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WRITING TOOLS
Books to know

“A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness."

--Robert Frost

Below is a list of famous poems by famous poets that students should know going into a college literary class. Like all poems, these should be reread as once gets older, as the poems will change meaning with the reader.
Mr. Coon’s American Canon Reading List
 

Benjamin Franklin (1706--1790)
  • Letters of Silence Dogood
  • Autobiography of Ben Franklin
  • Poor Richard’s Almanack
 
Thomas Paine (1737–1809)
  • “Common Sense”
 
Washington Irving (1783–1859)
  • “Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
  • “Rip Van Winkle”
 
James Fennimore Cooper (1789–1851)
  • The Last of the Mohicans
 
Catherine Maria Sedgwick (1789-1867)
  • Hope Leslie
 
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864)
  • The House of Seven Gables
  • The Scarlet Letter
  •  “Young Goodman Brown”
  • “Rappaccini’s Daughter”
 
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
  • “The Fall of the House of Usher”
  • “A Cask of Amontillado”
  • “The Tell-Tale Heart”
  • “The Pit and the Pendulum”
  • “The Purloined Letter”
  • “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”
 
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896)
  • Uncle Tom’s Cabin
 
Frederick Douglass (1817–1882)
  • Life of an American Slave
 
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
  • Walden
  • “Civil Disobedience”
 
Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
  • Leaves of Grass
 
Herman Melville (1819–1891)
  • Moby Dick
  • “Bartleby the Scrivener”
  • “Benito Cereno”
 
Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888)
  • Little Women
 
Mark Twain (1835–1910)
  • The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
  • The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
 
Henry James (1843–1916)
  • The Portrait of a Lady
  • The Turn of the Screw
 
Kate Chopin (1851–1904)
  • The Awakening
 
O. Henry (1862–1910)
  •  “The Cop and the Anthem”
  • “The Gift of the Magi”
  • “The Ransom of Red Chief”
  • “A Retrieved Reformation”
 
Edith Wharton (1862–1937)
  • The Age of Innocence
  • Ethan Fromme
 
Edgar Lee Masters (1868–1950)
  • Spoon River Anthology
 
Stephen Crane (1871–1900)
  • The Red Badge of Courage
 
Theodore Dreiser (1871–1845)
  • An American Tragedy
  • Sister Carrie
 
Willa Cather (1873–1947)
  • My Antonia
  • O Pioneers!
 
Jack London (1876–1916)
  • The Call of the Wild
  • “To Build a Fire”
 
Upton Sinclair (1878–1968)
  • The Jungle
 
Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951)
  • Main Street
  • Babbitt
 
 
 
Eugene O’Neill (1888–1953)
  • The Hairy Ape 
  • The Iceman Cometh
  • Long Day’s Journey into Night 
 
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973)
  • The Good Earth
 
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
  • The Great Gatsby
 
William Faulkner (1897–1962)
  • As I Lay Dying
  • Light in August
  • The Sound and the Fury
  • “A Rose for Emily”
 
Thornton Wilder (1897–1975)
  • Our Town
 
Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
  • A Farewell to Arms
  • For Whom the Bell Tolls
  • The Old Man and the Sea
  • The Sun Also Rises
  • “A Clean Well-Lighted Place”
 
John Steinbeck (1902–1968)
  • Cannery Row
  • East of Eden
  • The Grapes of Wrath
  • Of Mice and Men
  • The Pearl
  • Travels with Charley
 
Zora Neale Hurston (1903–1960)
  • Their Eyes Were Watching God
 
Richard Wright (1908–1960)
  • Black Boy
  • Native Son
 
Tennessee Williams (1911–1983)
  • A Streetcar Named Desire
  • Cat on a Hot Tin Roof 
  • The Glass Menagerie 
 
William Burroughs (1914–1997)
  • Naked Lunch
 
Anthony Burgess (1917-1993)
  • A Clockwork Orange
 
Saul Bellow (1915–2005)
  • The Adventures of Augie March

Arthur Miller (1915–2005)
  • Death of a Salesman 
  • The Crucible 
 
Shirley Jackson (1916–1965)
  • “The Lottery”
 
J. D. Salinger (1919–2010)
  • Catcher in the Rye
  • “A Perfect Day for Bananafish”
 
Ray Bradbury (1920–2012)
  • The Martian Chronicles
  • Fahrenheit 451
  • “A Sound of Thunder”
 
Jack Kerouac (1922–1969)
  • On the Road
 
Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007)
  • Cat’s Cradle
  • God Bless you, Mr. Rosewater
  • Slaughterhouse-Five
  • Welcome to the Monkey House
 
Joseph Heller (1923–1999)
  • Catch-22
 
Truman Capote (1924–1984)
  • In Cold Blood
  • Breakfast at Tiffany’s
 
Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964)
  • “A Good Man is Hard to Find”
 
Harper Lee (1926–)
  • To Kill a Mockingbird
 
Allen Ginsberg (1926--1997)
  • “Howl”
 
Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927–)
  • One Hundred Years of Solitude
  • Love in the Time of Cholera
  • “Innocent Erindera”
 
Edward Albee (1928–)
  • The Zoo Story 
  • Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? 
 
 
 
E. L. Doctorow (1931– )
  • Ragtime
 
Toni Morrison (1931– )
  • Beloved
 
Tom Wolfe (1931– )
  • The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
 
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963)
  • The Bell Jar
 
John Updike (1932– 2009)
  • Rabbit Run
  • “A & P”
 
Cormac McCarthy (1933– )
  • The Road
 
Mario Vargas Llosa (1936--)
  • Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter
  • The Bad Girl
  • The Feast of the Goat
 
Don DeLillo (1936–)
  • Underworld
  • White Noise
 
John Kennedy Toole (1937–1969)
  • A Confederacy of Dunces
 
Rudolfo Anaya (1937–)
  • Bless Me, Ultima
 
Hunter S. Thompson (1937--2005)
  • Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
 
Joyce Carol Oates (1938– )
  •  “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”
 
Margaret Atwood (1939– )
  • The Handmaid’s Tale
 
Isabel Allende (1942–)
  • City of Beasts
  • The House of Spirits
 
August Wilson (1945–2005 )
  • Joe Turner has Come and Gone
  • Fences
 
Tim O’Brien (1946--)
  • The Things They Carried
Julia Alvarez (1950–)
  • In the Time of the Butterflies
  • In the Name of Salome
  • How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents
 
Jon Krakauer (1954--)
  • Into the Wild
  • Under the Banner of Heaven
 
Barbara Kingsolver (1955–)
  • Animal Dreams
  • Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
  • The Poisonwood Bible
 
Achy Obejas (1956--)
  • Days of Awe
  • Memory Mambo
  • Ruins
 
David Sedaris (1956--)
  • Naked
  • Me Talk Pretty One Day
 
Chuck Palahniuk (1962--)
  • Choke
  • Fight Club
  • Haunted
 
David Foster Wallace (1962–2008)
  • Consider the Lobster
  • Infinite Jest
 
Michael Chabon (1963--)
  • Yiddish Policeman’s Union
  •  Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
 
Malcolm Gladwell (1963--)
  • The Tipping Point
  • Blink
  • Outliers
 
Augusten Burroughs (1965--)
  • Dry
  • Running with Scissors
  • The Wolf at the Table
 
Junot Diaz (1968--)
  • The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
 
Dave Eggers (1970--)
  • What is the What
  • Zeitoun

Mr. Coon’s European Canon Reading List
 

Homer (ca. 8th century BCE)
  • The Iliad
  • The Odyssey
 
Unknown (ca. 7th century BCE)
  • The Epic of Gilgamesh
 
Sophocles (496 BCE-406 BCE)
  • Antigone
  • Oedipus at Colonus
  • Oedipus Rex
 
Euripides (480 BCE-406 BCE)
  • Medea
  • The Trojan Women
 
Aristophanes (446 BCE–386 BCE)
  • The Clouds
  • The Frogs
  • Lysistrata
 
Plato (424 BCE—348 BCE)
  • The Republic
  • Symposium
 
Aristotle (384 BCE–322 BCE)
  • “On Virtues and Vices”
  • “Poetics”
 
Virgil (70 BCE-19 BCE)
  • Aeneid
  • Eclogues
 
Ovid (43 BCE-17 CE)
  • Metamorphoses
 
Marcus Aurelius (121-180)
  • Meditations
 
Unknown Medieval Authors
  • Beowulf
  • Everyman
  • The Saga of the Volsungs
  • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
  • Song of Roland
 
 
Maimonides (1135-1204)
  • The Guide for the Perplexed
 
 
Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)
  • Summa Theologica
 
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)
  • Inferno
  • La Vita Nuova
 
Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400)
  • The Canterbury Tales
 
Thomas Malory (1409-1470)
  • Le Morte d’Arthur
 
Unknown (13th century)
  • The Arabian Nights
 
Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527)
  • The Prince
 
Thomas More (1476-1535)
  • Utopia
 
Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616)
  • Don Quixote
 
Edmund Spenser (1552-1599)
  • The Faerie Queen
 
Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)
  • Doctor Faustus
 
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
  • Hamlet
  • Henry IV
  • Julius Caesar
  • King Lear
  • Macbeth
  • The Merchant of Venice
  • A Midsummer Night’s Dream
  • Othello
  • Richard III
  • Romeo and Juliet
  • The Merchant of Venice
  • Twelfth Night
 
Lope de Vega (1568-1635)
  • Fuenteovejuna
 
John Milton (1608-1674)
  • Paradise Lost
 
Moliere (1622-1673)
  • The Miser
  • The Misanthrope
  • Tartuffe
 
John Locke (1632-1704)
  • Two Treatises of Government
  • “Essay Concerning Human Understanding”
 
Jonathan Swift (1667-1794)
  • Gulliver’s Travels
  • A Modest Proposal
 
Daniel Defoe (1659-1731)
  • Robinson Crusoe
 
Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
  • “An Essay on Man”
  • “The Rape of the Lock”
 
Voltaire (1694--1778
  • Candide
 
Jane Austin (1775-1817)
  • Emma
  • Pride and Prejudice
  • Sense and Sensibility
 
Mary Shelley (1797-1851)
  • Frankenstein
 
Alexandre Dumas (1802--1870)
  • The Man in the Iron Mask
  • The Three Musketeers
 
Victor Hugo (1802--1870)
  • The Hunchback of Notre Dame
  • Les Miserables
 
Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
  • A Christmas Carol
  • Great Expectations
  • Oliver Twist
  • A Tale of Two Cities
 
Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855)
  • Jane Eyre
 
Emily Bronte (1818-1848)
  • Wuthering Heights
 
George Eliot (1819-1880)
  • Middlemarch
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821--1881)
  • The Brother Karamazov
  • Crime and Punishment
  • Notes from the Underground
 
Jules Verne (1828–1905)
  • 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
  • Around the World in Eighty Days
  • Journey to the Center of the Earth
 
Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910)
  • Anna Karenina
 
Henrik Ibsen (1828--1906)
  • A Doll’s House
  • Enemy of the People
 
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
  • Tess of the D’Ubervilles
 
Bram Stoker (1847-1912)
  • Dracula
 
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)
  • Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
  • Treasure Island
 
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
  •  The Importance of Being Earnest
  • “The Critic as Artist”
 
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
  • Pygmalion
 
Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)
  • Heart of Darkness
 
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)
  • The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
 
Anton Chekhov (1860--1904)
  • The Cherry Orchard
  • The Three Sisters
 
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
  • The Jungle Book
  • Just So Stories
 
H.G. Wells (1866-1946)
  • The Invisible Man
  • The Island of Dr. Moreau
 
W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)
  • Of Human Bondage
 
E.M. Forster (1879-1970)
  • A Passage to India
  • A Room with a View
 
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)
  • Mrs. Dalloway
  • To the Lighthouse
  • “A Room of One’s Own”
 
James Joyce (1882--1941)
  • Dubliners
  • Portrait of the Artist
  • Ulysses
 
Franz Kafka (1883--1924)
  • The Metamorphosis
  • The Trial
 
D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930)
  • Lady Chatterley’s Lover
  • Sons and Lovers
  •  “On Pornography and Obscenity”
 
Jean Rhys (1890--1979)
  • Wide Sargasso Sea
 
Richard Connell (1893–1949)
  • “The Most Dangerous Game”
 
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
  • Brave New World
 
Vladimir Nabokov (1899--1977)
  • Lolita
 
George Orwell (1903-1950)
  • 1984
  • Animal Farm
 
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966)
  • Brideshead Revisited
  • Scoop
 
Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)
  • Waiting for Godot
 
Daphne du Maurier (1907–1989)
  • Rebecca
 
Eugene Ionesco (1909--1994)
  • Rhinoceros
 
 
 
William Golding (1911-1993)
  • Lord of the Flies
 
Albert Camus (1913--1960)
  • The Stranger
 
Aleksander Solzhentsyn (1918--2008)
  • One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
 
John Fowles (1926–2005)
  • The Collector
 
Elie Wiesel (1928--)
  • Night
 
Chinua Achebe (1930--2013)
  • Things Fall Apart
 
Salman Rushdie (1947--)
  • Midnight’s Children
  • The Satanic Verses
 
Kazui Ishiguro (1954—)
  •  The Remains of the day
  • Never Let Me Go
 
Nick Hornby (1957–)
  • High Fidelity
  • About a Boy
 
Neil Gaiman (1960–
  • American Gods
  • Good Omens
 
Mark Mathabane (1960--)
  • Kaffir Boy
 
Mark Haddon (1962--)
  • The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
 
Khaled Hosseini (1965--)
  • The Kite Runner
  • A Thousand Splendid Suns
 
Zadie Smith (1975--)
  • On Beauty
  • White Teeth
 
Markus Zusak (1975–)
  • The Book Thief
 
Ishmael Beah (1980--)
  • A Long Way Gone
© COPYRIGHT BRANDON COON, 2020. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  • Basics
    • 10 Rules
    • Setting
    • Genre
    • Structure >
      • Novel Forms
      • Poem Forms
      • Myth Forms
      • Play Forms
    • Style >
      • Analogy
      • Irony
      • Sonance
      • Parallelism
      • Solecism
    • Purpose
    • Glossary
    • Need a Word?
  • Story
    • Conflict
    • Character
    • Archetypes
    • Perspective
    • Starts & Ends
    • PULSE
    • Dialogue
  • Analysis
    • Theme+
    • How to read a... >
      • Poem
      • Play
      • Film
      • Image
      • Comic
    • Intertextuality
    • Lit Movements
    • Critical Lenses >
      • Marxism
      • Postcolonialism
      • Feminism
      • Queer
      • Ecocritical
      • Affliction
      • Psychoanalysis
      • Reader Response
  • Edifiers
    • Essays >
      • Precis
      • College Essay
    • Rhetoric >
      • Thesis
      • Appeals
      • Fallacies
    • Journalism >
      • Ethics
      • AP Style
      • Interviewing
      • Articles >
        • Headlines
        • News
        • Reviews
        • Opinions
    • Metiers >
      • Resume+
      • Speeches
  • Research
    • Source Citation >
      • MLA Citation
      • APA Citation
      • In-Text
    • Copyright
    • How to quote
    • How to Make a... >
      • Bibliograpy
      • Annotated Bib.
      • Abstract
      • Ignite
  • Grammar
    • Parts of Speech >
      • Nouns
      • Main Verbs
      • Helping Verbs
      • Verbals
      • Modifiers
      • Pronouns
      • Conjunctions
    • Mechanics >
      • Punctuation
      • Commas
      • Parentheticals
    • Usage >
      • Titles
      • Numbers
      • Decency
      • Respect
      • Yellow Words
    • Print Format