Quality poetry and literature from the
1000 Good
Books List
This online catalog is made possible through an association with Amazon.com.
Clicking on the book cover will take you to Amazon’s information page about that
book. You can look at its price, availability, any discounts currently taken for that
title, reviews of the book, and other information, as well as order it if you decide to
purchase the book. You can even place books in your shopping cart and save them for
purchase at a later time. You can continue to add or delete books from your shopping cart
until you are satisfied with your order and ready to purchase. Clicking on your
browser’s “Back” button will bring you back to this catalog.
Sometimes books go out of print, or the publisher runs out of stock.
Any book not available from Amazon.com for any reason can be searched using AddAll.com, a book shopping site which will scan Amazon
as well as Barnes and Noble, Powell’s Books, Book Close Outs and many other new and
used book sites.
Still have questions? Ask
me!
IN ASSOCIATION
WITH
The Age of Chivalry
Thomas Bulfinch
Our children last
read the medieval legends in 3rd grade, so now it is high
time for them to reacquaint themselves with those legends of adventures and romance with
the master mythology of the English language - Bulfinch’s. For almost a century and a
half, Bulfinch’s Mythology has been the text by which the great legends of medieval
knights have been known. The Age of Chivalry includes the legends of King Arthur and His
Knights (the greatest king of the Christian Britons fighting for their land against the
pagan Saxon invaders), The Mabinogeon, the classic collection of Welsh mythology, and The
Knights of English History. This volume also includes The Legends of Charlemagne, the
great Christian king of the Franks and Germans crowned in Rome by the Pope as first
Emperor of the new Holy Roman Empire in 800 A.D. Another edition of Bulfinch’s
Mythology, which contains The Age of Fable (Greek, Roman, Norse, and Celtic mythology)
along with The Age of Chivalry and Legends of Charlemagne, is also available in both paperback
and hardcover.
Pilgrim’s Progress
John Bunyan
This first and classic Christian
allegory is the literary masterpiece of the Reformation. Written from 1678-1684, “The
Pilgrim’s Progress holds a unique place in the history of English literature, as
it is the most widely-read book of English literature, after the Bible. No other
seventeenth-century work, except the King James Bible, nothing from the pen of a writer of
Bunyan’s social class in any period, and no other Christian work, has enjoyed such an
extensive readership. The pilgrim Christian, Mr. Worldly Wiseman, Giant Despair, Hopeful,
Ignorance, and the others are engaged in a powerful drama set against a solidly realistic
background of town and country. Bunyan captures the speech of ordinary people as
accurately as he depicts their behaviour and appearance and as firmly as he realizes their
inner emotional and spiritual life. The tale is related in language remarkable for its
beauty and simplicity, and is spiced with Bunyan’s acute and satirical perceptions of
the vanity and hypocrisy of his own society.”
Autobiography
Benvenuto Cellini, translated by George Bull
You will usually find
Cellini’s Autobiography listed in the top twenty or so of the greatest works of
literature of Western Civilization, and there is good reason. Cellini, a celebrated 16th
century Florentine goldsmith, also had a remarkable talent for writing. He portrays 16th
century Florence with such vividness and vivacity that the reader is effortlessly
transported to that other time and place. Cellini’s life was a non-stop adventure,
and his talent and temperment kept him in the company of the great artists, merchants,
political leaders, popes and cardinals of Renaissance Italy, all of whom figure in the
story of his life. And that story reads like the most gripping fiction - duels and
dungeons, battles and romance, intrigue and treachery, and over it all Cellini’s
passionate personality and strong sense of righteousness in an era of corruption and
compromise.
Don Quixote de la Mancha
Miguel de Cervantes
In writing his great novel, Cervantes
set out to parody the romances of chivalry -- remember that he was writing in 1597, the
ages of the Renaissance and Reformation, in which the Middle Ages were looked on as an
inferior time between classical antiquity and the present. But, the hero got the better of
his creator’s purpose, and the result far surpassed the limits of a mere burlesque.
Don Quixote remains unsurpassed as a masterpiece of droll humor, as a picture of Spanish
life at the close of the 16th century, as a gallery of immortal portraits. It has in the
highest degree the mark of all great art, the successful combination of the universal and
the particular: it is true to the life of the country and age of its production, and true
also to general human nature everywhere and always.
Westward Ho!
Charles Kingsley, illustrated by N. C. Wyeth
From the coral reefs of the Barbados to the great
sea battle with the Spanish Armada in 1588, this vibrant novel captures the daring spirit
of the Elizabethan adventurers who sailed with Sir Francis Drake. All these matters of
history are engaged in Kingsley’s best work of historical fiction: Oxenham’s
voyage to the South Seas, Drake’s voyage round the world, the Spanish landing on the
southern coast of Ireland, the intrigues of the Jesuits, Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s
voyage to Newfoundalnd, Drake’s raid along the Spanish coast wherein he “singed
the King of Spain’s beard,” the sailing and destruction of the mighty Armada:
here painted by a master hand that throws side lights on the characters of the leaders in
England and the conditions of thought and life in Queen Elizabeth’s reign.
Well at the World’s End
William Morris
William Morris lived in the 19th
century in England, and worked during the Victorian Era. He is perhaps most well known for
his decorative arts designs and as the founder of the Arts and Crafts movement. He was
also an author and poet, whose books were devoured by a young C.S. Lewis, and were to have
a great impact on his life -- most notably, as Lewis relates in Surprised by
Joy, in giving him a glimpse of such joy and beauty that he continued to search for
Joy and Beauty until he found them in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Elements of
Morris’ medieval fantasies can be found in Lewis’ Narnia Chronicles, and Morris
also influenced other 20th century fantasy writers such as Tolkein and Lloyd. Well at
the World’s End has been called “the most entrancing of William
Morris’s late romances ... part futuristic fantasy novel ... part beautiful,
elaborate, old-fashioned fairy tale. Morris writes his magic love story with a sense of
color, pattern, and the sheer imaginative fervor of one of the most brilliant decorative
artists there has ever been.” Many of Morris’ writings are out of print, but a
few have been reprinted: The Wood Beyond
the World -- another medieval fantasy, and News From
Nowhere -- a collection of short stories and lectures on various topics, some having
to do with art, some having to do with socialism - Morris was an ardent socialist later in
life.
The Chronicles of Brother Cadfael
Ellis Peters
Set in Shrewsbury in England in the 12th
century, Brother Cadfael is a Benedictine monk who loves the peace of the abbey to tend to
his garden, his herbarium, and his prayers, but whose nose for the truth gets him involved
in mysteries aplenty, and whose powers of deduction are legendary. A Rare
Benedictine contains three short stories that tell us how Cadfael came to wear the
Benedictine cowl (he saw enough of the warrior’s ways during the Crusades). The first
book in the Brother Cadfael series is A Morbid Taste
for Bones, centering around a murder mystery that also highlights the medieval
practice of honoring the relics of the saints. Next is One Corpse Too
Many, set among the political struggle for the English throne between King Stephen and
Empress Maud, as are many of the others in the series. They are: Monk’s
Hood, Saint
Peter’s Fair, The Leper of
Saint Giles, Virgin in the
Ice, The
Sanctuary Sparrow, The Devil’s
Novice, Dead
Man’s Ransom, The Pilgrim of
Hate, An
Excellent Mystery, The Raven in the
Foregate, The
Rose Rent, Hermit of Eyton
Forest, The Confession of Brother Haluin, The
Heretic’s Apprentice, The
Potter’s Field, The Summer of
the Danes, The Holy Thief,
and Brother
Cadfael’s Penance.
Ivanhoe
Sir Walter Scott
A stirring romantic tale of peril and rescue, chivalry
and pageantry, Ivanhoe is the first of Sir Walter Scott’s novels to take place
in the Middle Ages, and many consider it one of his best achievements. It is the
captivating tale of Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe, a Saxon knight returning from the Third
Crusade in 1194 with King Richard the Lion-Hearted. Disinherited because of his love for
the beautiful Lady Rowena, he joins forces with the king to stop the evil machinations of
the scheming Prince John, win his beloved’s hand, and save Rebecca, the lovely Jewess
who had saved his life. It is also the first novel in the English language to deal
seriously with issues of race, and to shed light on the plight of the persecuted Jews in
Christendom.
Idylls of the King
Lord Alfred Tennyson
The classic work of King Arthur and his
Knights of the Round Table. Written in verse revealing a delicacy of phrase and a metrical
effect that is unmatched, Arthur is Tennyson’s personification of valor and virtue,
manhood and leadership. The poetry is not too difficult for our children that have been
reading poetry all along:
“Arthur sat Crown’d on the dais, and his warriors cried,
‘Be thou the king, and we will work thy will
Who love thee.’ Then the King in low deep tones,
And simple words of great authority,
Bound them by so strait vows to his own self
That when they rose, knighted from kneeling, some
Were pale as at the passing of a ghost,
Some flushe’d, and others dazed, as one who wakes
Half-blinded at the coming of a light.”
Return to Dialectic Stage Literature
Return to CCH’s Online Catalog: Literature
