Interactive Timeline: 100 Greatest Literary Classics

Homer

An ancient Greek epic poem set during the Trojan War, focusing on the rage of Achilles.

Homer

Epic poem following Odysseus's ten-year journey home after the Trojan War.

Laozi

Foundational text of Taoism exploring the nature of existence and the Way.

Confucius

Collection of sayings and teachings of Confucius on ethics and morality.

Aeschylus

Trilogy of tragic plays about the curse on the House of Atreus.

Euripides

Tragedy of Medea's revenge against her unfaithful husband Jason.

Sophocles

Tragedy about King Oedipus discovering he has killed his father and married his mother.

Aristophanes

Comedy about women withholding sex to end the Peloponnesian War.

Vyasa

Massive Sanskrit epic including the Bhagavad Gita, about the Kurukshetra War.

Plato

Philosophical dialogue about justice and the ideal state.

Valmiki

Sanskrit epic about Prince Rama's journey to rescue his wife Sita.

Virgil

Latin epic poem telling the legendary story of Aeneas and the founding of Rome.

Ovid

Narrative poem chronicling the history of the world from creation to Julius Caesar's deification.

Augustine of Hippo

Autobiographical work detailing Augustine's sinful youth and conversion to Christianity.

Muhammad (traditional)

Central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be the word of God.

Anonymous

Old English epic poem about the hero Beowulf's battles with monsters.

Various Authors

Collection of Middle Eastern folk tales including Aladdin and Sinbad.

Murasaki Shikibu

Often considered the world's first novel, following the romantic life of Prince Genji.

Anonymous

French epic poem about the battle of Roncevaux and the heroic death of Roland.

Chrétien de Troyes

Collection of verse romances about King Arthur and his knights.

Anonymous

Middle High German epic poem about the dragon-slayer Siegfried.

Guillaume de Lorris & Jean de Meun

Allegorical dream vision about the pursuit of love.

Dante Alighieri

Epic poem describing Dante's journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise.

Giovanni Boccaccio

Collection of 100 tales told by young people sheltering from the Black Death.

William Langland

Allegorical narrative poem about a peasant's spiritual journey.

Anonymous

Arthurian romance about Sir Gawain's supernatural challenge.

Anonymous (Pearl Poet)

Dream vision poem about a father's encounter with his deceased daughter.

Geoffrey Chaucer

Collection of stories told by pilgrims traveling to Canterbury Cathedral.

Sir Thomas Malory

Compilation of Arthurian legends into a unified narrative of King Arthur and his knights.

Miguel de Cervantes

The adventures of an idealistic nobleman who believes himself a knight-errant.

William Shakespeare

Tragedy of an aging king dividing his kingdom among his daughters.

William Shakespeare

Tragedy of the Prince of Denmark seeking revenge for his father's murder.

John Milton

Epic poem retelling the biblical story of the Fall of Man.

John Bunyan

Christian allegory following a man's journey from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City.

Daniel Defoe

Story of a man stranded on a remote island for 28 years.

Jonathan Swift

Satirical novel about Lemuel Gulliver's travels to strange lands.

Henry Fielding

Comic novel following the foundling Tom Jones's path to adulthood.

Voltaire

Satirical novella critiquing optimism through the misadventures of Candide.

Laurence Sterne

Experimental novel playing with narrative conventions and storytelling.

Jane Austen

Romance between Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy in Regency England.

Jane Austen

Story of Emma Woodhouse, a well-meaning but misguided matchmaker.

Mary Shelley

Scientist Victor Frankenstein creates a living creature from dead tissue.

Walter Scott

Medieval romance set in 12th-century England during the reign of Richard I.

Stendhal

Ambitious young man Julien Sorel's rise and fall in post-revolutionary France.

Alexander Pushkin

Verse novel about the aristocratic Eugene Onegin and his relationships.

Honoré de Balzac

Young man's education in the corruption of Parisian high society.

Charles Dickens

Orphan boy's journey through the criminal underworld of London.

Mikhail Lermontov

Portrait of Pechorin, a cynical officer representing the 'superfluous man' archetype.

Nikolai Gogol

Chichikov's scheme to buy deceased serfs still counted in census records.

Alexandre Dumas

D'Artagnan joins the musketeers Athos, Porthos, and Aramis in 17th-century France.

Alexandre Dumas

Edmond Dantès' elaborate revenge after wrongful imprisonment.

Charlotte Brontë

Orphaned Jane's journey to independence and love with the brooding Rochester.

Emily Brontë

Passionate and destructive love between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw.

William Makepeace Thackeray

Satirical portrayal of English society through Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley.

Charles Dickens

Semi-autobiographical novel following David from childhood to maturity.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Hester Prynne's public shaming for adultery in Puritan New England.

Herman Melville

Captain Ahab's obsessive quest for revenge against the white whale.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Anti-slavery novel depicting the harsh realities of slavery in America.

Charles Dickens

Critique of bureaucracy and social institutions through Amy Dorrit's story.

Gustave Flaubert

Emma Bovary's romantic illusions and tragic pursuit of passion.

Charles Dickens

Pip's journey from blacksmith's apprentice to gentleman.

Victor Hugo

Jean Valjean's redemption story set against post-revolutionary France.

Ivan Turgenev

Generational conflict between traditional aristocrats and radical nihilists.

Jules Verne

Professor Lidenbrock's expedition to the Earth's core through an Icelandic volcano.

Lewis Carroll

Alice's surreal journey through a fantastical underground world.

Leo Tolstoy

Epic chronicling Russian society during the Napoleonic era.

Jules Verne

Captain Nemo's underwater adventures aboard the submarine Nautilus.

George Eliot

Interconnected lives in the fictional town of Middlemarch during social reform era.

Leo Tolstoy

Tragic story of Anna's adulterous affair and its consequences.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Murder mystery exploring faith, doubt, and morality through the Karamazov family.

Henry James

Isabel Archer's quest for independence and self-determination in Europe.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Young Jim Hawkins' adventure seeking pirate treasure with Long John Silver.

Mark Twain

Huck and Jim's journey down the Mississippi River.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Scientist's experiment splits his personality into good and evil halves.

Oscar Wilde

Young man's portrait ages while he remains youthful through moral corruption.

Thomas Hardy

Tragic story of Tess Durbeyfield's fall from innocence in rural England.

Stephen Crane

Young soldier's psychological experience during the American Civil War.

Bram Stoker

Vampire Count Dracula's attempt to spread the undead curse from Transylvania to England.

Henry James

Governess encounters supernatural phenomena at a remote estate.

Kate Chopin

Edna Pontellier's sexual and personal awakening in Creole society.

Theodore Dreiser

Country girl Carrie Meeber's rise in Chicago and New York.

Joseph Conrad

Marlow's journey up the Congo River to find the mysterious Kurtz.

Jack London

Domestic dog Buck's transformation into a wild creature during the Klondike Gold Rush.

Anton Chekhov

Aristocratic family loses their estate as old Russia gives way to the new.

Edith Wharton

Newland Archer's love triangle in New York high society.

Sinclair Lewis

Carol Kennicott's struggle against small-town conformity and narrow-mindedness.

James Joyce

Leopold Bloom's journey through Dublin paralleling Homer's Odyssey.

T.S. Eliot

Modernist poem depicting spiritual and cultural desolation of post-WWI era.

Thomas Mann

Hans Castorp's intellectual and spiritual development at a Swiss sanatorium.

Franz Kafka

Josef K.'s arrest and prosecution by an unknown court for an unspecified crime.

Virginia Woolf

Single day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway in post-WWI London.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Jay Gatsby's pursuit of the American Dream and lost love Daisy Buchanan.

Theodore Dreiser

Clyde Griffiths' rise and fall driven by American materialism.

Virginia Woolf

Ramsay family's experiences before and after WWI at their summer home.

William Faulkner

Decline of the Compson family told through multiple perspectives.

Erich Maria Remarque

German soldier's devastating experience during World War I.

Ernest Hemingway

American ambulance driver's love affair during World War I in Italy.

Aldous Huxley

Dystopian society where humans are conditioned for stability and happiness.

William Faulkner

Joe Christmas's tragic story exploring race and identity in the American South.

John Dos Passos

Experimental novel chronicling American society from 1900-1930.

John Steinbeck

Joad family's migration from Oklahoma to California during the Great Depression.

James Joyce

Experimental novel written in a unique polyglot language of Joyce's creation.

Ernest Hemingway

American dynamiter Robert Jordan during the Spanish Civil War.

Albert Camus

Meursault's indifferent response to his mother's death and subsequent murder.

George Orwell

Winston Smith's rebellion against totalitarian surveillance state.

Simone de Beauvoir

Foundational feminist text analyzing women's oppression throughout history.

J.D. Salinger

Holden Caulfield's weekend in New York after being expelled from prep school.

Ralph Ellison

Unnamed narrator's journey through racism and identity in America.

James Baldwin

John Grimes' religious awakening in 1930s Harlem.

William Golding

British schoolboys stranded on an island descend into savagery.

Vladimir Nabokov

Humbert Humbert's obsession with twelve-year-old Dolores Haze.

Jack Kerouac

Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty's cross-country adventures.

Boris Pasternak

Physician-poet Yuri Zhivago during the Russian Revolution and Civil War.

Chinua Achebe

Okonkwo's life in traditional Igbo society and its disruption by colonialism.

Harper Lee

Scout Finch's childhood in Alabama during her father's defense of a black man.