man, John Ferguson
A. A. Milne: Second Plays, The Day's Play
P. G. Wodehouse: The Inimitable Jeeves, Meet Mr Mulliner
Oliver Onions: In Accordance with the Evidence
J. D. Beresford: The Hampdenshire Wonder
Henry Handel Richardson: Maurice Guest
E. M. Forster: Howards End
Compton Mackenzie: Carnival
Hugh Walpole: The Dark Forest
Francis Brett Young: Portrait of Clare
D. H. Lawrence: Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, Tales, Fantasia of the Unconscious, poems
Katherine Mansfield: The Garden Party
Wyndham Lewis: Tarr
Virginia Woolf: Mrs Dalloway, The Common Reader
Naomi Mitchison: The Conquered
R. H. Mottram: The Spanish Farm
J. B. Priestley: Angel Pavement, plays
Stella Benson: The Little World
Charles Langbridge Morgan: Portrait in a Mirror
Aldous Huxley: Little Mexican, Brave New World, Jesting Pilate, stories, essays, poems
David Garnett: Lady into Fox, A Man in the Zoo
Henry Williamson: Tarka the Otter
L. A. G. Strong: Tuesday Afternoons
Evelyn Waugh: Decline and Fall
Denis Johnston: The Moon in the Yellow River
Seán O'Casey: Five Irish Plays
Norah Hoult: Poor Women
H. E. Bates: Thirty Tales

Other prose[]

C. M. Doughty: Travels in Arabia Deserta
W. H. Hudson: El Ombú, Birds and Men
Morley Roberts: The Western Avernus
Norman Douglas: South Wind, Old Calabria
R. B. Cunninghame Graham: Rodeo, Mogreb el-Acksa
Apsley Cherry-Garrard: The Worst Journey in the World
David Bone: The Brassbounder
H. M. Tomlinson: The Sea and the Jungle, Norman Douglas
C. E. Montague: Disenchantment, Fiery Particles
Havelock Ellis: Selected Essays
Graham Wallas: Human Nature in Politics
G. Lowes Dickinson: A Modern Symposium
W. R. Inge: Outspoken Essays
Bertrand Russell: What I Believe, On Education, Roads to Freedom
Alfred North Whitehead: Science and the Modern World
Arthur Stanley Eddington: The Nature of the Physical World
Hilaire Belloc: The Path to Rome, The Servile State, The Mercy of Allah, A Picked Company (picked by E. V. Lucas)
G. K. Chesterton: The Flying Inn, Charles Dickens, The Victorian Age in Literature, Autobiography, stories, essays, poems
Maurice Baring: Lost Diaries
W. N. P. Barbellion: The Journal of a Disappointed Man
Lytton Strachey: Queen Victoria
Max Beerbohm
Sir Edmund Gosse: Father and Son
Arthur Machen: Far Off Things
Arthur Quiller-Couch: On the Art of Reading
Alfred George Gardiner: Windfalls
E. V. Lucas: Loiterers' Harvest, The Gentlest Art (ed.)
Percy Lubbock: Earlham
Robert Lynd: Books and Authors

Poets[]

Algernon Charles Swinburne
W. B. Yeats
Lord Alfred Douglas
Robert Bridges
William Watson
A. E. Housman
George William Russell ("A. E.")
John Davidson
Alice Meynell
Laurence Binyon
Gordon Bottomley
W. H. Davies
Walter de la Mare
John Masefield
Ralph Hodgson
Edward Thomas
Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
James Stephens
Lascelles Abercrombie
John Drinkwater
Rupert Brooke
Charlotte Mew: The Farmer's Bride
James Elroy Flecker
Wilfred Owen
J. C. Squire
Edmund Blunden: Undertones of War
W. J. Turner: In Times Like Glass, Jack and Jill, Blow for Balloons
Robert Graves
Siegfried Sassoon
Robert Nichols: Ardours and Endurances
Edith Sitwell
Osbert Sitwell: Argonaut and Juggernaut
Sacheverell Sitwell: The 101 Harlequins
T. S. Eliot
James Joyce: Chamber Music, Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Richard Church: News from the Mountain
Roy Campbell: Adamastor
W. H. Auden: The Dance of Death, The Ascent of F6 (with Christopher Isherwood)
Cecil Day-Lewis
Louis MacNeice
Christopher Hassall: Devil's Dyke and Other Poems

Appendix (Penguin edition)[]

The Penguin edition of 1938 included an appendix of books they were offering in paperback for sixpence a volume. Those not already appearing above were:

W. H. Hudson: The Purple Land
George Bernard Shaw: Back to Methuselah, The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism, and Fascism
Alfred North Whitehead: Science and the Modern World
Roger Fry: Vision and Design
Olaf Stapledon: Last and First Men
W. W. Jacobs: Deep Waters
G. K. Chesterton: The Man Who was Thursday
E. C. Bentley: Trent's Last Case
P. G. Wodehouse: My Man Jeeves
E. M. Forster: A Passage to India
Hugh Walpole: Mr Perrin and Mr Traill
Francis Brett Young: The Crescent Moon
Aldous Huxley: Crome Yellow
Osbert Sitwell: Before the Bombardment

External links[]

Literary Taste: How to Form It at Internet Archive, Project Gutenberg and Google Books (scanned books, text, HTML and other formats)
Literary Taste: How to Form It, audio book at Librivox