We at Great Books are often asked for reading lists to support the suggested or required readings of school book lists. Below you will find some excerpts from a wide cross-section of world classics. Ranging from the ancient epics of Homer and Virgil to the puzzling pleasures of 20th century poets William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens, and including all the titans in between—Shakespeare, Dante, Keats, Milton, and Dostoevsky.

Enjoy getting to know a few of these authors of classic literature by browsing these selections.

• Frederick Douglass, "Learning to Read and Write"(link)
• Virgil, The Aeneid (link)
• William Shakespeare, The Tragedies (link)
• William Carlos Williams (link) and H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) (link)
• Henry David Thoreau, "Why I Went into the Woods" (link)
• Plato, The Trial of Socrates (link)
• Homer, Odyssey (link)
• Emily Dickinson (link)
• Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature (link)
• Dante, The Divine Comedy (link)
• Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself" from Leaves of Grass (link)
• T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (link)
• Thomas Hardy, "The Man He Killed," from The Dynasts (link)
• Benjamin Franklin, Concluding Address at the Constitutional Convention (link)
• John Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and "When I have fears that I may cease to be" (link)