The Online Books Page

Canon (Literature)

Here are entered works on the accepted or sanctioned list of works which have achieved recognition in literary history for their superior qualities.

See also what's at Wikipedia, your library, or elsewhere.

• Best books
• Criticism
• Literature -- History and criticism

• Classics, Literary
• Literary canon
• Literary classics

• The Myths of Fiction: Studies in the Canonical Greek Novels (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, c2004), by Edmund P. Cueva (page images at HathiTrust)
• Proofs of Genius: Collected Editions from the American Revolution to the Digital Age (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015), by Amanda A. Gailey (HTML with commentary at Digital Culture Books)
• A General Introduction to the Great Books and to a Liberal Education (Great Ideas program v1; Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1959), by Mortimer J. Adler and Peter Wolff, contrib. by Robert Maynard Hutchins (page images at HathiTrust)
• Manifesto of a Tenured Radical (New York and London: New York University Press, c1997), by Cary Nelson (HTML with commentary at NYU Press)
• Toward a Working-Class Canon: Literary Criticism in British Working-Class Periodicals, 1816-1858 (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, c1994), by Paul Thomas Murphy (PDF files with commentary at Ohio State Press)
• The Voice in the Margin: Native American Literature and the Canon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), by Arnold Krupat (HTML at UC Press)

Items below (if any) are from related and broader terms.

• The Best Books: A Reader's Guide to the Choice of the Best Available Books (About 50,000) in Every Department of Science, Art and Literature, With the Dates of the First and Last Editions and the Price, Size, and Publisher's Name of Each Book (second edition, corrected; London: Swan Sonnenschein and Co.; et al., 1901), by William Swan Sonnenschein
  • multiple formats at archive.org
  • page images at HathiTrust; US access only
• List of Books for Girls and Women and Their Clubs: With Descriptive and Critical Notes and a List of Periodicals and Hints for Girls' and Women's Clubs (Boston: Published for the American Library Association Publishing Section by the Library Bureau, 1895), ed. by George Iles and Augusta H. Leypoldt (multiple formats at archive.org)
• A Reader's Guide to Contemporary Literature: Being the First Supplement to The Best Books (London: S. Sonnenschein and Co.; New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1895), by William Swan Sonnenschein (page images at HathiTrust)
• Fiction Catalog (partial serial archives)
• Standard Catalog for Public Libraries: Fiction Section (second edition revised; New York: H. W. Wilson Co., 1931), by Phyllis Crawford, ed. by Corinne Bacon (page images at HathiTrust)
• English Prose Fiction: A Selected List Cataloged by Author and Title With Annotations (abridged version of Fiction Catalog; Minneapolis: H. W. Wilson Co., 1908) (page images at HathiTrust)
• Fiction Catalog: A Complete List Cataloged by Author and Title With Annotations (Minneapolis: H. W. Wilson Co., 1911) (multiple formats at archive.org)
• Fiction Catalog: A Selected List Cataloged by Author and Title With Annotations (Minneapolis: H. W. Wilson Co., 1908) (page images at HathiTrust)
• Novelistas Malos y Buenos (second edition, in Spanish; Bilbao: Sr. Administrator de el Mensajero del Corazón de Jesús, ca. 1911), by Pablo Ladrón de Guevara (page images at HathiTrust; US access only)
• Novelistas Malos y Buenos Juzgados en Orden de Naciones: Júzganse 2,057 Novelistas: 288 Españoles, 97 Hispanoamericanos, 24 Portugueses, 65 Italianos, 1173 Franceses, 143 Ingleses, 98 Alemanes, 169 Rusos, Belgas, Escandinovos, etc. (in Spanish; Bogotá: Impr. Eléctrica, 1910), by Pablo Ladrón de Guevara (page images at HathiTrust; US access only)
• Pantology: or, A Systematic Survey of Human Knowledge, Proposing a Classification of All Its Branches and Illustrating Their History, Relations, Uses, and Objects (Philadelphia: Hogan and Thompson, 1841), by Roswell Park (multiple formats at archive.org)
• Editions for the Armed Services, Inc.: A History, Together With the Complete List of 1324 Books Published for American Armed Forces Overseas (New York: Editions for the Armed Services, Inc., ca. 1948), contrib. by John Jamieson (page images at HathiTrust)

• Children's Booklist, by Theosophical Society Children's Committee (HTML at theosophy-nw.org)

• One Hundred Books Famous in English Literature, With Facsimiles of the Title-Pages, by Grolier Club, contrib. by George Edward Woodberry (page images at CMU)
• Immortal Memories, by Clement King Shorter (Gutenberg text)
• Literary Taste: How to Form It, With Detailed Instructions for Collecting a Complete Library of English Literature (seventh edition, 1914), by Arnold Bennett (Gutenberg text)

• Choice (partial serial archives)

• The Wilson Bulletin (library journal) (partial serial archives)

• Children's Book-A-Day Almanac (online version, updated regularly), by Anita Silvey (illustrated HTML at childrensbookalmanac.com)

• A Booklist for Penal Institution Libraries: Books Published From July 1948 to June 1950 (New York: American Prison Association, ca. 1950), by American Correctional Association Committee on Institution Libraries, ed. by Edwin I. Friedman (page images at HathiTrust; US access only)
• 1000 Books for Prison Libraries, 1936-1939 (St. Paul: Dawson-Patterson, printers, 1939), by Mildred Louise Methven and American Correctional Association Committee on Institution Libraries (page images at HathiTrust)

• Figural Realism: Studies in the Mimesis Effect (originally published 1998; open access edition Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), by Hayden V. White (HTML and PDF files with commentary at Project MUSE)
• The Institution of Theory (originally published 1994; open access edition Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), by Murray Krieger (multiple formats with commentary at Project MUSE)
• The Play and Place of Criticism (originally published 1967; open access edition Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), by Murray Krieger (multiple formats with commentary at Project MUSE)
• Bakhtin's Theory of the Literary Chronotope: Reflections, Applications, Perspectives (Ghent: Academia Press, c2010), ed. by Nele Bemong, Pieter Borghart, Michel De Dobbeleer, Kristoffel Demoen, Koen de Temmerman, and Bart Keunen (PDF with commentary at OAPEN)
• Framing Theory's Empire (West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press, c2007), ed. by John Holbo (multiple formats at archive.org)
• Marxism and Deconstruction: A Critical Articulation (originally published 1982; open access edition Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), by Michael Ryan (multiple formats with commentary at Project MUSE)
• Poetic Presence and Illusion: Essays in Critical History and Theory (originally published 1979; open access edition Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), by Murray Krieger (multiple formats with commentary at Project MUSE)
• The Theory of Criticism: A Tradition and Its System (originally published 1976; open access edition Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), by Murray Krieger (multiple formats with commentary at Project MUSE)
• Tar for Mortar: The Library of Babel and the Dream of Totality (Earth: BABEL Working Group, c2018), by Jonathan Basile
  • PDF with commentary at punctumbooks.com
  • PDF files with commentary at Project MUSE
• Literature Against Criticism: University English and Contemporary Fiction in Conflict (Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, c2016), by Martin Paul Eve (HTML and PDF with commentary at Open Book Publishers)
• Literature Matters (London: Open Humanities Press, 2016), by J. Hillis Miller, ed. by Monika Reif-Hülser (PDF with commentary at Open Humanities Press)
• Risk Criticism: Precautionary Reading in an Age of Environmental Uncertainty (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, c2016), by Molly Wallace
  • PDF with commentary at OAPEN
  • page images at HathiTrust
  • PDF files at JSTOR
• The Institution of Criticism (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, c1982), by Peter Uwe Hohendahl (PDF files at Project MUSE)
• Legacies of Paul de Man (2005), ed. by Marc Redfield (PDF at Romantic Circles)
• On Human Nature: A Gathering While Everything Flows, 1967-1984 (Berkeley: University of California Press, c2003), by Kenneth Burke, ed. by William H. Rueckert and Angelo Bonadonna (frame-dependent HTML with commentary at UC Press)
• Subjective Criticism (originally published 1978; open access edition Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), by David Bleich (HTML and Epub with commentary at Project MUSE)
• Critical Approaches to Literature (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1956), by David Daiches (page images at HathiTrust)
• Critique of Creativity: Precarity, Subjectivity and Resistance in the "Creative Industries" (London: MayFlyBooks, 2011), ed. by Gerald Raunig, Gene Ray, and Ulf Wuggenig (PDF and HTML with commentary at MayFlyBooks)
• Reading Graphs, Maps, Trees: Responses to Franco Moretti (Anderson, SC: Parlor Press, c2011), ed. by Jonathan Goodwin and John Holbo (PDF at parlormultimedia.com)
• The Anatomy of Criticism: A Trialogue, by Henry Hazlitt (PDF at mises.org)
• The Critical Attitude (London: Duckworth and Co., 1911), by Ford Madox Ford (multiple formats at archive.org)
• Critical Essays of the Early Nineteenth Century, With Introduction and Notes (New York et al.: C. Scribner's Sons, c1921), ed. by Raymond Macdonald Alden (page images at HathiTrust)
• The Critical I, by Norman N. Holland (HTML at ufl.edu)
• Criticism and Fiction, by William Dean Howells (Gutenberg text)
• Essays Literary and Critical, by Matthew Arnold (DjVu at archive.org)
• The Function of Criticism at the Present Time, by Matthew Arnold (HTML at Toronto)
• The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1911), by Joel Elias Spingarn (page images at HathiTrust)
• The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism (1920 edition), by T. S. Eliot (HTML at Bartleby)
• Culture and Cognition: The Boundaries of Literary and Scientific Inquiry (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, c1992), by Ronald Schleifer, Robert Con Davis, and Nancy Mergler (PDF and Epub with commentary at Cornell Open)
• Hieroglyphics (London: Grant Richards, 1902), by Arthur Machen (page images at Google; US access only)
• Literary Criticism From the Elizabethan Dramatists: Repertory and Synthesis (New York: Sturgis and Walton Co., 1910), by David Klein (multiple formats at archive.org)
• Our Stage and its Critics (1910), by Edward Fordham Spence (Gutenberg text)
• Definitions: Essays in Contemporary Criticism, by Henry Seidel Canby (Gutenberg text)
• Definitions: Essays in Contemporary Criticism (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., c1922), by Henry Seidel Canby
  • multiple formats at archhive.org
  • page images at HathiTrust
• English Critical Essays: Nineteenth Century (London: Oxford University Press, H. Miford, c1916), ed. by Edmund D. Jones (Gutenberg text)
• The Grounds of Criticism in Poetry (main text only; some peripheral sections omitted), by John Dennis (HTML at Toronto)

More items available under broader and related terms at left.