The Library
91 classics, free to read online — each with a summary, themes, character guide, and a modern comparison translation alongside the original.
Philosophy
What is real, how to live
Plato's Dialogues
Six conversations around Socrates
- Apology Socrates defends himself, and loses on purpose.
- Crito A friend at the cell door, an argument against escape.
- Symposium Seven men, a lot of wine, and speeches on love.
- Phaedo The last hours, on the soul and what follows.
- The Republic What is justice? A city built in words to find out.
- Phaedrus A walk outside the walls; rhetoric, eros, the soul as chariot.
Aristotle
Ethics, politics, poetics
- Nicomachean Ethics How to live well, defined by the man who liked definitions.
- Politics Man is a political animal. Discuss.
- Poetics Why tragedy works, dissected.
The Stoics
Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius
- The Manual Pocket-sized stoicism, from a former slave.
- Meditations A Roman emperor talks to himself in the dark.
Christian Tradition
Augustine, à Kempis, Kierkegaard
- Confessions The first real autobiography — and an argument with God.
- The Imitation of Christ Devotional. The book second only to the Bible in old monastic cells.
- Fear and Trembling On Abraham, faith, and the things you can't explain.
Modern Philosophy
Descartes through Nietzsche
- Meditations on First Philosophy How to doubt everything, and then put a little back.
- Walden Two years in a cabin, and notes on what was simplified out.
- Utilitarianism Pleasure, pain, and how to add them up.
- Beyond Good and Evil A hammer, applied to morality.
- On the Genealogy of Morals Where our values came from, and who they served.
Politics & The State
Power, liberty, foundations
On the State
Constitutions, sovereignty, federalism
- Second Treatise of Government Where rights come from, and when revolution is permitted.
- The Social Contract Born free; everywhere in chains.
- Democracy in America A Frenchman tours America and figures out the future.
On Power & Tyranny
Machiavelli, Marx, and the dramatists
- The Prince How to take power and not lose it. Notoriously practical.
- The Communist Manifesto A specter is haunting Europe.
On Liberty
Rousseau, Wollstonecraft, Mill
- Discourse on the Origin of Inequality How property invented inequality, in two essays.
- A Vindication of the Rights of Woman The case for educating women, made when it still had to be made.
- On Liberty Where one person's freedom ends — and why it must end there.
Founding Documents
Magna Carta, US founding, Federalist
- Magna Carta The first time a king signed away some of the power.
- The US Founding Documents Declaration, Constitution, Bill of Rights — bundled.
- The Federalist Papers 85 essays defending a new constitution, published under "Publius."
Drama
The plays, in four Shakespearean modes and a Greek tradition
Shakespeare — Tragedies
Hamlet, Lear, Othello, Macbeth & co.
- Romeo and Juliet Two households, both alike in dignity.
- Julius Caesar Et tu, Brute?
- Hamlet A ghost, a prince, the great deferral.
- Othello Iago whispers; a great man unravels.
- King Lear Divide the kingdom, lose your mind.
- Macbeth Three witches, an ambitious wife, a tomorrow and tomorrow.
- Antony and Cleopatra Two empires, two egos, one Nile.
- Coriolanus A warrior who cannot bow to the crowd.
Shakespeare — Comedies
Romances, farces, problem plays
- The Taming of the Shrew A famously thorny courtship comedy.
- The Comedy of Errors Two sets of twins, one city, infinite confusion.
- A Midsummer Night's Dream Fairies, lovers, donkeys, and a play within a play.
- The Merchant of Venice A pound of flesh, a casket riddle, a courtroom turn.
- Much Ado About Nothing Banter, slander, and Beatrice.
- As You Like It All the world's a stage.
- Twelfth Night Shipwreck, cross-dressing, love at all the wrong angles.
- The Merry Wives of Windsor Falstaff tries to seduce two women; both notice.
- Measure for Measure A problem play about a problem deputy.
Shakespeare — Histories
The English chronicle plays
- Richard III A villain in soliloquy.
- Henry V Once more unto the breach.
- Henry IV, Part 2 Falstaff, and the price of becoming king.
Shakespeare — Romances
The late, strange plays
- The Winter's Tale Jealousy, sixteen years, a statue that breathes.
- The Tempest A magician on an island, settling accounts.
- Cymbeline A late romance with everything in it.
Greek Tragedy
Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides
- The Oresteia A house cursed; the birth of trial by jury.
- Antigone Bury your brother, defy the king.
- Medea A wife scorned, in a foreign land, with options.
- Oedipus Rex A king investigates a plague and finds himself at the bottom of it.
- Oedipus at Colonus The exiled king finds, at last, a place to die.
- The Bacchae A god comes home to a city that won't worship him.
Modern Drama
Goethe's Faust
- Faust, Part One A scholar bargains his soul; results immediately complicate.
Novels
Long-form prose, by tradition
The Russians
Dostoevsky and Tolstoy
- Notes from Underground I am a sick man — a spiteful man.
- Crime and Punishment A student commits a murder, then has to live with it.
- War and Peace Napoleon comes to Russia. So do five hundred other people.
- Anna Karenina All happy families are alike.
- The Brothers Karamazov Three brothers, one father, one murder, and God on trial.
19th-Century English Novels
Austen to Conrad
- Pride and Prejudice A truth universally acknowledged.
- Frankenstein The first science-fiction novel, written at nineteen.
- Jane Eyre Reader, she narrated it herself.
- Great Expectations A blacksmith's boy, a strange benefactor, a London education.
- Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde A respectable doctor, a chemical, a second self.
- Heart of Darkness A boat up the Congo, and what it found there.
American Novels
Melville and Chopin
- Moby Dick Call me Ishmael. The rest is the whale.
- The Awakening A woman in Louisiana realizes she's allowed to want.
Modernism
A new century, a new sentence
- Ulysses One day in Dublin, told several different ways.
Nordic Novels
Jacobsen and Lagerlöf
- Niels Lyhne A Danish atheist dreams, loses, and dies. Rilke loved it.
- Jerusalem A Swedish village uprooted by faith, headed for the holy land.
Satire
Voltaire and the philosophical tale
- Candide A young optimist tours the worst of all possible worlds.
Poetry & Epic
From Gilgamesh to Milton
Ancient Epics
Gilgamesh, Homer, Virgil
- The Epic of Gilgamesh The oldest surviving story — a king's grief and the search for what cannot die.
- The Iliad The wrath of Achilles, and the long siege of Troy.
- The Odyssey A long way home, by way of every sea-monster between.
- The Aeneid A refugee from Troy founds Rome, sort of.
Sacred Epics
Dante and Milton
- The Divine Comedy A guided tour of hell, purgatory, and paradise — in terza rima.
- Paradise Lost The fall, in twelve books of blank verse.
Medieval Epics
Beowulf
- Beowulf Monsters, mead-halls, alliterative grandeur.
Scripture & Devotion
Sacred texts and contemplatives
Bible & Devotion
Scripture, and the books read alongside it
- The Bible Sixty-six books, two testaments. The library inside the library.
History
The first historians
Ancient History
The first historians
- The Histories The first history book, half ethnography and half tall tale.
- History of the Peloponnesian War Athens versus Sparta, by a participant who took notes.
War & Strategy
The art of conflict, and its history
Strategy
The art of conflict
- The Art of War Win without fighting, when you can.
For Younger Readers
Classics that grew up readers
Children's Classics
Books that grew up readers
- Around the World in Eighty Days Phileas Fogg bets the club; the clock starts.
- The Jungle Book A boy raised by wolves; assorted other tales.
- A Little Princess A girl loses everything; her imagination keeps her warm.