One Hundred Best Books

A novelist's hundred best books, chosen “frankly subjective” in 1916 — with an essay on reading that picks a fight with every other such list.

G

7 books in this part of One Hundred Best Books.

Goethe

Faust, translated in English Poetry by Bayard Taylor. Wilhelm Meister, in Carlyle's translation. Goethe's Conversations with Eckerman…

Guy de Maupassant

Le Maison Tellier. Madame Tellier's Establishment. Any translation, preferably not one bound in paper or in an "Edition de Luxe." Guy de…

Gabriele D'Annunzio

The Flame of Life. The Translated by Arthur Horn Triumph of Death. blow. D'Annunzio is the most truly Italian, the most inveterately Latin…

George Meredith

Harry Richmond. “ Harry Richmond" is at once the least Meredithian and the best of all Meredith's books. Meredith, though to a much less…

George Bernard Shaw

Mr. Shaw has found his rôle and his occupation very happily cut out for him in the unfailing stupidity, not untouched by a sense of humor…

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Mr. Chesterton may congratulate himself upon being the only man of letters in England who has had the originality or the insight or the…

Gilbert Cannan

Round the Corner. "Round the Corner" is perhaps Mr. Cannan's best book but "Young Earnest" and "Old Mole" are also curious and interesting…

Rights & ReuseThe complete text of One Hundred Best Books (1916) is in the public domain in the United States — like all works published before 1928 — and is free to read, download, quote, teach from, and reuse. This digital edition (its transcription, restored images, and site design) is © 2026 PhotoOpAI, and any editorial commentary we add is clearly marked as ours; the underlying public-domain text carries no such restriction.