What Every College Freshman Should Have Read
This is a list of books recommended by Eastern Michigan University professors I conducted some years ago when I was frustrated that my profs had expected me to know more than I did. The list is feeling dated to me, now, but still a valuable place to consider your reading background!
NOVELS:
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain). The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
Crane, Stephen. The Red Badge of Courage.
Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe.
Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations, David Copperfield.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment.
Eliot, George. Middlemarch.
Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man.
Faulkner, William. Light in August.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby.
Forster, E. M. A Passage to India.
Golding, William. Lord of the Flies.
Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the d'Urbervilles.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter.
Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms.
Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World.
James, Henry. The Turn of the Screw.
Kafka, Franz. The Trial.
Lewis, Sinclair. Babbitt.
Lawrence, D. H. Sons and Lovers.
Melville, Herman. Moby Dick.
Orwell, George. 1984, Animal Farm.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Swift, Jonathon. Gulliver's Travels.
Tolstoy, Leo. War and Peace.
Wright, Richard. Native Son.
PLAYS:
Ibsen, Henrik. A Doll's House.
Miller, Arthur. The Crucible, Death of a Salesman.
Shakespeare, William. Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth.
Sophocles. Oedipus Rex.
POETRY:
Dickinson, Emily. Selected Poems.
Poe, Edgar Allen. Selected Poems including "The Raven."
Whitman, Walt. "Leaves of Grass" and other poems.
OTHER READINGS:
Aristotle. Politics.
The Holy Bible.
Jefferson, Thomas. "The Declaration of Independence."
Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Prince.
MLA Handbook.
Strunk and White, The Elements of Style.
OTHER SUGGESTIONS OF NOTE:
Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice.
Baldwin, James. "Stranger in the Village."
Bronte, Emily. Wuthering Heights.
Camus, Albert. The Stranger.
Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Brothers Karamazov.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Essays.
Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary.
Franklin, Benjamin. Autobiography.
Greene, Graham. The Power and the Glory.
Keats, John. "Ode to Autumn" and "Bright Star."
Plato. Dialogues.
Salinger, J. D. The Catcher in the Rye.
Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath.
Swift, Jonathon. "A Modest Proposal."
Tolstoy, Leo. "Master and Man."
Greek mythology
United States history