Harvard Classics Books

Canterbury Tales and Other Poems

Geoffrey Chaucer

Chaucer is considered by some to be the Father of English Literature, and the Canterbury Tales is his magnum opus. It is a frame story - a collection of stories contained by a larger one - written in ..

Gulliver's Travels

Jonathan Swift

To this day, the classic Gulliver's Travels places Jonathan Swift as the master of both parody and satire. Fifteen years in the making, his book was published anonymously due to fear of prosecution. A..

The Invisible Man

H. G. Wells

Certainly a classic book but I have always felt like, in the end, the central character was just too one-dimensional. The absence of any moral reflection has always seemed like an opportunity missed. ..

The Time Machine

H. G. Wells

H.G. Wells is like the Plato of science fiction, and The Time Machine might be his Republic. It's the first of his series of vastly influential books which include War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man..

Little Women

Louisa May Alcott

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott is a beloved portrait of an American family during the latter half of the 19th century. The March family patriarch engaged in the Civil War as a chaplain in the Union..

Walden

Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau's book Walden would become particularly popular during the forced austerity of the Great Depression of the 1930s, and then again during the 1960s when conservationism, transcendent..

The Three Musketeers

Alexandre Dumas

The Three Musketeers is the classic adventure novel by Alexandre Dumas, set in the 17th century, about a young man named d'Artagnan who leaves home to become a guard of the musketeers. The titular cha..

Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad

A compelling story reaching into the unspoken depths of the place in man's soul where, sometimes, greatness seems both noble and tragic. The most beautifully-written, memorable and perhaps meaningful ..