Posted on

Britain & Ireland

Jay’s Revised Modern Canon 2020 Edition

                       World Literature: Britain & Ireland

                       History

     The Isles, Norman Davies

     London, Edward Rutherford

     The English: a social history 1066-1945, King Arthur, London: biography of a city, Christopher Hibbert

     A History of Britain volume 1 3500 BC-AD 1603, Vol 2 1603-1776, Vol 3 1776-2000, Simon Schama

     Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour, Kate Fox

     Four Branches of the Mabinogion, Evangeline Walton

     The Grail Legend, by Emma Jung, Marie-Louise von Franz

     Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages: A Collaborative History, Loomis ed

     Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton, Rice

     The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites, Elizabeth Prettejohn

     Modernists and Mavericks: Bacon, Freud, Hockney and the London Painters, Martin Gayford

     Signs Wonders: Essays on Literature and Culture, Fantastic Metamorphoses, Other Worlds: Ways of Telling the Self , From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers, Phantasmagoria: Spirit Visions, Metaphors, and Media Into the Twenty-First Century, No Go the Bogeyman: Scaring, Lulling, and Making Mock, Managing Monsters: Six Myths of Our Time: The Reith Lectures 1994, Marina Warner

     KLF: Chaos Magic Music Money, Stranger Than We Can Imagine: Making Sense of the Twentieth Century, J.M.R. Higgs

     A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future by David Attenborough

     How to Grow Your Own Poem by Kate Clanchy

                     Literature

     The Táin: From the Irish Epic Táin Bó Cúailnge, Thomas Kinsella trans.

     Complete Irish Mythology, Lady Augusta Gregory, W.B. Yeats (Foreword)

     Beowulf

     Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

     Canterbury Tales, Chaucer

The Poetry of Chaucer, The Life and Times of Chaucer, John Gardner

     The King James Bible

     The Riverside Shakespeare

Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, Harold Bloom

Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being, Ted Hughes

     Dr Faustus, Hero and Leander, Christopher Marlowe

     John Milton: The Major Works, Goldberg & Orgel eds

     Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift: his life and world, Leo Damrosch

     The Bride of Lammermoor, Sir Walter Scott

     The Blazing World, Margaret Cavendish

     Lord Byron: The Major Works, McGann ed

     Frankenstein, Mary Shelly

     Complete Poems and Selected Letters, John Keats

     Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte

     Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

     Complete William Blake

A Blake Dictionary; ideas & symbols, Foster Damon

Eternity’s Sunrise: the imaginative world of William Blake, Leo Damrosch

     Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

     Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, Kublai Khan, Coleridge

     Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Treasure Island, Robert Lewis Stevenson

     Heart of Darkness, The Secret Sharer, Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, Under Western Eyes, The Duel, Joseph Conrad

     To the Lighthouse, Orlando, Virginia Woolf

     Finnegans Wake, Ulysses, James Joyce

Mythic Worlds, Modern Words, Joseph Campbell

Joysprick: the language of Joyce, Anthony Burgess

     The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington, Leonora Carrington

     I’ll go on, I cant go on: a Beckett Reader

A Reader’s Guide to Samuel Beckett, Hugh Kenner

     Selected Poems & Three Plays, Yeats, Rosenthal ed.

     Salome, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Lady Windemere’s Fan, The Importance of Being Ernest, The Soul of Man under Socialism, Oscar Wilde

Oscar: a Life, Matthew Sturgis

     Sons and Lovers, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, D.H. Lawrence

D. H. Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study, Anais Nin

     Selected Stories of Padraic Colum

     Selected Poems, Seamus Heaney

     At Swim-Two-Birds, The Third Policeman, O’Brien

     House of Names, The Master, All a Novelist Needs: Colm Tóibín on Henry James, The Blackwater Lightship, Nora Webster, Beauty in a Broken Place, Lady Gregory’s Toothbrush, On Elizabeth Bishop, Mad Bad Dangerous to Know: The Fathers of Wilde, Yeats and Joyce, Love in a Dark Time: and Other Explorations of Gay Lives and Literature, The Modern Library: The 200 Best Novels in English Since 1950, (with Carmen Callil),  Colm Tóibín

     Lanark, A History Maker, Old Men in Love: John Tunnock’s Posthumous Papers, Every Short Story by Alasdair Gray 1951-2012, The Book of Prefaces, Alaisdair Gray

     The Birthday Party, The Homecoming, No Man’s Land, The Caretaker, Celebration, Harold Pinter

     Travesties, Arcadia, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, The Coast of Utopia Trilogy (Voyage, Shipwreck, & Salvage), Tom Stoppard

Tom Stoppard A Life by Professor Dame Hermione Lee

     The Annotated Alice, Lewis Carroll, Gardner ed.

     Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell

On Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Biography, D.J. Taylor

     Lord of the Flies With additional materials, Penguin Great Books edition, E.M. Forster (introduction), E.L. Epstein (notes), Darkness Visible, William Golding

William Golding: A Structural Reading of His Fiction, Philip Redpath

     Nights at the Circus, Wise Children, The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman, The Magic Toyshop, The Curious Room, Expletives Deleted, Shaking A Leg, Burning Your Boats, The Sadeian Woman, Angela Carter

     Napoleon Symphony, Earthly Powers, A Dead Man in Depford, Nothing Like The Sun, The Kingdom of the Wicked, The Devil’s Mode, Mozart and the Wolf Gang, Anthony Burgess

     Light, Nelly’s Version, Tenancy, The Tree of Knowledge, Sex and Subterfuge: women writers to 1850, Eva Figes

     Crow, Tales From Ovid, Cave Birds: an Alchemical Romance, Birthday Letters, Howls & Whispers, Gaudette, The Oresteia, Prometheus on his Crag, Ted Hughes

     The Flute Player, The White Hotel, Pictures at an Exhibition, Eating Pavlova, D.M. Thomas

     Oranges, The Passion, Sexing the Cherry, Written on the Body, Art and Lies, Gut Symmetries,  The Powerbook, Jeanette Winterson

     A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters, Flaubert’s Parrot, England England, The Noise of Time, Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes

     Possession, Angels & Insects, Little Black Book of Stories, The Children’s Book,   The Frederica Quartet  (The Virgin in the Garden, Still Life, Babel Tower ,A Whistling Woman),  A.S. Byatt

     The Magus, The Collector, The Aristos, Mantissa, Daniel Martin,  John Fowles

Arcadia, Harvest, The Gift of Stones, Signals of Distress, The Melody, Quarantine, Jim Crace

     The Philosopher’s Pupil, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, The Sovereignty of Good. The Sacred and Profane Love Machine, A Word Child, Henry and Cato, The Sea, the Sea, Nuns and Soldiers, The Good Apprentice, The Book and the Brotherhood, The Message to the Planet, and The Green Knight, Iris Murdoch

Degrees Of Freedom: The Early Novels of Iris Murdoch, A.S. Byatt

The Saint and the Artist: A Study of Iris Murdoch’s Works. Peter J. Conrad

     The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts, Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord,  The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Birds Without Wings, Imaging Alexandria, Louis de Bernieres

     Skabboys, Trainspotting, Glue, Marabou Stork Nightmares, The Acid House,  Babylon Heights, Irvine Welsh

     Red Thread: On Mazes and Labyrinths, Charlotte Higgins

     Selected Poems, Prose Occasions 1951-2006, Thomas Kinsella

Confronting Shadows: An Introduction to the Poetry of Thomas Kinsella, David Lynch

     The Mermaids in the Basement, The Leto Bundle, Indigo, Murderers I have Known and other short stories, Fly Away Home, Marina Warner

    His Dark Materials (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass), The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, Philip Pullman

     Autumn, Winter, Spring, Summer, Ali Smith

     Tongues of Fire by Sean Hewitt 

     Mordew by Alex Pheby

     War of the Maps by Paul McAuley 

     Red Pill by Hari Kunzru   

     Piranesi by Susanna Clarke   Britain

     The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again by M John Harrison

     The Liar’s Dictionary by Eley Williams 

     How Pale the Winter Has Made Us by Adam Scovell  

    The Treatment by Michael Nath  

     Bina by Anakana Schofield  

     The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave    

      Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell   

     Apeirogon by Colum McCann   

Published by

jayofdollhousepark

I am a former counselor, teacher, and debate coach who loves to read and write, and a student of literature, psychology, history, philosophy, and languages who loves to travel. Help me celebrate the lives and works of our great authors as a common human heritage. I can also be reached at jayofdollhousepark@gmail.com. Regarding my literary criticism on Dollhouse Park Conservatory and Imaginarium: My initial project was to celebrate the authors whose work I love on their birthdays, by reading something of theirs and writing an appreciation. I've now come full circle and completed the calendar year. These are the authors whose works have been my companions through life, and some new discoveries. Many of their books are ones I also taught in high school English classes; works thoroughly lived with. I also include reading lists by national literature, a Modern American Literature group of lists, and Best Books of the Year lists and reviews. There will occasionally be my own poetry as well; you are warned. I hope that you may also find books which will help you through life and bring depth and joy to your days. As to my aesthetics, I envision the mission of creating civilization as a game played by figures which represent conserving and revolutionary forces, as James Joyce and T.S. Eliot may serve as paragons of their sides of the board and reflect each other as partners in the great game of reimagining humankind, a result of the early influence of Herman Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game and Yasunari Kawabata’s The Master of Go, which I read during seventh grade, and Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy, which I read the following year. Each of us, as with every author, musician, artist, scientist, or public figure, plays the Great Game on one of these dyadic teams. The function of conservatism is to buffer order from the shock of the new and withstand stresses and changing conditions without losing ourselves or undergoing morphogenic change, the loss of identity as structural form, or ruptures to our prochronism, the memory and history of our choices, successful adaptations and strategies of survival as expressed in our systemic form, the loss of our culture and traditions. The function of revolution and innovation is to capitalize on chaos as adaptive potential in dynamically unstable conditions, to adapt and shape ourselves to future needs and to transform, create, and discover new forms, meanings, and values. We need both conserving and revolutionary forces to envision and enact a thing of beauty, be it a person, story, song, film, theory, or any creative artifact of authentic human imagination and experience. A beautiful political structure may be judged by the same criterion as a beautiful poem; so also with humans and the values their actions embody. Thank you so much for your company on this journey. Regarding my daily political journal on Torch of Freedom, a voice of progressive democracy and the antifascist Resistance: I stand for liberty, equality, truth, and justice; a free society of equals. My America is a torch of Liberty and a beacon of hope to the world. I stand for the absolute structural and systemic equality of all human beings, and for the Rights of Man everywhere on earth. I am on the side of Prometheus; rebellion, chaos, anarchy, resistance, transgression, revolution, and the frightening of the horses. Herein I write as an agent of Chaos and Transformation whose goal in life is to become a fulcrum and change the balance of power in the world. For thirty-nine years now I have been engaged in antifascist action, democracy activism, and revolutionary struggle against tyranny and state terror for the liberation of humankind, wherever men hunger to be free. And so I offer to all of you the Oath of the Resistance as it was given to me in Beirut 1982 by the great Jean Genet as he formulated it in Paris 1940, in a burning house, in a lost cause, in a time of force and darkness, in a last stand and an act of defiance beyond hope of victory or survival; “We swear our loyalty to each other, who answer tyranny with Liberty and fascism with Equality. We shall resist and yield not, and abandon not our fellows.” Resist and fear not, O my brothers and sisters, for in resistance we seize our freedom and become Unconquered.

Leave a comment

Leave a comment