English IV - Recommended Reading for College Bound Students
Sorted by Title / Author
F TWA	Twain, Mark, 1835-1910. The adventures of Huckleberry Finn. New York : Modern Library, 1993. Huck, in flight from his murderous father, and Jim, in flight from slavery, pilot their raft down the Mississippi River in search of freedom.
F REM	Remarque, Erich Maria, 1898-1970. All quiet on the western front. Fawcett Crest ed. New York : Ballantine, 1987, c1958. Depicts the experiences of a group of young German soldiers fighting and suffering during the last days of World War I.
F WARREN	Warren, Robert Penn, 1905-. All the king's men. 2nd Harvest ed. San Diego [Calif.] : Harcourt Brace, 1996, c1946. Willie Stark, a well-intentioned, idealistic, back-country lawyer is unable to resist greed for power and lust for politics during his rise and fall as an American demagogue.
F Dre	Dreiser, Theodore, 1871-1945. An American tragedy. New York : Library of America :, c2003. Presents the 1925 novel about Clyde Griffiths, an impoverished young man whose dreams of self-betterment lead him to commit a horrible murder, and includes a chronology and notes.
F TOLSTOY	Tolstoy, Leo, graf, 1828-1910. Anna Karenina : a novel in eight parts. Penguin Classics deluxe ed. New York : Penguin Books, 2002. In nineteenth-century Russia, the wife of an important government official loses her family and social status when she chooses the love of Count Vronsky over a passionless marriage.
F Morrison	Morrison, Toni. Beloved : a novel. New York : Plume, 1998, c1987. Sethe, an escaped slave who now lives in post-Civil War Ohio, has borne the unthinkable and works hard at "beating back the past." She struggles to keep Beloved, an intruder, from gaining possession of her present while throwing off the legacy of her past.
F Dic	Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870. Bleak House. London ; : Penguin Books, [2003], c1853. Presents Dickens's 1853 novel which tells the story of several generations of the Jarndyce family who wait in vain to inherit money that is tied up in a legal dispute in England's notoriously slow-moving Court of Chancery.
F ANAYA	Anaya, Rudolfo A. Bless me, Ultima. Warner Books ed. New York : Warner Books, c1999. Six-year-old Antonio embarks upon a spiritual journey under the watchful guidance of Ultima, a healing woman, that leads him to question his faith and beliefs in family, religion, and other aspects of his Chicano culture.
F HUX	Huxley, Aldous. Brave new world. Perennial library ed. New York : Harper & Row, 1989. A satirical novel about the Utopia of the future, when babies are decanted from bottles and the great Ford is worshipped.
F Hel	Heller, Joseph. Catch-22. New York : Dell, 1990, c1961. Set on a tiny Mediterranean island during World War II, this comic novel recounts the amazing adventures of the 256th bombing squadron and its lead bombardier, Captain Yossarian.
F SALINGER	Salinger, J. D. The catcher in the rye. Toronto ; New York : Bantam, 1986, c1951. Unable to conform despite pressure from his family, teachers, and friends, Holden Caufield embarks on a journey of self-discovery.
F ATWOOD	Atwood, Margaret Eleanor, 1939-. Cat's eye. 1st Anchor Books ed. New York : Anchor Books, 1998, c1988. A feminist painter returns to Toronto for a retrospective of her work and confronts her memories, family, and friends.
F SILKO	Silko, Leslie, 1948-. Ceremony. New York : Penguin Books, 1986. Follows Tayo, a young Native American, after his release from a veteran's hospital following World War II as he searches for meaning and sanity in his life.
F DOSTOYEVSKY	Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 1821-1881. Crime and punishment. New York : Pocket Books, [2004]. Raskolnikov, an impoverished Russian student, murders a despicable old pawnbroker, reasoning that his evil act is outweighed by humanitarian good, but he discovers the fault in his theory when he is plagued by horror and guilt over his actions. Includes a selection of study aids.
F PATON	Paton, Alan. Cry, the beloved country. 1st Scribner Paperback Fiction ed. New York : Scribner Paperback Fiction, 1995. Accused of murdering a white man, a young black South African turns to his minister father and a white attorney for help, but the racial problems of the country prevent justice from being served.
F Dic	Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870. David Copperfield. Modern Library pbk. ed. New York : Modern Library, 2000. Presents Charles Dickens's 1850 novel that chronicles an English orphan boy's lessons in love, betrayal, loyalty, and forgiveness from birth to fatherhood; and includes explanatory notes, commentary from such figures as Virginia Woolf and George Orwell, and discussion questions.
F WELTY	Welty, Eudora, 1909-. Delta wedding : a novel. 1st Harvest/HBJ ed. New York : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979, c1974. A portrait of a large Southern family living on their plantation in the Mississippi delta land in 1923.
F PASTERNAK	Pasternak, Boris Leonidovich, 1890-1960. Doctor Zhivago. [Pantheon pbk. ed.]. New York : Pantheon Books, [1991], c1958. Presents the classic story of Dr. Zhivago and Lara who fall in love in the midst of the turmoil of the Russian Revolution.
F CERVANTES	Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de, 1547-1616. Don Quixote. Washington Square Press, c1972. The epic tale of an eccentric country gentleman and his companion who set out as a knight and squire of old to right wrongs and punish evil in sixteenth-century Spain.
F AUSTEN	Austen, Jane, 1775-1817. Emma. 2001 Modern Library pbk. ed. New York : Modern Library, 2001. A novel of Regency England that centers upon a self-assured young lady who is determined to arrange her life and the lives of those around her into a pattern dictated by her romantic fancy.
F WHA	Wharton, Edith, 1862-1937. Ethan Frome. New York : Signet Classic, [2000]. The tragic story of Ethan Frome, a New England farmer married to a hypochondriac and in love with his wife's lively cousin, Mattie.
F DEFOE	Defoe, Daniel, 1661?-1731. The fortunes and misfortunes of the famous Moll Flanders. New York : Signet Classics, [2005]. Presents Daniel Defoe's eighteenth-century novel about a woman born in Newgate prison who becomes an infamous prostitute and thief in both England and the American colonies.
F SHE	Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, 1797-1851. Frankenstein, or, The modern Prometheus. New York : Modern Library, 1993. A monster assembled by a scientist from parts of dead bodies is scorned for being ugly and swears revenge on his creator and the human race.
F STEINBECK	Steinbeck, John, 1902-1968. The grapes of wrath. New York : Penguin, 1992. The saga of a family in 1939 that struggles through the Great Depression by laboring as Dust Bowl migrants.
F DICKENS	Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870. Great expectations. New York : Knopf :, c1992. Contains the complete text of the 1860 novel about Pip, an orphan in Victorian England who is plucked from a life of poverty and informed he is to be educated and reared as a gentleman; and includes a critical introduction and a chronology.
F SWIFT	Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745. Gulliver's travels. New York : Signet Classic, c[1999]. The voyages of an Englishman carry him to a land of people six inches high, a land of giants, an island of sorcerers, and a land where horses are masters of human-like creatures.
F Dic	Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870. Hard times. Dover ed. Mineola, N.Y. : Dover Publications, 2001. Contains the complete text of the nineteenth-century tale of redemption in a northern English town beset by industrialism, and includes a critical introduction and chronology.
F Con	Conrad, Joseph, 1857-1924. Heart of darkness. Dover ed. New York : Dover, 1990. Marlow comes face to face with the corruption and despair that lies at the heart of human existence when he undertakes a journey on behalf of a Belgian trading company up the Congo River in search of the tormented white ivory trader, Kurtz.
F FIELDING	Fielding, Henry, 1707-1754. The history of Tom Jones, a foundling. New York : Penguin Books, 2005. Presents Henry Fielding's 1749 comic novel in which Tom Jones, abandoned as an infant, is adopted by Squire Allworthy and amuses himself with amorous escapades until the day he decides to leave home and seek his fortune and real identity. Includes an introduction, a chronology, a glossary, explanatory notes, and an appendix on Fielding's revisions.
F MOMADAY	Momaday, N. Scott, 1934-. House made of dawn. 1st Perennial Classics ed. New York : Perennial Classics, 1999, c1966. Abel, a young American Indian home from a foreign war, finds himself torn between his father's world on the reservation and the lure of industrial America.
F Haw	Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864. The house of the seven gables. New York : Dodd Mead, 1979. In 17th-century New England, Hepzibah Pyncheon tries to protect her ex-convict brother from the persecution of the unscrupulous Judge Pyncheon.
F ALLENDE	Allende, Isabel. The house of the spirits. New York : Bantam Books, 1993, c1982. The epic story of the passionate Trueba family begins at the turn of the century in South America.
F ELLISON	Ellison, Ralph. Invisible man. 2nd Vintage International ed. New York : Vintage International, 1995, c1947. In the course of his wanderings from a Southern college to New York's Harlem, an African-American man becomes involved in a series of adventures.
F BRO	Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Evanston : Houghton Mifflin, [1997]. When a penniless governess falls in love with the brooding master of Thornfield, she is unaware of the tragic events that will follow.
F TAN	Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. New York : Ivy Books, [1995], c1989. In 1949 four Chinese women began meeting in San Francisco to play mah jong. They called their gathering the Joy Luck Club. Forty years later they look back and remember.
F HARDY	Hardy, Thomas, 1840-1928. Jude the obscure. Bantam Classic ed. New York : Bantam Classic, 1996. The story of Jude Fawley, an impoverished stonemason who aspires to the ministry and fails to fulfill the opposite expectations of the two women he loves in Victorian society.
F Sin	Sinclair, Upton, 1878-1968. The jungle : an authoritative text, contexts and backgrounds, criticism. 1st ed. New York : Norton, c2003. Contains the text of the novel that describes the conditions of the Chicago stockyards through the eyes of a young immigrant struggling in America and also includes selected readings that examine its historical importance and literary qualities as well contemporary reviews and critical commentaries on the work.
F HARDY	Hardy, Thomas, 1840-1928. The life and death of the Mayor of Casterbridge : the story of a man of character. New York : Signet Classic, [1999]. Tells the story about a headstrong man who rises to become the richest corn merchant and chief citizen in his town. Despite his great wealth and power, however, the man can not forget his past.
F FAULKNER	Faulkner, William, 1897-1962. Light in August : the corrected text. Vintage international ed. New York : Vintage International, 1990. Joe Christmas, who appears to be white but is part African-American, kills Joanna Burden, a spinster with whom he has had an affair. He is captured, castrated, and killed by outraged townspeople.
F CONRAD	Conrad, Joseph, 1857-1924. Lord Jim. New York : Signet Classic, [2000]. A man who has been branded a coward earns the respect of the Malay people.
F FLA	Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary. New York: Barnes & Noble, c1993. Emma Bovary is one of the most compelling heroines in all of modern literature. Unhappily married to a devoted but clumsy and hopelessly provincial doctor, Emma revolts against the boredom and monotony of her life by pursuing romantic dreams of sexual pasion and love. This relenteless pursuit, however, becomes the ultimate source of her undoing. Enacted within the stifling atmosphere of bourgeois life in nineteenth-century France, Madame Bovary is both an unsparing depiction of Emma's gradual corruption, and a savage indictment of society's hypocrisy and insensitivity.
F LEW	Lewis, Sinclair, 1885-1951. Main Street. New York : Bantam Books, 1996. A young woman has difficulty adjusting to life in a small town in Minnesota.
F AUSTEN	Austen, Jane. Mansfield Park. New York : Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc, 1967. Fanny, a girl of low social rank brought up on her wealthy relatives' estate, feels the sharp sting of rejection when her cousin Edmund, the only person who treats her as an equal, is won over by an unprincipled London girl; and includes explanatory notes and appendices on social status, dancing, the British Navy, and the play "Lovers' Vows.".
F McC	McCullers, Carson, 1917-1967. The member of the wedding. New York : Bantam, c1973. Frankie Addams, a motherless twelve-year-old raised by her father and the family's African-American cook, struggles with conflicting feelings about her brother's upcoming wedding.
F ELIOT	Eliot, George, 1819-1880. Middlemarch : a study of provincial life. New York : Signet Classic, [2003]. The lives of three people in a nineteenth-century provincial community become entwined as crusader Dorothea Brooke is prevented from being with the man she loves, the idealistic Dr. Lydgate succumbs to materialism, and religious hypocrite Bulstrode tries to hide his past crimes.
F Mel	Melville, Herman, 1819-1891. Moby-Dick. 2nd ed., 150th anniversary ed. New York : Norton, c2002. Presents the text and critical analysis of Herman Melville's "Moby Dick," and includes reviews and letters by Melville.
F WOOLF	Woolf, Virginia, 1882-1941. Mrs. Dalloway. New York : Harcourt, [1981], c1925. Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway, occupied with the last-minute details of party preparation, finds her thoughts on a very different route through the past.
SC F Wri	Wright, Richard, 1908-1960. Native son. New York : Harper & brothers, 1940. Presents Richard Wright's 1940 novel in which a young African-American man, trapped in the poverty-stricken ghetto of Chicago's South Side, kills a rich white girl in a moment of panic, and finds himself on a path to self-destruction.
F KOGAWA	Kogawa, Joy. Obasan. 1st Anchor Books ed. New York : Anchor Books, 1994, c1981. Naomi Nakane, a child of Japanese immigrant parents, is interned by the Canadians at the beginning of World War II when she is five years old.
F MAUGHAM	Maugham, W. Somerset (William Somerset), 1874-1965. Of human bondage. Modern Library pbk. ed. New York : Modern Library, 1999. Philip Carey, a handicapped orphan, is brought up by a self-indulgent Victorian clergyman, sheds his religious faith as a young man, and begins to study art in Paris, but finally returns to London to qualify as a doctor.
F DIC	Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870. Oliver Twist. London ; : Penguin Books, [1985]. In nineteenth-century England, a young orphan boy lives in the squalid surroundings of a workhouse until he becomes involved with a gang of thieves.
F WHI	White, T.H. Once and Future King, The. New York: G.P. Putnam, [1987]. Retells the story of King Arthur from the early days to his final battle and death.
F MARQUEZ	García Márquez, Gabriel, 1928-. One hundred years of solitude. 1st Perennial Classics ed. New York : HarperPerennial, 1998. The rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendia family.
F WELTY	Welty, Eudora, 1909-. The optimist's daughter. Vintage International ed. New York : Vintage Books, 1990. A woman who has left the South returns when her father is dying. After his death, she and her silly young stepmother go back to the small Mississippi town where she grew up.
F AUSTEN	Austen, Jane, 1775-1817. Persuasion. New ed. Oxford ; : Oxford University Press, 2004. Anne Elliot, persuaded by family and friends that the charming and handsome Frederick Wentworth is not worthy of her regard, questions her decision to send him away until he returns seven years later, his circumstances much improved.
F WIL	Wilde, Oscar. Picture of Dorian Gray,The. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, [1999]. Dorian Gray, a young man of great physical beauty, is having his portrait done by his painter friend Basil Hallward. As he sits for his portrait, Dorian is introduced to Lord Henry Wotton. During the course of their discussion, Dorian tells Lord Henry that he would give his soul if he could remain eternally young while his portrait ages. Dorian later discovers that his wish has been granted.
SC F Joy	Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man. New York : Random House, [1916]. Traces the childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood of Stephen Dedalus, a character based on author James Joyce's life.
F GREENE	Greene, Graham, 1904-. The power and the glory. New York : Penguin Books, 2003, c1940. In anticlerical Mexico after the revolution of 1910, the last priest left--the worldly "whiskey priest"--seeks to reconcile his dual nature as saint and sinner while running from the Communists.
F AUSTEN	Austen, Jane, 1775-1817. Pride and prejudice. Bantam Classic ed. New York : Bantam Books, 1981. In early nineteenth-century England, a spirited young woman copes with the courtship of a snobbish gentleman as well as the romantic entanglements of her four sisters.
F SPARK	Spark, Muriel. The prime of Miss Jean Brodie. 1st Perennial Classics ed. New York : Perennial Classics, 1999. A teacher at a girls' school in Edinburgh, Scotland, Miss Jean Brodie was a woman of ideas, wit, and charm who had a lover. The students she chose as her special friends were called the "Brodie set." One of them would betray her.
F Har	Hardy, Thomas, 1840-1928. The return of the native. Austin : Holt, Rinehart and Winston, [2000?]. Clym Yeobright, tired of Paris city life, returns to Egdon Heath to open a school. There he marries a pleasure-loving girl and tragedy follows.
F DeF	Defoe, Daniel, 1661?-1731. Robinson Crusoe. London ; : Penguin Books, 2001. During one of his several adventurous voyages in the seventeenth century, an Englishman becomes the sole survivor of a shipwreck and lives for nearly thirty years on a desert island.
F Haw	Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864. The scarlet letter. Bantam classic ed. New York : Bantam Classic, 2003. Hester Prynne, a young woman in seventeenth century Massachusets, is condemned by Puritan law to wear a scarlet "A" as the symbol of the sin she committed.
F AUSTEN	Austen, Jane, 1775-1817. Sense and sensibility. 1st Tor ed. New York : Tor, 1995. Two sisters of opposing temperaments share the pangs of tragic love. Their mutual suffering brings a closer understanding between the two sisters, and true love finally triumphs.
F KNO	Knowles, John. Separate Peace, A. New York: Scribner Classics, [1996]. Gene Forrester looks back fifteen years to a World War II year in which he and his best friend Phineas were roomates in a New Hampshire boarding school. Their friendship is marred by Finny's crippling fall, an event for which Gene is responsible and one that eventually leads to tragedy.
F PRO	Proulx, Annie. The shipping news. 1st Touchstone ed. New York : Simon & Schuster, 1994, c1993. Quoyle and his two emotionally disturbed daughters return to the family ancestral home in Newfoundland to start new lives.
823.8 ELI	Eliot, George, 1819-1880. Silas Marner : the weaver of Raveloe. Modern Library pbk. ed. New York : Modern Library, 2001. The life of Silas Marner, a dejected man obsessed with money, changes drastically when an orphaned little girl arrives at his home. Includes an introduction by Chris Bohjalian.
F Dre	Dreiser, Theodore, 1871-1945. Sister Carrie. Dover ed. Mineola, N.Y. : Dover Publications, 2004. The story of a young woman from Wisconsin who goes to Chicago, becomes an actress, marries and moves to New York, and when her husband loses his job, returns to the stage.
F VONNEGUT	Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughter-House-Five. New York: Random House, [1969]. During World War II, Billy Pilgrim, a shell-shocked soldier in war-torn Dresden, escapes the horror and absurdity of war by taking schizophrenic journeys through time and space. In his time-trips" Billy visits the distant planet Tralfamadore, where he is put in a zoo and mated to a former movie star from Earth. The novel is a complex story-within-a-story, unified by its central setting-Dresden during the bombing--and its central theme--the absurdity and brutality of war.
F MOR	Morrison, Toni. Song of Solomon. New York : Plume, [1987], c1977. Follows the life of Macon Dead, Jr., the son of the richest black family in a midwestern town, as he leaves home on a quest for personal freedom.
F CAMUS	Camus, Albert, 1913-1960. The stranger. New York : Knopf :, 1993. Caught in the grip of forces he does not understand, a quiet, ordinary clerk in Algiers commits a murder.
F MORRISON	Morrison, Toni. Sula. 1st Vintage International ed. New York : Vintage International, 2004, c1973. Traces the lives of two black heroines from their growing up together in a small Ohio town, to their sharply divergent paths of womanhood, to their ultimate confrontation and reconciliation.
F DICKENS	Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870. A tale of two cities. London ; : Penguin Books, [2003]. Presents Charles Dickens's 1859 historical novel set in Paris and London during the French Revolution, in which French nobleman Charles Darnay renounces his position and leaves his country, then returns during the Terror to save the life of a servant, putting himself in grave danger.
F Har	Hardy, Thomas, 1840-1928. Tess of the d'Urbervilles : a pure woman. New York : Modern Library, 1979. An English woman finds herself the victim of fate and of forces beyond her control.
F HURSTON	Hurston, Zora Neale. Their eyes were watching God. 1st Perennial Classics ed. New York : Perennial, 1998, c1937. An African-American woman searches for a fulfilling relationship through two loveless marriages and finally finds it in the person of Tea Cake, an itinerant laborer and gambler.
F ACHEBE	Achebe, Chinua. Things fall apart. Fawcett Crest ed. New York : Ballantine, 1983. Set in an Ibo village in Nigeria, the novel recreates pre-Christian tribal life and shows how the coming of the white man led to the breaking up of the old ways.
F STO	Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 1811-1896. Uncle Tom's cabin. Bantam classic ed. New York : Bantam Books, 1981. Presents the controversial novel, published in 1852, in which author Harriet Beecher Stowe offers an indictment of the pre-Civil War South through the story of Uncle Tom, an elderly slave who maintains his human dignity in the face of cruelty, suffering, and death.
F TOLSTOY	Tolstoy, Leo, graf, 1828-1910. War and peace. New York : Signet Classic, c1968. An epic novel featuring the Russian role in the Napoleonic wars and providing a complex panorama of the life of the time.
979.4 KIN	Kingston, Maxine Hong. The woman warrior : memoirs of a girlhood among ghosts. Vintage International ed. New York : Vintage International, 1989, c1976. A memoir of the American-born daughter of Chinese immigrants who lived within the traditions and fears of the Chinese past as well as the realities of the alien modern American culture.
F Bro	Bronte, Emily, 1818-1848. Wuthering Heights. London, England ; : Puffin Books, 1994. Forced by a storm to spend the night at the home of the somber Heathcliff, Mr. Lockwood uncovers a tale of terror and hatred on the Yorkshire moors.