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The Belle Letter Guide

Works from the dead that should, nevertheless, be read

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This list is curated upon the idea that not every reader can read every book. There is, then, for most, a need for some sort of guide to literature, an introductory reference page of the worthwhile, so that the busy reader can best maximize both himself and his time. This is a working attempt at such a thing, a short list of the most belle of letters, from which a reader can begin his reading journey from the widest base and with the firmest footing, sure to have spent his formative reading within the pages that form of him the best mold.

In the spirit of introduction, it is the intention to keep the list limited to under fifty titles.

The current list is not to be considered final nor exhaustive, and it is edited and added to regularly. Cases where a listed title may not currently have any accompanying information are either those where such such is forthcoming or those where the title has enough written about it elsewhere that anything here has been deemed unnecessary.

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  • The Illiad (8th Century BC) by Homer
  • The Odyssey (8th Century BC) by Homer
  • The Aeneid (19 BC) by Virgil
  • The Matter of BC by Various
  • On the Deeds of the Britons (1136 AD) by Geoffrey of Monmouth
  • Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart (1181 AD) by Chrétien de Troyes
  • The Divine Comedy (1321 AD) by Dante
  • The Decameron (1353 AD) by Boccaccio
  • The Canterbury Tales (1400 AD) by Geoffrey Chaucer
  • Paradise Lost (1667 AD) John Milton
  • The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678 AD) by John Bunyan
  • Gulliver’s Travels (1726 AD) by Jonathan Swift
  • Candide (1759 AD) by Voltaire
  • The Vicar of Wakefield (1766 AD) by Oliver Goldsmith
  • David Copperfield (1850 AD) by Charles Dickens
  • Madame Bovary (1857 AD) by Gustave Flaubert
  • The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884 AD) by Mark Twain
  • The Call of the Wild (1903 AD) by Jack London
  • The Trial (1915 AD) by Franz Kafka
  • The Castle (1922 AD) by Franz Kafka
  • The Great Gatsby (1925 AD) by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • Brave New World (1932 AD) by Aldous Huxley
  • The Day of the Locust (1939 AD) by Nathanael West
  • Animal Farm (1945 AD) by George Orwell
  • 1984 (1948 AD) by George Orwell
  • Fahrenheit 451 (1953 AD) by Ray Bradbury