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The Flowers of Evil (Les Fleurs du Mal) is a collection of poems by Charles Baudelaire influential on several levels. Fellow artists were impressed and unsettled when it was published in 1857; one described the effect as “immense, prodigious, unexpected, mingled with admiration and some indefinable anxious fear”. Admirers included Victor Hugo and Gustave Flaubert, who wrote “you are as unyielding as marble and as penetrating as English mist”. The general public, however, was scandalized by the themes of sex and death and frank treatment of subjects such as lesbianism, which led to a prosecution of Baudelaire, his publisher and printer for offenses against publish morals. The conviction resulted in a fine and the removal of six poems. A second edition was released in 1861 that deleted the offending poems and added 35 poems, including a new section, Parisian Scenes, which described the effects of modernization symbolized by the identical streets and buildings taking shape during the renovation of Paris and a resulting alienation and estrangement as well as a sense of loss. On a stylistic level, the collection introduced a kind of highly ordered prose poetry and the use of a cynical and ironic voice that broke with Romantic traditions by acknowledging moral complexity, urban corruption, loss of innocence, and indulging in sensual and aesthetic pleasures. The work captures the fleeting sense of life and beauty in the emerging urban industrial world for which Baudelaire coined the term modernity and has had a lasting influence that continues to be an inspiration to this day.

The Flowers of Evil (Les Fleurs du Mal) is a collection of poems by Charles Baudelaire influential on several levels. Fellow artists were impressed and unsettled when it was published in 1857; one described the effect as “immense, prodigious, unexpected, mingled with admiration and some indefinable anxious fear”. Admirers included Victor Hugo and Gustave Flaubert, who wrote “you are as unyielding as marble and as penetrating as English mist”. The general public, however, was scandalized by the themes of sex and death and frank treatment of subjects such as lesbianism, which led to a prosecution of Baudelaire, his publisher and printer for offenses against publish morals. The conviction resulted in a fine and the removal of six poems. A second edition was released in 1861 that deleted the offending poems and added 35 poems, including a new section, Parisian Scenes, which described the effects of modernization symbolized by the identical streets and buildings taking shape during the renovation of Paris and a resulting alienation and estrangement as well as a sense of loss. On a stylistic level, the collection introduced a kind of highly ordered prose poetry and the use of a cynical and ironic voice that broke with Romantic traditions by acknowledging moral complexity, urban corruption, loss of innocence, and indulging in sensual and aesthetic pleasures. The work captures the fleeting sense of life and beauty in the emerging urban industrial world for which Baudelaire coined the term modernity and has had a lasting influence that continues to be an inspiration to this day.

It has been said that James Joyce never wrote a thing unless it was a masterpiece. Many years since his death the assessment remains and is proven in his book of short stories, Dubliners. Written before 1905 when Irish nationalism was first on every Irishman’s mind, the compilation of stories deal with characters living in an Ireland not triumphant, but with characters who feel they have failed at life in an Ireland that has suffered mightily under the yokes of two tyrants, the British Government and the Catholic Church. Seeking a sense of identity and purpose in a land overtaken by powers that care little for their captives, James Joyce in plain and simple language presents and dissects the paralysis, the insecurities, the failure to thrive in a people so poorly served. Though many of the characters we meet in Dubliners will appear again Ulysses, this is not the Joyce of Ulysses with its sometimes difficult language and allusions. This is Joyce at his most matter of fact, providing the understatement necessary for wit and wisdom. The stories by the young artist are brilliant, sometimes painful in their searing honesty, humorous in the Irish way, and ultimately illuminating – as illuminating as the moments of epiphany that Joyce talked and wrote about as he formed, polished and nurtured his considerable aesthetic. (Summary by Michael Hogan)

The Sign of the Four is the second of four full-length novels featuring the brilliant Sherlock Holmes. Published in 1890 and sometimes titled The Sign of Four, the story begins with the mysterious disappearance of British Army Captain Arthur Morstan and proceeds to unravel a complex plot that centers on a stolen treasure, a secret pact among four convicts, and corrupt prison guards, with much of the action set in India beginning at the time of the Indian Rebellion of 1857. The story humanizes and deepens the character of Holmes, partly by introducing us to his use of cocaine. It also introduces Morstan’s daughter, Mary, who eventually becomes Watson’s bride. The book was originally serialized in Lippincott’s magazine before publication in book form and has been adapted for the cinema thirteen times.

The Portrait of a Lady is one of the most popular of Henry James’ novels and considered a masterpiece. Set mainly in Italy and England, its heroine Isabel Archer, a young American heiress, seeks her future among the upper classes in European society. Her maternal aunt, Lydia Touchette, invites Isabel to visit at the family estate near London after the death of her father. Lord Warburton, neighbor to the Touchettes, proposes marriage, as does Caspar Goodwood, heir to a Boston fortune. Her invalid uncle dies and leaves her a portion of his fortune. Savoring independence, she rejects both, and travels the Continent. In Florence she meets and marries American expatriate and widower Gilbert Osmond, a match that proves to be troubled. Isabel bonds with Ormond’s daughter, Pansy, and supports her marriage plans, which conflict with the wishes of her father. Isabel leaves for England to comfort her dying cousin Ralph despite the objections of Ormond. Goodwood again courts her, but she chooses instead to return to Italy. The reader is left to wonder whether she will suffer her tragic marriage or eventually make other plans. The book was first serialized in the Atlantic Monthly in America and Macmillan’s Magazine in England in 1880-1881 before released as a book in 1881. It was acclaimed for its deep analysis of human consciousness and motivation, and did much to raise the awareness of the limited range of options available to Victorian women as they dealt with the lure of freedom and the tug of responsibility.

The Portrait of a Lady is one of the most popular of Henry James’ novels and considered a masterpiece. Set mainly in Italy and England, its heroine Isabel Archer, a young American heiress, seeks her future among the upper classes in European society. Her maternal aunt, Lydia Touchette, invites Isabel to visit at the family estate near London after the death of her father. Lord Warburton, neighbor to the Touchettes, proposes marriage, as does Caspar Goodwood, heir to a Boston fortune. Her invalid uncle dies and leaves her a portion of his fortune. Savoring independence, she rejects both, and travels the Continent. In Florence she meets and marries American expatriate and widower Gilbert Osmond, a match that proves to be troubled. Isabel bonds with Ormond’s daughter, Pansy, and supports her marriage plans, which conflict with the wishes of her father. Isabel leaves for England to comfort her dying cousin Ralph despite the objections of Ormond. Goodwood again courts her, but she chooses instead to return to Italy. The reader is left to wonder whether she will suffer her tragic marriage or eventually make other plans. The book was first serialized in the Atlantic Monthly in America and Macmillan’s Magazine in England in 1880-1881 before released as a book in 1881. It was acclaimed for its deep analysis of human consciousness and motivation, and did much to raise the awareness of the limited range of options available to Victorian women as they dealt with the lure of freedom and the tug of responsibility.

Prufrock and Other Observations is the title of a pamphlet of twelve poems by T. S. Eliot published in 1917 by The Egoist, a small publishing firm run by Dora Marsden, an English suffragette and philosopher of language. Most of the poems had been published earlier in literary magazines, most notably the “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, which was Eliot’s first published poem and appeared in the June 1915 issue of Poetry: A Magazine of Modern Verse at the urging of Ezra Pound, overseas editor for the magazine. Prufrock is a dramatic interior monologue of a modern urban man trapped in an inertia of isolation and indecision that has been described as a “drama of literary anguish”. The poem was influenced by The Divine Comedy and is peppered with references to the Bible, Shakespeare plays, and the works of metaphysical poet Andrew Marvell and the French symbolist poets. It was considered outlandish when it first appeared. One anonymous London reviewer commented that "The fact that these things occurred to the mind of Mr. Eliot is surely of the very smallest importance to anyone, even to himself. They certainly have no relation to poetry." As it happens, Prufrock and the companion poems in this volume helped effect a paradigm shift away from Romanticism and Georgian lyrics to what came to be called Modernism and introduced one of the most distinctive voices and recognized voices in modern literature.

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is a collection of stories told by a group of pilgrims who compete in a story-telling contest for a prize of a free dinner as they journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas a Becket in Canterbury. The tales, which are told in both prose and poetry, are earthy, candid, comic and ironic, and often cast English society and the Anglican Church in a critical light. The structure of the work resembles The Decameron of Boccaccio, which Chaucer, a courtier and diplomat as well as an author, is likely to have read. The Canterbury Tales appeared at the end of the 14th Century and is considered the first important literary work written in Middle English, the language of the people, and became the base for the use of English in those great works that might otherwise have been written in Latin for the ever-dwindling audience who spoke, wrote and read that dying language. Chaucer produced a long list of notable works, but The Canterbury Tales stand as his magnum opus and that sealed his reputation as England’s first great poet.

The Awakening is one of the first American novels that focused on women’s issues and is now seen as a landmark feminist work. Originally titled A Solitary Soul and set in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast at the end of the 19th century, it is the story of Edna Pontelier, wife of a New Orleans businessman and mother of two sons who struggles to manage her family duties with her desire to be true to her emotions. The conflict becomes evident at the outset when, while vacationing, she falls in love with Robert, the son of the owner of the Grand Isle resort. He flees to escape the impossible situation, and Edna returns home to retreat from both her family and New Orleans social life. Left alone for a time, she dallies with a rakish acquaintance, becomes friends with Mme Reisz, an eccentric musician, and pines for Robert, who returns, only to run away again in shame. The story does not have a happy ending. The Awakening met with a mixed response due to its ruthlessly honest treatment of issues usually swept under the rug. The psychological insight, social commentary and realistic narrative mark it as an important link the development of American modernism. Critics rank the book alongside her contemporaries Edith Wharton and Henry James and among the first of the works in the Southern tradition of William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Flannery O’Connnor, and Tennessee Williams.

The Awakening is one of the first American novels that focused on women’s issues and is now seen as a landmark feminist work. Originally titled A Solitary Soul and set in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast at the end of the 19th century, it is the story of Edna Pontelier, wife of a New Orleans businessman and mother of two sons who struggles to manage her family duties with her desire to be true to her emotions. The conflict becomes evident at the outset when, while vacationing, she falls in love with Robert, the son of the owner of the Grand Isle resort. He flees to escape the impossible situation, and Edna returns home to retreat from both her family and New Orleans social life. Left alone for a time, she dallies with a rakish acquaintance, becomes friends with Mme Reisz, an eccentric musician, and pines for Robert, who returns, only to run away again in shame. The story does not have a happy ending. The Awakening met with a mixed response due to its ruthlessly honest treatment of issues usually swept under the rug. The psychological insight, social commentary and realistic narrative mark it as an important link the development of American modernism. Critics rank the book alongside her contemporaries Edith Wharton and Henry James and among the first of the works in the Southern tradition of William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Flannery O’Connnor, and Tennessee Williams.

The Thirty-Nine Steps is a classic political thriller and one of the earliest examples of the “man-on-the-run” plot archetype. Set on the eve of World War I, expatriate Scotsman Richard Hannay has just returned from a stint in Rhodesia and settled in London when he encounters an American freelance spy who tells of an anarchist plot to assassinate the Greek Premier and destabilize Europe. After two murders in his building he is forced to flee to southwest Scotland but is pursued by police,who suspect his involvement. After numerous surprising twists of fate, chases and escapes, we find him with a group of British military in a coastal village in Kent descending the thirty-nine steps down a path in a cliff to apprehend a group of German spies about to abscond with key British secrets. Serialized in Blackwood’s Magazine and published in book form in 1915, the story was a big hit with the soldiers in the trenches and the general public. It has been adapted for radio five times and four times for the cinema and television, most recently in2008 by the BBC, and appears on the BBC’s Big Read poll of the “best-loved novels” in the UK.

The Republic of Plato is the greatest and best known of Plato’s works and possibly the most influential work of philosophy and political theory in history. It consists of ten books of dialogs between Socrates and various Athenians and foreigners that address the question of whether a just man or unjust man achieves the greatest happiness by considering the governance and culture of a series of hypothetical cities. In his A History of Western Philosophy (1945), Bertrand Russell identifies three parts to the Republic: the definition of the utopia or ideal state (Books I-V); the definition of the philosopher as ideal ruler (Books VI-VII); the pros and cons of various forms of government (Books VII-X). He outlines the progressive degeneration that results from the “five regimes” of Aristocracy, Timocracy, Oligarchy, Democracy and Tyranny. Translator Benjamin Jowett writes in his introduction that “The principles of definition, the law of contradiction, the fallacy of arguing in a circle, the distinction between the essence and accidents of a thing or notion, between means and ends, between causes and conditions; also the division of the mind into the rational, concupiscent, and irascible elements, or of pleasures and desires into necessary and unnecessary—these and other great forms of thought are all of them to be found in the Republic, and were probably first invented by Plato.” It is no wonder that The Republic has been a centerpiece of a classical education for centuries.