---

Exploring more than 100 of the world´s most important literary works and the literary geniuses that created them, this book is the perfect introduction to the subject of literature and writing.

The Literature Book features over 100 of the world´s most celebrated books, plays, and poetry, including Latin American and African fiction, and best-selling masterpieces from the most renowned authors ever to have lived.

Stunning images and inspirational quotes jump out from the pages, while detailed plot summaries and feature boxes bring the timeless works of literature to life and set them into their wider social and cultural context. The book also offers a deeper look into the famed fiction of Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, and more, as in-depth literary criticism and interesting authorial biographies give each work of literature a new meaning.

From Fitzgerald´s The Great Gatsby to Shelley´s Frankenstein, The Literature Book is a must-have for any literature student or fan of fiction.

---

1: Introduction
2: Heroes and legends 3000BCE - 1300CE 1: Only the gods dwell forever in sunlight, The Epic of Gilgamesh
2: To nourish oneself on ancient virtue induces perseverance, Book of Changes, attributed to King Wen of Zhou
3: What is this crime I am planning, O Krishna? Mahabharata, attributed to Vyasa
4: Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles, Iliad, attributed to Homer
5: How dreadful knowledge of the truth can be when there´s no help in the truth! Oedipus the King, Sophocles
6: The gates of hell are open night and day; smooth the descent, and easy is the way, Aeneid, Virgil
7: Fate will unwind as it must, Beowulf
8: So Scheherazade began... One Thousand and One Nights
9: Since life is but a dream, why toil to no avail? Quan Tangshi
10: Real things in the darkness seem no realer than dreams, The Tale of Genji, Murasaki Shikibu11: A man should suffer greatly for his Lord, The Song of Roland
12: Tandaradei, sweetly sang the nightingale, "Under the Linden Tree", Walther von der Vogelwelde
13: He who dares not follow love´s command errs greatly, Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart, Chretien de Troyes
14: Let another´s wound be my warning, Njal´s Saga
15: Further reading

2: Renaissance to enlightenment 1300 - 1800 1: I found myself within a shadowed forest, The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri
2: We three will swear brotherhood and unity of aims and sentiments, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Luo Guanzhong
3: Turn over the leef and chese another tale, The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer
4: Laughter´s the property of man. Live joyfully, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Francois Rabelais
5: As it did to this flower, the doom of age will blight your beauty, Les Amours de Cassandre, Pierre de Ronsard
6: He that loves pleasure must for pleasure fall, Doctor Faustus, Christopher Marlowe
7: Every man is the child of his own deeds, Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes
8: One man in his time plays many parts, First Folio, William Shakespeare
9: To esteem everything is to esteem nothing, The Misanthrope, Moliere
10: But at my back I always hear Time´s winged chariot hurrying near, Miscellaneous Poems, Andrew Marvell
11: Sadly, I part from you; like a clam torn from its shell, I go, and autumn too, The Narrow Road to the Interior, Matsuo Basho
12: None will hinder and none be hindered on the journey to the mountain of death, The Love Suicides at Sonezaki, Chikamatsu Monzaemon
13: I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good family, Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe
14: If this is the best of all possible worlds, what are the others? Candide, Voltaire
15: I have courage enough to walk through hell barefoot, The Robbers, Friedrich Schiller
16: There is nothing more difficult in love than expressing in writing what one does not feel, Les Liaisons dangereuses, Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
17: Further reading3: Romanticism and the rise of the novel 1800 - 1855 1: Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge, Lyrical Ballads, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
2: Nothing is more wonderful, nothing more fantastic than real life, Nachtstucke, E T A Hoffmann
3: Man errs, till he has ceased to strive, Faust, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
4: Once upon a time... Children´s and Household Tales, Brothers Grimm
5: For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn? Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
6: Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil, Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
7: All for one, one for all, The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas
8: But happiness I never aimed for, it is a stranger to my soul, Eugene Onegin, Alexander Pushkin
9: Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes, Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman
10: You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass
11: I am no bird; and no net ensnares me, Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

---