TIMELESS CLASSICS 

An old Chinese proverb says, "A book is like a garden in the pocket." Many of us who have valued
reading in our early years derive 

enjoyment from reading to our children, and now, as I do, to our grandchildren. Books are voyages of
discovery and transforming instruments to all of us. 

A few years ago, the National Endowment for the Humanities asked schools around the country to
send reading lists of their favorite 

books. Noticing how often books that other generations have enjoyed 

appear on these lists, we decided to make this compilation of tried andtrue 
titles. The works herein, published in 1960 or earlier, have 

delighted generations of readers. 

Some have asked, "Is the book dead?" as we move into new computer 

technologies. Not at all. Print text will co-exist with these new 

mediums. 

As concerned parents, educators, and counselors, we must continue to 
emphasize the importance of access to good reading in order to shape our 
students' learning process, enhance their understanding of American 

heritage, and open up a new world of self-fulfillment. As Aldous Huxley 

said, "The proper study of mankind is books." 

There are some excellent older books that are missing from the list, 

because they appeared too infrequently in the school selections: Kate 

Douglas Wiggin's Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, for example; Dylan Thomas's 

A Child's Christmas in Wales; Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life 
of Frederick Douglass. Despite the absences, we hope this compilation 

will nevertheless bring hours of pleasure and enlightenment. 

The titles presented for suggested extracurricular reading provide a 
solid foundation and hours of enjoyment for students and scholars of all 
ages. 

We at NEH hope that the "Timeless Classics" booklist will continue 

to be a rich source of material for everyone. 

              Sheldon Hackney
              Chairman

"Books are humanity in print" ...Barbara Tuchman 

"Literature is an investment of genius which pays dividends to all subsequent times." ...John Burroughs 

"All that mankind has done, thought, gained, or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of
books." ...Thomas Carlyle 

### Kindergarten through Grade 6 ### 

Adamson, Joy
Born Free 

Aesop
Fables* 

Alcott, Louisa May
Little Women 

Andersen, Hans Christian
Fairy tales 

Atwater, Richard and Florence
Mr. Popper's Penguins* 

Bailey, Carolyn Sherwin
Miss Hickory 

     Recommended for K-3, either for reading by children or for reading to them. 

Barrie, J.M.
Peter Pan 

Baum, L. Frank 
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz 

Bemelmans, Ludwig
Madeline series* 

Bond, Michael
A Bear Called Paddington 

Boston, L.M.
The Children of Green Knowe 

Brink, Carol Ryrie
Caddie Woodlawn 

Brown, Margaret Wise
Goodnight, Moon* 

Brunhoff, Jean de
The Story of Babar* 

Burnett, Frances Hodgson
The Secret Garden 

Burton, Virginia Lee
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel* 

Butterworth, Oliver
The Enormous Egg 

Clark, Ann Nolan
Secret of the Andes 

Cleary, Beverly
Henry Huggins series 

Coatsworth, Elizabeth
The Cat Who Went to Heaven 

Dalgliesh, Alice
The Bears on Hemlock Mountain*
The Courage of Sarah Noble* 

De Angeli, Marguerite
The Door in the Wall 

De Jong, Meindert
The House of Sixty Fathers
The Wheel on the School 

Dodge, Mary Mapes
Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates 

Du Bois, William Pene
The Twenty-One Balloons 

Edmonds, Walter D.
The Matchlock Gun 

Estes, Eleanor
Ginger Pye
Moffats series 

Farley, Walter
The Black Stallion 

Field, Rachel
Hitty, Her First Hundred Years 

Fritz, Jean
The Cabin Faced West 

Gilbreth, Frank B. and
Ernestine G. Carey
Cheaper By the Dozen 

Gipson, Fred
Old Yeller 

Godden, Rumer
The Mousewife* 

Grahame, Kenneth
The Reluctant Dragon*
The Wind in the Willows f 

Gray, Elizabeth Janet
Adam of the Road 

Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm
Grimm's Fairy Tales 

Hawes, Charles
The Dark Frigate 

Haywood, Carolyn
Betsy series* 

Henry, Marguerite
King of the Wind
Misty of Chincoteague 

Keith, Harold
Rifles for Watie 

Kelly, Eric
The Trumpeter of Krakow 

Kipling, Rudyard
Captains Courageous
Just So Stories for
Little Children*
The Jungle Books 

Kjelgaard, Jim
Big Red 

Knight, Eric
Lassie Come Home 

Krumgold, Joseph
...and Now Miguel
Onion John 

LaFarge, Oliver
Laughing Boy 

Lamb, Charles and Mary
Tales from Shakespear 

Latham, Jean Lee
Carry on, Mr. Bowditch 

Lawson, Robert
Ben & Me
Rabbit Hill 

Leaf, Munro
The Story of Ferdinand* 

Lear, Edward
Book of Nonsense* 

Lenski, Lois
Strawberry Girl 

Lewis, C.S.
Chronicles of Narnia series 

Lindgren, Astrid
Pippi Longstocking series 

Lofting, Hugh
Doctor Doolittle series 

London, Jack
The Call of the Wild
White Fang 

MacDonald, Betty
Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle* 

MacGregor, Ellen
Miss Pickerell series 

McCloskey, Robert
Blueberries for Sal*
Homer Price
Make Way for Ducklings* 

McSwigan, Marie
Snow Treasure 

Meigs, Cornelia
Invincible Louisa 

Milne, A.A.
The House at Pooh Corner*
Now We Are Six*
When We Were Very Young*
Winnie-the-Pooh* 

Minarik, Else Holmelund
Little Bear 

Montgomery, L.M.
Anne of Green Gables 

Mukerji, Dhan Ghopal
Gay-Neck, the Story of a Pigeon 

Norton, Mary
The Borrowers series 

O'Hara, Mary
My Friend Flicka 

Pearce, Philippa
Tom's Midnight Garden 

Perrault, Charles
Cinderella* 

Potter, Beatrix
The Tale of Peter Rabbit* 

Pyle, Howard
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood 

Rey, H.A.
Curious George series* 

Richter, Conrad
The Light in the Forest 

Selden, George
The Cricket in Times Square* 

Seuss, Dr.
The Cat in the Hat* 

Sewell, Anna
Black Beauty 

Sorenson, Virginia
Miracles on Maple Hill 

Speare, Elizabeth George
The Witch of Blackbird Pond 

Sperry, Armstrong
Call It Courage 

Spyri, Johanna
Heidi 

Steinbeck, John
The Red Pony 

Stevenson, Robert Louis
A Child's Garden of Verses*
Kidnapped
Treasure Island 

Travers, Pamela L.
Mary Poppins series 

Van Loon, Hendrik
The Story of Mankind 

White, E.B.
Charlotte's Web
Stuart Little 

Wilder, Laura Ingalls
Little House series 

Williams, Margery
The Velveteen Rabbit* 

Wyss, Johann
Swiss Family Robinson 

Zion, Gene
Harry the Dirty Dog* 

### Grades 7 and 8 ### 

Alcott, Louisa May
Little Men 

Bagnold, Enid
National Velvet 

Blackmore, Richard D.
Lorna Doone 

Boulle, Pierre
The Bridge over the River Kwai 

Bradbury, Ray
Dandelion Wine
Fahrenheit 451
The Illustrated Man
Martian Chronicles 

Buchan, John
The Thirty-Nine Steps 

Bunyan, John
The Pilgrim's Progress 

Carroll, Lewis
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Through the Looking Glass 

Clark, Walter
The Ox-Bow Incident 

Cooper, James Fenimore
The Deerslayer
The Last of the Mohicans 

Curie, Eve
Madame Curie: A Biography 

Dana, Richard Henry
Two Years before the Mast 

Day, Clarence
Life with Father 

Defoe, Daniel
Robinson Crusoe 

Dickens, Charles
A Christmas Carol 

Douglas, Lloyd C.
The Robe 

Doyle, Arthur Conan
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes 

Dumas, Alexander
The Count of Monte Christo
The Three Musketeers 

Du Maurier, Daphne
Rebecca 

Edmonds, Walter D.
Drums along the Mohawk 

Ferber, Edna
Cimarron 

Forbes, Esther
Johnny Tremain 

Forester, C.S.
The African Queen
The Hornblower series 

Frank, Anne
Diary of a Young Girl 

Frost, Robert
Poems 

Gallico, Paul
The Snow Goose 

Gunther, John
Death Be Not Proud 

Guthrie, A.B.
The Big Sky 

Haggard, H. Rider
King Solomon's Mines 

Hansberry, Lorraine
Raisin in the Sun 

Hemingway, Ernest
The Old Man and the Sea 

Hersey, John
A Bell for Adano
Hiroshima
The Wall 

Heyerdahl, Thor
Kon-Tiki 

Hilton, James
Goodbye, Mr. Chips
Lost Horizon 

Hudson, W.H.
Green Mansions 

Hughes, Richard
A High Wind in Jamaica 

Hugo, Victor
The Hunchback of Notre Dame 

Irving, Washington
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow 

Keller, Helen
Story of My Life 

Kennedy, John F.
Profiles in Courage 

Kipling, Rudyard
Kim 

Knowles, John
A Separate Peace 

Lee, Harper
To Kill a Mockingbird 

London, Jack
The Sea Wolf 

Lord, Walter
A Night to Remember 

Malory, Sir Thomas
Le Morte d'Arthur 

Maxwell, Gavin 
Ring of Bright Water 

McCullers, Carson
Member of the Wedding 

Michener, James
The Bridges at Toko-Ri 

Mitchell, Margaret
Gone with the Wind 

Nordhoff, Charles and J.N. Hall
Mutiny on the Bounty 

O'Dell, Scott
Island of the Blue Dolphins 

Orczy, Baroness Emma
The Scarlet Pimpernel 

Paton, Alan
Cry, the Beloved Country 

Pyle, Howard
Men of Iron 

Rawlings, Marjorie Kinnan
The Yearling 

Renault, Mary
The King Must Die 

Roberts, Kenneth
Northwest Passage 

Saint-Exupery, Antoine de
The Little Prince
Wind, Sand and Stars 

Saki 
Stories 

Schaefer, Jack
Shane 

Scott, Sir Walter
Ivanhoe 

Shelley, Mary
Frankenstein 

Smith, Betty
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn 

Steinbeck, John
The Pearl
Tortilla Flat 

Stevenson, Robert Louis
The Black Arrow
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde 

Stoker, Bram
Dracula 

Thurber, James
The Thurber Carnival 

Tolkien, J.R.R.
The Hobbit
The Lord of the Rings 

Twain, Mark
The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
A Connecticut Yankee in 
King Arthur's Court
Innocents Abroad
Life on the Mississippi
The Prince and the Pauper 

Verne, Jules
Around the World in Eighty Days
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Mysterious Island
20,000 Leagues under the Sea 

Wallace, Lewis
Ben-Hur 

Washington, Booker T.
Up from Slavery 

Wells, H.G.
The Time Machine
War of the Worlds 

Wharton, Edith
Ethan Frome 

Wilder, Thornton
The Bridge of San Luis Rey 

Wister, Owen
The Virginian 

Yates, Elizabeth
Amos Fortune, Free Man 

### Grades 9 through 12 ### 

Agee, James
A Death in the Family 

Anderson, Sherwood
Winesburg, Ohio 

Austen, Jane
Emma
Northanger Abbey
Pride and Prejudice
Sense and Sensibility 

Baldwin, James
Go Tell It on the Mountain 

Balzac, Honore de
Pere Goriot 

Beckett, Samuel
Waiting for Godot 

The Bible
Old Testament
New Testament 

Bolt, Robert
A Man for All Seasons 

Bronte, Charlotte
Jane Eyre 

Bronte, Emily
Wuthering Heights 

Browning, Robert
Poems 

Buck, Pearl
The Good Earth 

Butler, Samuel
The Way of All Flesh 

Camus, Albert
The Plague
The Stranger 

Cather, Willa
Death Comes for the Archbishop
My Antonia 

Cervantes, Miguel
Don Quixote 

Chaucer, Geoffrey
The Canterbury Tales 

Chekhov, Anton
The Cherry Orchard 

Chopin, Kate
The Awakening 

Collins, Wilkie
The Moonstone 

Conrad, Joseph
Heart of Darkness
Lord Jim
The Secret Sharer
Victory 

Crane, Stephen
The Red Badge of Courage 

Dante
The Divine Comedy 

Defoe, Daniel
Moll Flanders 

Dickens, Charles
Bleak House
David Copperfield
Great Expectations
Hard Times
Oliver Twist
A Tale of Two Cities 

Dickinson, Emily
Poems 

Dinesen, Isak
Out of Africa 

Dostoevski, Fyodor
Brothers Karamazov
Crime and Punishment 

Dreiser, Theodore
An American Tragedy
Sister Carrie 

Eliot, George
Adam Bede
Middlemarch
Mill on the Floss
Silas Marner 

Eliot, T.S.
Murder in the Cathedral 

Ellison, Ralph
Invisible Man 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo
Essays 

Faulkner, William
Absalom, Absalom!
As I Lay Dying
Intruder in the Dust
Light in August
The Sound and the Fury 

Fielding, Henry
Joseph Andrews
Tom Jones 

Fitzgerald, F. Scott
The Great Gatsby
Tender Is the Night 

Flaubert, Gustave
Madame Bovary 

Forster, E.M.
A Passage to India
A Room with a View 

Franklin, Benjamin
The Autobiography of
Benjamin Franklin 

Galsworthy, John
The Forsyte Saga 

Golding, William
Lord of the Flies 

Goldsmith, Oliver
She Stoops to Conquer 

Graves, Robert
I, Claudius 

Greene, Graham
The Heart of the Matter
The Power and the Glory 

Hamilton, Edith
Mythology 

Hardy, Thomas
Far From the Madding Crowd
Jude the Obscure
The Mayor of Casterbridge
The Return of the Native
Tess of the D'Urbervilles 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel
The House of the Seven Gables
The Scarlet Letter 

Hemingway, Ernest
A Farewell to Arms
For Whom the Bell Tolls
The Sun Also Rises 

Henry, O.
Stories 

Hersey, John
A Single Pebble 

Hesse, Hermann
Demian
Siddhartha
Steppenwolf 

Homer
The Iliad
The Odyssey 

Hughes, Langston
Poems 

Hugo, Victor
Les Miserables 

Huxley, Aldous
Brave New World 

Ibsen, Henrik
A Doll's House
An Enemy of the People
Ghosts
Hedda Gabler
The Master Builder
The Wild Duck 

James, Henry
The American
Daisy Miller
Portrait of a Lady
The Turn of the Screw 

Joyce, James
Portrait of the Artist
As a Young Man
Dubliners 

Kafka, Franz
The Castle
Metamorphosis
The Trial 

Keats, John
Poems 

Kerouac, Jack
On the Road 

Koestler, Arthur
Darkness at Noon 

Lawrence, D.H.
Sons and Lovers 

Lawrence, Jerome and Robert E. Lee
Inherit the Wind 

Lewis, Sinclair
Arrowsmith
Babbitt
Main Street 

Llewellyn, Richard
How Green Was My Valley 

Machiavelli
The Prince 

MacLeish, Archibald
J.B. 

Mann, Thomas
Buddenbrooks
The Magic Mountain 

Marlowe, Christopher
Dr. Faustus 

Maugham, Somerset
Of Human Bondage 

McCullers, Carson
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter 

Melville, Herman
Billy Budd
Moby-Dick
Typee 

Miller, Arthur
The Crucible
Death of a Salesman 

Monsarrat, Nicholas
The Cruel Sea 

O'Neill, Eugene
The Emperor Jones
A Long Day's Journey into Night
Mourning Becomes Electra 

Orwell, George
Animal Farm
1984 

Pasternak, Boris
Doctor Zhivago 

Poe, Edgar Allan
Short stories 

Remarque, Erich
All Quiet on the Western Front 

Rolvaag, O.E.
Giants in the Earth 

Rostand, Edmond
Cyrano de Bergerac 

Salinger, J.D.
The Catcher in the Rye 

Sandburg, Carl
Abraham Lincoln: 
The Prairie Years
Abraham Lincoln: 
The War Years 

Saroyan, William
The Human Comedy 

Sayers, Dorothy
The Nine Tailors 

Shakespeare, William
Plays and sonnets 

Shaw, George Bernard
Arms and the Man
Major Barbara
Pygmalion
Saint Joan 

Sheridan, Richard B.
The School for Scandal 

Shute, Nevil
On the Beach 

Sinclair, Upton
The Jungle 

Sophocles
Antigone
Oedipus Rex 

Steinbeck, John
East of Eden
The Grapes of Wrath
Of Mice and Men 

Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Uncle Tom's Cabin 

Swift, Jonathan
Gulliver's Travels 

Thackeray, William M.
Vanity Fair 

Thoreau, Henry David
Walden 

Tolstoy, Leo
Anna Karenina
War and Peace 

Trollope, Anthony
Barchester Towers 

Turgenev, Ivan
Fathers and Sons 

Twain, Mark
Pudd'nhead Wilson 

Updike, John
Rabbit Run 

Vergil
The Aeneid 

Voltaire
Candide 

Warren, Robert Penn
All the King's Men 

Waugh, Evelyn
Brideshead Revisited
A Handful of Dust 

Wharton, Edith
Age of Innocence 

White, T.H.
The Once and Future King
The Sword in the Stone 

Wilde, Oscar
The Importance of Being Earnest
The Picture of Dorian Gray 

Wilder, Thornton
Our Town 

Williams, Tennessee
The Glass Menagerie
A Streetcar Named Desire 

Wolfe, Thomas
Look Homeward, Angel 

Woolf, Virginia
Mrs. Dalloway
To the Lighthouse 

Wouk, Herman
The Caine Mutiny 

Wright, Richard
Black Boy
Native Son