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Good Reads: Full Text of Classics in Western Literature

-- by David Swink, FCTA, 06/13/2021 (Updated 04/16/2024)

Classic English-Lit Books in Fx Co Schools, circa 1962:
When this writer graduated from Fairfax County Public Schools in 1962, he had been required to read and discuss the following classic books in English-Lit classes. (Is this still a requirement in FCPS?) These works teach us life's lessons and provide valuable perspective from human history in Western civilization.

• Animal Farm, by George Orwell (1944) -- 112pp
• Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens (1867) -- 544pp
• Moby Dick, Herman Melville (1851) -- 378pp
• Of Human Bondage, by W. Somerset Maughn (1915) -- 648pp
• Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck (1937) -- 107pp
• The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane (1894) -- 112pp
• The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850) -- 272pp
• Silas Marner, George Eliot (1861) -- 128pp
• A Tale Of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens (1859) -- 304pp

... but today's parents should insist their kids NOT be forced or encouraged to read:

• STAMPED: Racism, Antiracism, and You, by Ibram X. Kendi (2020) -- 248pp ... (Critique)
• Lawn Boy, by Jonathan Evison (2018) -- various Fx Co HS libraries
• Gender Queer, by Maia Kobabe (2019) -- various Fx Co HS libraries

Other Classic Works you may care to read:
Your wisdom will be greatly enhanced after having consumed (with sometimes considerable effort) these classic reads.

• The Bible, King James Version -- 776pp
• The Iliad, by Homer (800BC), translated by Samuel Butler -- 560pp
• The Odyssey, by Homer (800BC), translated by Samuel Butler -- 541pp
• Aesop's Fables, -- 146 Short Kid Stories
• Charlotte's Web, by E. B. White (1952) -- 184pp
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll (1865) -- 70pp
• Why Johnny Can't Read, by Rudolf Flesch (1955) -- 222pp
• McGuffey Readers: Primer, R1, R2, R3, R4, R5, R6, Speller
• The Beacon Second Reader, by James H. Fasset (1914) -- 202pp
• Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott (1868) -- 759pp
• Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte (1847) -- 450pp
• Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte (1847) -- 463pp
• Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen (1813) -- 305pp
• A Little Princess, by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1905) -- 122pp
• Anne Of Green Gables, by Lucy Maud Montgomery (1908) -- 158pp
• The Secret Garden, by Lucy Maud Montgomery (1911) -- 192pp
• Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe (1719) -- 290pp
• The Swiss Family Robinson, by Johann David Wyss (1812) -- 232pp
• Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson (1883) -- 286pp
• Lord Of The Flies, by William Golding (1954) -- 224pp
• The Old Man And The Sea, by Earnest Hemingway (1952) -- 112pp
• The Grapes Of Wrath, by John Steinbeck (1939) -- 464pp
• To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee (1960) -- 281pp
• The Call of the Wild, by Jack London (1903) -- 232pp
• 1984, by George Orwell (1949) -- 328pp
• The Trial, by Franz Kafka (1925) -- 160pp
• Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy (1878) -- 864pp (CliffsNotes)
• Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley (1818) -- 280pp
• The Time Machine, by H. G. Wells (1895) -- 84pp
• The War of the Worlds, by H. G. Wells (1898) -- 138pp
• 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne (1870) -- 212pp
• Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley (1932) -- 288pp
• Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury (1953) -- 256pp
• The Diary of Anne Frank, English translation (1947) -- 238pp
• The Road To Serfdom, by Friedrich A. Hayek (1944) -- 178pp
• The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels (1848) -- 35pp
• Free to Choose, by Milton and Rose Friedman (1980) -- 310pp
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain (1876) -- 225pp
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain (1884) -- 293pp
• Popular Works of Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849)
• Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman (1855-1892) -- 160pp
• Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1852) -- 576pp (Project Gutenberg)
  
• Literary Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, (1849) -- (American Transcendentalism Web)
• A History of the American People [1580-1997], by Paul Johnson (1997) -- 976pp (Booknotes)
  
• Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand (1957) -- 1169pp (CliffsNotes)
  -- Francisco's Speech on Money ... (CliffsNotes)
  -- "This is John Galt Speaking" ... (CliffsNotes)

Most of the bold-text links to the works above are to local site-independent plain-text copies of those works posted elsewhere. Those original postings are hot-linked in the title of FCTA's copy, so you can choose which version you like better. (FCTA's local copies are also quite readable as 'View Source' monospaced text.) Each local HTML book contains a hot-linked table of contents, so you can see your reading progress 'bookmarked' by the previously-read purple chapter links.

Note that few of us actually enjoy reading an entire book from a computer; buy the paperback! This site merely serves as a convenient list of the available Western classics, as encouragement to explore these great works, and for post-read reference material.