Marianne Moore’s list
Marianne Moore (1887-1972), one of the most famous American poets of the 20th century, compiled this list of greatest literary works for the book Pour une Bibliothèque Idéale, edited by Raymond Queneau.
Auden, W: H.: The Double Man; Collected Shorter Poems
Blake, William: Poems
Burke, Edmund: Speeches
Byron: Letters
Carroll, Lewis: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Cavalcanti, Guido: Donna Mi Prega
Chaucer, Geoffrey: Troilus and Cressida; Canterbury Tales
Cocteau, Jean: Poemes; Theatre; Essais critiques
Coleridge, Samuel: Poems; Biographia Literaria
Comtesse de Segur: Les Malheurs de Sophie
Corbiere, Tristan: Les Amours jaunes
Cummings, e: e.: Eimi; Poems
Dante: The Divine Comedy; La Vita Nuova
Donne, John: Letters; Poems
Dumas, Alexandre: Les Trois Mousquetiers
Eliot, T: S.: Poems; Plays; The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism
Fabre, Jean-Henri: Souvenirs entomologiques; Littre
Flaubert, Gustave: Madame Bovary
Goldsmith, Oliver: Vicar of Wakefield; Plays; Poems
Gregory, Horace: Criticism
Hardy, Thomas: Poems; Tess of the d’Urbervilles; A Pair of Blue Eyes
Hawthorne, Nathanial: Notebooks; Fiction
Henryson, Robert: Poems and Fables
Hopkins, Gerald Manley: Poems; Letters
James, Henry: Prefaces; Letters; Novels
Johnson, Samuel: Lives of the Poets
Joyce, James: Poems; Novels; Dubliners
Keats, John: Letters; Poems
Lamb, Charles: Letters
Lear, Edward: The Owl and the Pussycat
Levin, Harry: Studies of Joyce; Stendhal; Flaubert; Balzac
Maritain, Jacques:”Religion and the Intellectuals” (Partisan Review Symposium)
Melville, Herman: Poems; Short novels
Moliere: Theatre
Nash, Ogden: Poems
Niebuhr,Reinhold: The Dilemma of Modern Man
Pascal: Pensees
Perrault, Charles: Contes
Perse, Saint-John: Eloges; Exil
Plato: The Dialogues
Plutarch: Pope, Alexander: Essay on Criticism
Potter, Beatrix: Peter Rabbit; Squirrel Nutkin
Pound, Ezra: Translations of the Analects of Confucius; Poems
Proust, Marcel: Maxims
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel: Italian Poets before Dante
Sainte-Beuve: Portraits contemporains
Saintsbury, George: A Short History of English Literature; The English Novel
Seneca: Shakespeare, William: Sonnets; Midsummer Night’s Dream; Hamlet; Macbeth
Sidney, Sir Philip: Defense of Poesie; Poems
Smart, Christopher: Poems
Stein, Gertrude: The Making of Americans; The Geographical History of America
Stendhal: Le Rouge et le Noir; De l’Amour; Memoires d’un Touriste
Stevens, Wallace: Poems; Prose commentaries
Swift, Jonathan: Gulliver; Journal
Trollope, Anthony: Autobiography; Phineas Finn
Valery, Paul: La Soiree avec M: Teste; Poemes; Variete; Introduction a la Methode de Leonard de Vinci
Various: Greek Reader (Viking Press): Voltaire: Correspondance
Wilson, Edmund: Joyce; Axel’s Castle
Xenophon: On Hunting; Hipparchicus; On Horsemanship