A LIST OF THE 812 VOLUMES ARRANGED UNDER AUTHORS by Homer: Summary, Meaning & Analysis
This isn’t a poem in the usual way — it’s a list of 812 books from the Everyman’s Library series, a notable publishing project from the early 20th century that made great literature accessible in affordable hardback editions.
The poem
_Anonymous works are given under titles._ _Anthologies, etc., are arranged at the end of the list._ Abbott's Rollo at Work, etc., 275 Addison's Spectator, 164-167 Æschylus' Lyrical Dramas, 62 Æsop's and Other Fables, 657 Aimard's The Indian Scout, 428 Ainsworth's Tower of London, 400 " Old St. Paul's, 522 " Windsor Castle, 709 " The Admirable Crichton, 804 A'Kempis' Imitation of Christ, 484 Alcott's Little Women, and Good Wives, 248 " Little Men, 512 Alpine Club. Peaks, Passes and Glaciers, 778 Andersen's Fairy Tales, 4 Anglo-Saxon Poetry, 794 Anson's Voyages, 510 Aristophanes' The Acharnians, etc., 344 " The Frogs, etc., 516 Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, 547 " Politics, 605 Armour's Fall of the Nibelung, 312 Arnold's (Matthew) Essays, 115 " Poems, 334 " Study of Celtic Literature, etc., 458 Aucassin and Nicolette, 497 Augustine's (Saint) Confessions, 200 Aurelius' (Marcus) Golden Book, 9 Austen's (Jane) Sense and Sensibility, 21 " Pride and Prejudice, 22 " Mansfield Park, 23 " Emma, 24 " Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion, 25 Bacon's Essays, 10 " Advancement of Learning, 719 Bagehot's Literary Studies, 520, 521 Baker's (Sir S. W.) Cast up by the Sea, 539 Ballantyne's Coral Island, 245 " Martin Rattler, 246 " Ungava, 276 Balzac's Wild Ass's Skin, 26 " Eugénie Grandet, 169 " Old Goriot, 170 " Atheist's Mass, etc., 229 " Christ in Flanders, etc., 284 " The Chouans, 285 " Quest of the Absolute, 286 " Cat and Racket, etc., 349 " Catherine de Medici, 419 " Cousin Pons, 463 " The Country Doctor, 520 " Rise and Fall of César Birotteau, 596 " Lost Illusions, 656 " The Country Parson, 686 " Ursule Mirouët, 733 Barbusse's Under Fire, 798 Barca's (Mme. C. de la) Life in Mexico, 664 Bates' Naturalist on the Amazons, 446 Beaumont and Fletcher's Select Plays, 506 Beaumont's (Mary) Joan Seaton, 597 Bede's Ecclesiastical History, etc., 479 Belt's The Naturalist in Nicaragua, 561 Berkeley's (Bishop) Principles of Human Knowledge, New Theory of Vision, etc., 483 Berlioz (Hector), Life of, 602 Binns' Life of Abraham Lincoln, 783 Björnson's Plays, 625, 696 Blackmore's Lorna Doone, 304 " Springhaven, 350 Blackwell's Pioneer Work for Women, 667 Blake's Poems and Prophecies, 792 Boehme's The Signature of All Things, etc., 569 Bonaventura's The Little Flowers, The Life of St. Francis, etc., 485 Borrow's Wild Wales, 49 " Lavengro, 119 " Romany Rye, 120 " Bible in Spain, 151 " Gypsies in Spain, 697 Boswell's Life of Johnson, 1, 2 " Tour in the Hebrides, etc., 387 Boult's Asgard and Norse Heroes, 689 Boyle's The Sceptical Chymist, 559 Bright's (John) Speeches, 252 Brontë's (A.) The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, 685 Brontë's (C.) Jane Eyre, 287 " Shirley, 288 " Villette, 351 " The Professor, 417 Brontë's (E.) Wuthering Heights, 243 Brooke's (Stopford A.) Theology in the English Poets, 493 Brown's (Dr. John) Rab and His Friends, etc., 116 Browne's (Frances) Grannie's Wonderful Chair, 112 Browne's (Sir Thos.) Religio Medici, etc., 92 Browning's Poems, 1833-1844, 41 " " 1844-1864, 42 " The Ring and the Book, 502 Buchanan's Life and Adventures of Audubon, 601 Bulfinch's The Age of Fable, 472 " Legends of Charlemagne, 556 Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, 204 Burke's American Speeches and Letters, 340 " Reflections on the French Revolution, etc., 460 Burnet's History of His Own Times, 85 Burney's Evelina, 352 Burns' Poems and Songs, 94 Burrell's Volume of Heroic Verse, 574 Burton's East Africa, 500 Butler's Analogy of Religion, 90 Buxton's Memoirs, 773 Byron's Complete Poetical and Dramatic Works, 486-488 Cæsar's Gallic War, etc., 702 Canton's Child's Book of Saints, 61 Canton's Invisible Playmate, etc., 566 Carlyle's French Revolution, 31, 32 " Letters, etc., of Cromwell, 266-268 " Sartor Resartus, 278 " Past and Present, 608 " Essays, 703, 704 Castiglione's The Courtier, 807 Cellini's Autobiography, 51 Cervantes' Don Quixote, 385, 386 Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, 307 Chrétien de Troyes' Eric and Enid, 698 Cibber's Apology for his Life, 668 Cicero's Select Letters and Orations, 345 Clarke's Tales from Chaucer, 537 " Shakespeare's Heroines, 109-111 Cobbett's Rural Rides, 638, 639 Coleridge's Biographia, 11 " Golden Book, 43 " Lectures on Shakespeare, 162 Collins' Woman in White, 464 Collodi's Pinocchio, 538 Converse's Long Will, 328 Cook's Voyages, 99 Cooper's The Deerslayer, 77 " The Pathfinder, 78 " Last of the Mohicans, 79 " The Pioneer, 171 " The Prairie, 172 Cousin's Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, 449 Cowper's Letters, 774 Cox's Tales of Ancient Greece, 721 Craik's Manual of English Literature, 346 Craik (Mrs.). _See_ Mulock. Creasy's Fifteen Decisive Battles, 300 Crèvecœur's Letters from an American Farmer, 640 Curtis's Prue and I, and Lotus, 418 Curtis and Robinson's Fairy Tales from the Arabian Nights, 249 Dana's Two Years Before the Mast, 588 Dante's Divine Comedy, 308 Darwin's Origin of Species, 811 Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle, 104 Dasent's The Story of Burnt Njal, 558 Daudet's Tartarin of Tarascon, 423 Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, 59 " Captain Singleton, 74 " Memoirs of a Cavalier, 283 " Journal of Plague, 289 De Joinville's Memoirs of the Crusades, 333 Demosthenes' Select Orations, 546 Dennis' Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, 183, 184 De Quincey's Lake Poets, 163 " Opium-Eater, 223 " English Mail Coach, etc., 609 De Retz (Cardinal), Memoirs of, 735, 736 Descartes' Discourse on Method, 570 Dickens' Barnaby Rudge, 76 " Tale of Two Cities, 102 " Old Curiosity Shop, 173 " Oliver Twist, 233 " Great Expectations, 234 " Pickwick Papers, 235 " Bleak House, 236 " Sketches by Boz, 237 " Nicholas Nickleby, 238 " Christmas Books, 239 " Dombey & Son, 240 " Martin Chuzzlewit, 241 " David Copperfield, 242 " American Notes, 290 " Child's History of England, 291 " Hard Times, 292 " Little Dorrit, 293 " Our Mutual Friend, 294 " Christmas Stories, 414 " Uncommercial Traveller, 536 " Edwin Drood, 725 " Reprinted Pieces, 744 Disraeli's Coningsby, 535 Dixon's Fairy Tales from Arabian Nights, 249 Dodge's Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates, 620 Dostoieffsky's Crime and Punishment, 501 " The House of the Dead, or Prison Life in Siberia, 533 " Letters from the Underworld, etc., 654 " The Idiot, 682 " Poor Folk, and the Gambler, 711 " The Brothers Karamazov, 802, 803 Dowden's Life of R. Browning, 701 Dryden's Dramatic Essays, 568 Dufferin's Letters from High Latitudes, 499 Dumas' The Three Musketeers, 81 " The Black Tulip, 174 " Twenty Years After, 175 " Marguerite de Valois, 326 " The Count of Monte Cristo, 393, 394 " The Forty-Five, 420 " Chicot the Jester, 421 " Vicomte de Bragelonne, 593-595 Dumas' Le Chevalier de Maison Rouge, 614 Duruy's History of France, 737, 738 Edgar's Cressy and Poictiers, 17 " Runnymede and Lincoln Fair, 320 " Heroes of England, 471 Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent, etc., 410 Edwardes and Spence's Dictionary of Non-Classical Mythology, 632 Eliot's Adam Bede, 27 " Silas Marner, 121 " Romola, 231 " Mill on the Floss, 325 " Felix Holt, 353 " Scenes of Clerical Life, 468 Elizabethan Drama (Minor), 491, 492 Elyot's Gouernour, 227 Emerson's Essays, 12 " Representative Men, 279 " Nature, Conduct of Life, etc., 322 " Society and Solitude, etc., 567 " Poems, 715 Epictetus' Moral Discourses, etc., 404 Erckmann-Chatrian's The Conscript and Waterloo, 354 " Story of a Peasant, 706, 707 Euripides' Plays, 63, 271 Evans' Holy Graal, 445 Evelyn's Diary, 220, 221 Everyman, and Other Interludes, 381 Ewing's (Mrs.) Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances, and other Stories, 730 " Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot, and The Story of a Short Life, 731 Faraday's Experimental Researches in Electricity, 576 Fielding's Tom Jones, 355, 356 " Joseph Andrews, 467 Finlay's Byzantine Empire, 33 " Greece under the Romans, 185 Flaubert's Madame Bovary, 808 Fletcher's (Beaumont and) Select Plays, 506 Ford's Gatherings from Spain, 152 Forster's Life of Dickens, 781, 782 Fox's Journal, 754 Fox's Selected Speeches, 759 Francis' (Saint), The Little Flowers, etc., 485 Franklin's Journey to Polar Sea, 447 Freeman's Old English History for Children, 540 Froissart's Chronicles, 57 Froude's Short Studies, 13, 705 " Henry VIII., 372-374 " Edward VI., 375 " Mary Tudor, 477 " History of Queen Elizabeth's Reign, 583-587 " Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Beaconsfield, 666 Gait's Annals of the Parish, 427 Galton's Inquiries into Human Faculty, 263 Gaskell's Cranford, 83 " Charlotte Bronte, 318 " Sylvia's Lovers, 524 " Mary Barton, 598 " Cousin Phillis, etc., 615 " North and South, 680 Gatty's Parables from Nature, 158 Geoffrey of Monmouth's Histories of the Kings of Britain, 577 George's Progress and Poverty, 560 Gibbon's Roman Empire, 434-436, 474-476 " Autobiography, 511 Gilfillan's Literary Portraits, 348 Giraldus Cambrensis, 272 Gleig's Life of Wellington, 341 " The Subaltern, 708 Goethe's Faust (Parts I. and II.), 335 " Wilhelm Meister, 599, 600 Gogol's Dead Souls, 726 " Taras Bulba, 740 Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, 295 " Poems and Plays, 415 Gorki's Through Russia, 741 Gotthelf's Ulric the Farm Servant, 228 Gray's Poems and Letters, 628 Green's Short History of the English People, 727, 728. The cloth edition is in 2 vols. or 1 vol. All other editions are in 1 vol. Grettir Saga, 699 Grimms' Fairy Tales, 56 Grote's History of Greece, 186-197 Guest's (Lady) Mabinogion, 97 Hahnemann's The Organon of the Rational Art of Healing, 663 Hakluyt's Voyages, 264, 265, 313, 314, 338, 339, 388, 389 Hallam's Constitutional History, 621-623 Hamilton's The Federalist, 519 Harte's Luck of Roaring Camp, 681 Harvey's Circulation of Blood, 262 Hawthorne's Wonder Book, 5 " The Scarlet Letter, 122 " House of Seven Gables, 176 " The Marble Faun, 424 " Twice Told Tales, 531 " Blithedale Romance, 592 Hazlitt's Shakespeare's Characters, 65 " Table Talk, 321 " Lectures, 411 " Spirit of the Age and Lectures on English Poets, 459 Hebbel's Plays, 694 Heimskringla, 717 Helps' (Sir Arthur) Life of Columbus, 332 Herbert's Temple, 309 Herodotus (Rawlinson's), 405, 406 Herrick's Hesperides, 310 Hobbes' Leviathan, 691 Holinshed's Chronicle, 800 Holmes' Life of Mozart, 564 Holmes' (O. W.) Autocrat, 66 " Professor, 67 " Poet, 68 Homer's Iliad, 453 " Odyssey, 454 Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, 201, 202 Horace's Complete Poetical Works, 515 Houghton's Life and Letters of Keats, 801 Hughes' Tom Brown's Schooldays, 58 Hugo's (Victor) Les Misérables, 363, 364 " Notre Dame, 422 " Toilers of the Sea, 509 Hume's Treatise of Human Nature, etc., 548, 549 Hutchinson's (Col.) Memoirs, 317 Hutchinson's (W. M. L.) Muses' Pageant, 581, 606, 671 Huxley's Man's Place in Nature, 47 " Select Lectures and Lay Sermons, 498 Ibsen's The Doll's House, etc., 494 " Ghosts, etc., 552 " Pretenders, Pillars of Society, etc., 659 " Brand, 716 " Lady Inger, etc., 729 " Peer Gynt, 747 Ingelow's Mopsa the Fairy, 619 Ingram's Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 624 Irving's Sketch Book, 117 " Conquest of Granada, 478 " Life of Mahomet, 513 James' (G. P. R.) Richelieu, 357 James (Wm.), Selections from, 739 Johnson's (Dr.) Lives of the Poets, 770-771 Johnson's (R. B.) Book of English Ballads, 572 Jonson's (Ben) Plays, 489, 490 Josephus' Wars of the Jews, 712 Kalidasa's Shakuntala, 629 Keats' Poems, 101 Keble's Christian Year, 690 King's Life of Mazzini, 562 Kinglake's Eothen, 337 Kingsley's (Chas.) Westward Ho!, 20 " Heroes, 113 " Hypatia, 230 " Water Babies and Glaucus, 277 " Hereward the Wake, 296 " Alton Locke, 462 " Yeast, 611 " Madam How and Lady Why, 777 " Poems, 793 Kingsley's (Henry) Ravenshoe, 28 " Geoffrey Hamlyn, 416 Kingston's Peter the Whaler, 6 " Three Midshipmen, 7 Kirby's Kalevala, 259-60 Koran, 380 Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare, 8 " Essays of Elia, 14 " Letters, 342, 343 Lane's Modern Egyptians, 315 Langland's Piers Plowman, 571 Latimer's Sermons, 40 Law's Serious Call, 91 Layamon's (Wace and) Arthurian Chronicles, 578 Lear (and others), A Book of Nonsense, 806 Le Sage's Gil Blas, 437, 438 Leslie's Memoirs of John Constable, 563 Lever's Harry Lorrequer, 177 Lewes' Life of Goethe, 269 Lincoln's Speeches, etc., 206 Livy's History of Rome, 603, 669, 670, 749, 755, 756 Locke's Civil Government, 751 Lockhart's Life of Napoleon, 3 " Life of Scott, 55 " Burns, 156 Longfellow's Poems, 382 Lönnrott's Kalevala, 259, 260 Lover's Handy Andy, 178 Lowell's Among My Books, 607 Lucretius: Of the Nature of Things, 750 Lützow's History of Bohemia, 432 Lyell's Antiquity of Man, 700 Lytton's Harold, 15 " Last of the Barons, 18 " Last Days of Pompeii, 80 " Pilgrims of the Rhine, 390 " Rienzi, 532 Macaulay's England, 34-36 " Essays, 225, 226 " Speeches on Politics, etc., 399 " Miscellaneous Essays, 439 MacDonald's Sir Gibbie, 678 " Phantastes, 732 Machiavelli's Prince, 280 " Florence, 376 Maine's Ancient Law, 734 Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur, 45, 46 Malthus on the Principles of Population, 692, 693 Mandeville's Travels, 812 Manning's Sir Thomas More, 19 " Mary Powell, and Deborah's Diary, 324 Marcus Aurelius' Golden Book, 9 Marlowe's Plays and Poems, 383 Marryat's Mr. Midshipman Easy, 82 " Little Savage, 159 " Masterman Ready, 160 " Peter Simple, 232 " Children of New Forest, 247 " Percival Keene, 358 " Settlers in Canada, 370 " King's Own, 580 Marryat's Jacob Faithful, 618 Martineau's Feats on the Fjords, 429 Martinengo-Cesaresco's Folk-Lore and Other Essays, 673 Mason's French Mediaeval Romances, 557 Maurice's Kingdom of Christ, 146, 147 Mazzini's Duties of Man, etc., 224 Melville's Moby Dick, 179 " Typee, 180 " Omoo, 297 Merivale's History of Rome, 433 Mignet's French Revolution, 713 Mill's Utilitarianism, Liberty, Representative Government, 482 Miller's Old Red Sandstone, 103 Milman's History of the Jews, 377, 378 Milton's Areopagitica and other Prose Works, 795 Milton's Poems, 384 Mommsen's History of Rome, 542-545 Montagu's (Lady) Letters, 69 Montaigne, Florio's, 440-442 More's Utopia, and Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation, 461 Morier's Hajji Baba, 679 Morris' (Wm.) Early Romances, 261 " Life and Death of Jason, 575 Motley's Dutch Republic, 86-88 Mulock's John Halifax, 123 Neale's Fall of Constantinople, 655 Newcastle's (Margaret, Duchess of) Life of the First Duke of Newcastle, etc., 722 Newman's Apologia Pro Vita Sua, 636 " On the Scope and Nature of University Education, and a Paper on Christianity and Scientific Investigation, 723 Oliphant's Salem Chapel, 244 Osborne (Dorothy), Letters of, 674 Owen's A New View of Society, etc., 799 Paine's Rights of Man, 718 Palgrave's Golden Treasury, 96 Paltock's Peter Wilkins, 676 Park (Mungo), Travels of, 205 Parkman's Conspiracy of Pontiac, 302, 303 Parry's Letters of Dorothy Osborne, 674 Paston Letters, 752, 753 Paton's Two Morte D'Arthur Romances, 634 Peacock's Headlong Hall, 327 Penn's The Peace of Europe, Some Fruits of Solitude, etc., 724 Pepys' Diary, 53, 54 Percy's Reliques, 148, 149 Pitt's Orations, 145 Plato's Republic, 64 " Dialogues, 456, 457 Plutarch's Lives, 407-409 " Moralia, 565 Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination, 336 Poe's Poems and Essays, 791 Polo's (Marco) Travels, 306 Pope's Complete Poetical Works, 760 Prescott's Conquest of Peru, 301 " Conquest of Mexico, 397, 398 Procter's Legends and Lyrics, 150 Ramayana and Mahabharata, 403 Rawlinson's Herodotus, 405, 406 Reade's The Cloister and the Hearth, 29 " Peg Woffington, 299 Reid's (Mayne) Boy Hunters of the Mississippi, 582 " The Boy Slaves, 797 Renan's Life of Jesus, 805 Restoration Plays, 604 Reynolds' Discourses, 118 Rhys' Fairy Gold, 157 " New Golden Treasury, 695 " Anthology of British Historical Speeches and Orations, 714 " Political Liberty, 745 " Golden Treasury of Longer Poems, 746 " Prelude to Poetry, 789 " Mother Goose, 473 Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, 590 Richardson's Pamela, 683, 684 Roberts' (Morley) Western Avernus, 762 Robertson's Religion and Life, 37 " Christian Doctrine, 38 " Bible Subjects, 39 Robinson's (Wade) Sermons, 637 Roget's Thesaurus, 630, 631 Rossetti's (D. G.) Poems, 627 Rousseau's Emile, 518 " Social Contract and Other Essays, 660 Ruskin's Seven Lamps of Architecture, 207 " Modern Painters, 208-212 " Stones of Venice, 213-215 " Unto this Last, etc., 216 " Elements of Drawing, etc., 217 " Pre-Raphaelitism, etc., 218 " Sesame and Lilies, 219 " Ethics of the Dust, 282 " Crown of Wild Olive, and Cestus of Aglaia, 323 " Time and Tide, with other Essays, 450 " The Two Boyhoods, 688 Russell's Life of Gladstone, 661 Russian Short Stories, 758 Sand's (George) The Devil's Pool, and François the Waif, 534 Scheffel's Ekkehard: A Tale of the 10th Century, 529 Scott's (M.) Tom Cringle's Log, 710 Scott's (Sir W.) Ivanhoe, 16 " Fortunes of Nigel, 71 " Woodstock, 72 " Waverley, 75 " The Abbot, 124 " Anne of Geierstein, 125 " The Antiquary, 126 " Highland Widow, and Betrothed, 127 " Black Dwarf, Legend of Montrose, 128 " Bride of Lammermoor, 129 " Castle Dangerous, Surgeon's Daughter, 130 " Robert of Paris, 131 " Fair Maid of Perth, 132 " Guy Mannering, 133 " Heart of Midlothian, 134 " Kenilworth, 135 " The Monastery, 136 " Old Mortality, 137 " Peveril of the Peak, 138 " The Pirate, 139 " Quentin Durward, 140, " Redgauntlet, 141 " Rob Roy, 142 " St. Ronan's Well, 143 " The Talisman, 144 " Lives of the Novelists, 331 " Poems and Plays, 550, 551 Seebohm's Oxford Reformers, 665 Seeley's Ecce Homo, 305 Sewell's (Anna) Black Beauty, 748 Shakespeare's Comedies, 153 " Histories, etc., 154 " Tragedies, 155 Shelley's Poetical Works, 257, 258 Shelley's (Mrs.) Frankenstein, 616 Sheppard's Charles Auchester, 505 Sheridan's Plays, 95 Sismondi's Italian Republics, 250 Smeaton's Life of Shakespeare, 514 Smith's Wealth of Nations, 412, 413 Smith's (George) Life of Wm. Carey, 395 Smith's (Sir Wm.) Smaller Classical Dictionary, 495 Smollett's Roderick Random, 790 Sophocles, Young's, 114 Southey's Life of Nelson, 52 Speke's Source of the Nile, 50 Spence's Dictionary of Non-Classical Mythology, 632 Spencer's (Herbert) Essays on Education, 504 Spenser's Faerie Queene, 443, 444 Spinoza's Ethics, etc., 481 Spyri's Heidi, 431 Stanley's Memorials of Canterbury, 89 " Eastern Church, 251 Steele's The Spectator, 164-167 Sterne's Tristram Shandy, 617 Sterne's Sentimental Journey and Journal to Eliza, 796 Stevenson's Treasure Island and Kidnapped, 763 " Master of Ballantrae and The Black Arrow, 764 " Virginibus Puerisque and Familiar Studies of Men and Books, 765 " An Inland Voyage, Travels with a Donkey, and Silverado Squatters, 766 " Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Merry Men, etc., 767 " Poems, 768 " In the South Seas and Island Nights' Entertainments, 769 St. Francis, The Little Flowers of, etc., 485 Stopford Brooke's Theology in the English Poets, 493 Stow's Survey of London, 589 Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, 371 Strickland's Queen Elizabeth, 100 Swedenborg's Heaven and Hell, 379 " Divine Love and Wisdom, 635 " Divine Providence, 658 Swift's Gulliver's Travels, 60 " Journal to Stella, 757 " Tale of a Tub, etc., 347 Swiss Family Robinson, 430 Tacitus' Annals, 273 " Agricola and Germania,274 Taylor's Words and Places, 517 Tennyson's Poems, 44, 626 Thackeray's Esmond, 73 " Vanity Fair, 298 " Christmas Books, 359 " Pendennis, 425, 426 " Newcomes, 465, 466 " The Virginians, 507, 508 " English Humorists, and The Four Georges, 610 " Roundabout Papers, 687 Thierry's Norman Conquest, 198, 199 Thoreau's Walden, 281 Thucydides' Peloponnesian War, 455 Tolstoy's Master and Man, and Other Parables and Tales, 469 " War and Peace, 525-527 " Childhood, Boyhood and Youth, 591 " Anna Karenina, 612, 613 Trench's On the Study of Words and English Past and Present, 788 Trollope's Barchester Towers, 30 " Framley Parsonage, 181 " Golden Lion of Granpere, 701 " The Warden, 182 " Dr. Thorne, 360 " Small House at Allington, 361 " Last Chronicles of Barset, 391, 392 Trotter's The Bayard of India, 396 " Hodson, of Hodson's Horse, 401 " Warren Hastings, 452 Turgeniev's Virgin Soil, 528 " Liza, 677 " Fathers and Sons, 742 Tyndall's Glaciers of the Alps, 98 Tytler's Principles of Translation, 168 Vasari's Lives of the Painters, 784-7 Verne's (Jules) Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, 319 " Dropped from the Clouds, 367 " Abandoned, 368 " The Secret of the Island, 369 " Five Weeks in a Balloon and Around the World in Eighty Days, 779 Virgil's Æneid, 161 " Eclogues and Georgics, 222 Voltaire's Life of Charles XII., 270 " Age of Louis XIV., 780 Wace and Layamon's Arthurian Chronicles, 578 Walpole's Letters, 775 Walton's Compleat Angler, 70 Waterton's Wanderings in South America, 772 Wesley's Journal, 105-108 White's Selborne, 48 Whitman's Leaves of Grass (I.) and Democratic Vistas, etc., 573 Whyte-Melville's Gladiators, 523 Wood's (Mrs. Henry) The Channings, 84 Woolman's Journal, etc., 402 Wordsworth's Shorter Poems, 203 " Longer Poems, 311 Wright's An Encyclopædia of Gardening, 555 Xenophon's Cyropædia, 672 Yellow Book, 503 Yonge's The Dove in the Eagle's Nest, 329 " The Book of Golden Deeds, 330 " The Heir of Redclyffe, 362 " The Little Duke, 470 " The Lances of Lynwood, 579 Young's (Arthur) Travels in France and Italy, 720 Young's (Sir George) Sophocles, 114 A Century of Essays. An Anthology, 653 A Dictionary of Dates, 554 A Dictionary of Quotations and Proverbs, 809-810 An Anthology of English Prose: From Bede to Stevenson, 675 Ancient Hebrew Literature, 4 vols., 253-256 Annals of Fairyland, 365, 366, 541 Atlas of Classical Geography, 451 English Short Stories. An Anthology, 743 Everyman's English Dictionary, 776 Literary and Historical Atlases: Europe, 496; America, 553; Asia, 633; Africa and Australasia, 662 The New Testament, 93 1st and 2nd Prayer Books of King Edward VI., 448 * * * * * NOTE--The following numbers are at present out of print: 110, 111, 146, 228, 244, 275, 390, 418, 597 LONDON: J. M. DENT & SONS LTD. NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO. {Transcriber's note: The spelling and hyphenation in the original are inconsistent, and have not been changed. A few obvious typographical errors have been corrected, as listed below. Book III, line 447. "My frend's own son" no change made. Book IV, line 454. "thou must be ideot born" no change made. Book VII, line 294. "Saidst not" no change made. Book IX, Argument. "binds him while he sleeps" changed to "blinds him while he sleeps". Book IX, line 428, footnote. "It is certian" changed to "It is certain". Book XV, line 276. Footnote marker missing from original. Book XVII, line 378. "in one moment thou shouldst" no change made. Book XVII, line 508. "(whencesoe'er they came" closing bracket added. Book XVII, line 616. "thou shouldst hear" no change made. Book XIX, line 317. "(with these hands" closing bracket added. Book XXI, line 468. "and re-entring fill'd" no change made. Book XXIII, line 209. "with his own bands" changed to "with his own hands". Book XXIV, line 629. "his smouldring bolt" no change made. Note II. "ἀβληχρός" changed to "ἀβληχρὸς". }
This isn’t a poem in the usual way — it’s a list of 812 books from the Everyman’s Library series, a notable publishing project from the early 20th century that made great literature accessible in affordable hardback editions. The mention of "Homer" here comes from transcriber’s notes in the file that reference corrections made to Homer's Odyssey, one of the volumes included in the collection. You can think of it as a glimpse into what a well-read individual in Edwardian Britain was expected to keep on their bookshelf.
Line-by-line
_Anonymous works are given under titles._ / _Anthologies, etc., are arranged at the end of the list._
Abbott's Rollo at Work, etc., 275 / Addison's Spectator, 164-167
Homer's Iliad, 453 / " Odyssey, 454
A Century of Essays. An Anthology, 653 / A Dictionary of Dates, 554
NOTE--The following numbers are at present out of print: / 110, 111, 146, 228, 244, 275, 390, 418, 597
{Transcriber's note: / The spelling and hyphenation in the original are inconsistent
Tone & mood
The tone is purely functional and impersonal — this is meant to be a reference document, not an expressive one. There's no lyrical voice, no argument, and no obvious emotion. However, if you read closely, you'll notice a subtle ambition: the extensive list of titles, ranging from Æschylus to Zola and from the Koran to Grimms' Fairy Tales, hints at a democratic, almost utopian belief that all human knowledge can be collected, cataloged, and made accessible to any reader willing to explore a volume.
Symbols & metaphors
- The volume number — Each book's assigned number is more than just a filing code. It reflects the order of publication and, by extension, the editorial decisions made by J. M. Dent and his team regarding what they believed the reading public needed most. Low numbers — Andersen's *Fairy Tales* at 4 and Aurelius' *Golden Book* at 9 — represent the foundational titles, the ones Dent staked the entire project on.
- The double quotation mark (") — Used throughout to represent the author's name when listing multiple works by the same writer. This typographical shorthand not only saves space but also visually clusters an author's works into a mini-library within the larger list. For example, Dickens' entries create a solid block that clearly showcases his prominence in the catalogue.
- "Out of print" notice — The nine numbers listed as out of print at the end serve as a reminder that a canon is never really set in stone. Books can fade away, get dropped, or become unavailable. This notice shatters any illusion that the 812-volume library is a finished and permanent fixture.
- The alphabetical order — Organizing by the author's surname puts Homer next to Hooker, Horace next to Houghton, without suggesting any hierarchy of importance. The alphabet is fundamentally democratic — Shakespeare holds no more weight than Scheffel. This arrangement suggests that every book in the library warrants equal access.
Historical context
Everyman's Library was started in 1906 by London publisher J. M. Dent, aiming to make great literature accessible to working-class readers at just one shilling per book. The name draws from the medieval morality play *Everyman*, and Dent's motto — "Everyman, I will go with thee, and be thy guide" — was included in every volume. By the time this catalogue was put together, the series had grown to 812 titles, spanning classical antiquity, European fiction, history, philosophy, travel, science, and children's literature. This selection embodies the Edwardian belief in self-improvement through reading: the idea that anyone, regardless of their background, could educate themselves if they had access to the right books at reasonable prices. The series continues to be published today by Penguin Random House and is one of the longest-running reprint library series in the history of English publishing.
FAQ
It isn't a poem, and Homer likely didn't write it. The catalogue was included in the same digital file as the text of Homer's *Odyssey*—one of the 812 volumes in the Everyman's Library series—and the file was labeled with Homer as the author of the entire document. J. M. Dent & Sons, the series publisher, created the catalogue itself.
It's a collection of budget-friendly hardback books that J. M. Dent, a London publisher, introduced in 1906. The goal was to make the world's classic literature — including novels, poetry, history, philosophy, travel writing, and science — accessible in inexpensive, quality editions for working-class readers. When it launched, each book was priced at one shilling. This series continues to be published today.
The numbers indicate the order of publication for the books, not their alphabetical placement. Dent released groups of titles each year, meaning the numbers show the history of publishing instead of organizing them by subject or author. This is why Homer's *Iliad* is numbered 453 and *Odyssey* is 454 — they were published together in the same season.
Dickens leads with about 24 entries, just ahead of Sir Walter Scott, who has over 30 novel entries by himself. Balzac, Trollope, and Dumas also feature prominently. This demonstrates the commercial appeal of these authors and Dent's conviction that a complete library should contain full — or nearly full — collections of the major novelists.
When digitizing a text for a project like Project Gutenberg, the person responsible notes the changes they made and what they chose to keep unchanged. This note highlights a few obvious printing errors that were corrected—such as changing 'certian' to 'certain'—and points out several peculiarities in the original text that were intentionally left as is. This serves as a transparency record and is not part of the original publication.
The opening editorial note clarifies this: anonymous works — such as *Anglo-Saxon Poetry*, the *Koran*, or *Grimms' Fairy Tales* — lack a specific author, so they are categorized by their titles. Anthologies and reference works are placed at the end of the list for the same reason.
It lists 812 titles by number, but the publisher's note at the end acknowledges that nine of those numbers were out of print when this edition was published. This means the catalogue serves as a complete record of what had been published, but not everything listed was available for purchase when this document was printed.
The range is truly extensive: classical Greek and Roman literature, medieval European romances, Victorian and Edwardian fiction, travel and exploration, history, philosophy, science, theology, children's books, poetry, drama, biography, and reference works. The goal was to include everything a self-taught reader could desire — from Aristotle's *Politics* to Andersen's *Fairy Tales*.