THE DEMOCRATIC AGE
PART III 
OF 
HAROLD BLOOM'S WESTERN CANON
                      Harold Bloom
Leo Tolstoy                     

In The Western Canon; The Books and School of the Age (1994), Harold Bloom examines the Western literary tradition by concentrating on the works of twenty-six authors central to the Canon. Bloom concludes his work with an extensive bibliography covering 36 two-columned pages. Here he provides a complete list of essential writers and books - his version of the Canon. The list is divided into four chronological ages: Theocratic, Aristocratic, Democratic, and Chaotic. Each of these is presented as a separate file at this site. He writes about the third part of the Canon, the Democratic Age as follows. "I have located Vico's Democratic Age in the post-Goethean century, when the literature of Italy and Spain ebbs, yielding eminence to England with its renaissance to the Renaissance in Romanticism, and to a lesser degree to France and Germany. This is also the era where the strength of both Russian and American Literature begins." Bloom makes specific recommendations on translations. See his book for these.

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ITALY

Ugo Foscolo  On Sepulchres. Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis. Odes and Graces.
Alessandro Manzoni  The Betrothed. On the Historical Novel. 
Giacomo Leopardi  Essays and Dialogues. Poems. The Moral Essays. 
Giuseppe Giocchino Belli  Roman Sonnets. 
Giosue Carducci  Hymn to Satan. Barbarian Odes. Rhymes and Rhythms.
Giovanni Verga  Little Novels of Sicily. Mastro-Don Gesualdo. The House by the Medlar Tree. The She-Wolf and Other Stories.

 SPAIN AND PORTUGAL

Gustavo Adolfo Becquer  Poems. 
Benito Perez Galdos  Fortunata and Jacinta. 
Leopoldo Alas (Clarin)  La Regenta. 
Jose Maria de Eca de Queiros  The Maias. 

  FRANCE

Benjamin Constant  Adolphe. The Red Notebook. 
Francois-Auguste-Rene de Chateaubriand  Atala and Rene. The Genius of Christianity. 
Alphonse de Lamartine  Meditations. 
Alfred de Vigny  Chatterton. Poems. 
Victor Hugo  The Distance, The Shadows: Selected Poems. Les Miserables. Notre Dame of Paris. William Shakespeare. The Toilers of the Sea. The End of Satan. God.
Alfred de Musset  Poems. Lorenzaccio. 
Gerard de Nerval  The Chimeras. Sylvie. Aurelia. 
Theophile Gautier  Mademoiselle de Maupin. Enamels and Cameos. 
Honore de Balzac  The Girl with the Golden Eyes. Louis Lambert. The Wild Ass's Skin. Old Goriot. Cousin Bette. A Harlot High and Low. Eugenie Grandet. Ursule Mirouet.
Stendhal  On Love. The Red and the Black. The Chaterhouse of Parma.
Gustave Flaubert  Madame Bovary. Sentimental Education. Salammbo. A Simple Soul
George Sand  The Haunted Pool. 
Charles Baudelaire  Flowers of Evil. Paris Spleen. 
Stephane Mallarme  Selected Poetry and Prose. 
Paul Verlaine  Selected Poems. 
Arthur Rimbaud  Complete Works. 
Tristan Corbiere  Les Amours Jaunes 
Jules Laforgue  Selected Writings. 
Guy de Maupassant  Selected Short Stories. 
Emile Zola  Germinal. L'Assommoir. Nana. 

 SCANDINAVIA

Henrik Ibsen 
 Brand. Peer Gynt. Emperor and Galilean. Hedda Gabbler. The Master Builder.
August Strindberg  To Damascis. Miss Julie. The Father. The Dance of Death. The Ghost Sonata. A DreamPlay. 
  .
 

     GREAT BRITAIN

Robert Burns  Poems. 
William Blake  Complete Poetry and Prose. 
William Wordsworth  Poems. The Prelude. 
Sir Walter Scott  Waverley. The Heart of Midlothian. Redgauntlet. Old Mortality
Jane Austen  Pride and Prejudice. Emma. Mansfield Park. Persuasion.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge  Poems and Prose. 
Dorothy Wordsworth  The Grasmere Journal. 
William Hazlitt  Essays and Criticism 
Lord Byron  Don Juan. Poems. 
Walter Savage Landor  Poems. Imaginary Conversations. 
Thomas De Quincey  Confessions of an English Opium Eater. Selected Prose.   
Charles Lamb Essays.
Maria Edgeworth  Castle Rackrent. 
John Galt  The Entail. 
Elizabeth Gaskell  Cranford. Mary Barton. North and South. 
James Hogg  The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
Charles Maturin  Melmoth the Wanderer. 
Percy Bysshe Shelley  Poems. A Defence of Poetry. 
John Clare  Poems. 
John Keats  Poems and Letters. 
Thomas Lovell Beddoes  Death's Jest-Book. Poems. 
George Darley  Nepenthe. Poems. 
Thomas Hood  Poems. 
Thomas Wade  Poems. 
Robert Browning  Poems. The Ring and the Book. 
Charles Dickens  The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. David Copperfield. The Adventures of oliver Twist. A Tale of Two Cities. Bleak House. Hard Times. Nicholas Nickleby. Dombey and Son. Great Expectations. Martin Chuzzlewit. Christmas Stories. Little Dorrit. Our Mutual Friend. The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
Alfred Lord Tennyson Poems.
Dante Gabriel Rosetti  Poems and Translations. 
Matthew Arnold  Poems. Essays. 
Arthur Hugh Clough  Poems. 
Christina Rosetti  Poems. 
Thomas Love Peacock  Nightmare Abbey. Gryll Grange. 
Gerard Manley Hopkins  Poems and Prose. 
Thomas Carlyle  Selected Prose. Sartor Resartus. 
John Ruskin  Modern Painters. The Stones of Venice. Unto This Last. The Queen of the Air
Walter Pater  Studies in the History of the Renaissance. Appreciations. Imaginary Portraits. Marius the Epicurean.
Edward FitzGerald  The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. 
John Stuart Mill  On Liberty. Autobiography. 
John Henry Newman  Apologia pro Vita Sua. A Grammar of Assent. The Idea of a University.
Anthony Trollope  The Barsetshire Novels. The Palliser Novels. Orley Farm. The Way We Live Now. 
Lewis Carroll  Complete Works. 
Edward Lear  Complete Nonsense. 
George Gissing  New Grub Street. 
Algernon Charles Swinburne  Poems and Letters. 
Charlotte Bronte  Jane Eyre. Villette. 
Emily Bronte  Poems. Wuthering Heights. 
William Makepeace Thackery  Vanity Fair. The History of Henry Esmond. 
Francis Thompson  Poems. 
Lionel Johnson  Poems. 
Robert Bridges  Poems. 
Gilbert Keith Chesterton  Collected Poems. The Man Who Was Thursday
Samuel Butler  Erewhon. The Way of All Flesh. 
W. S. Gilbert  Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan. Bab Ballads.
Wilkie Collins The Moonstone. The Woman in White. No Name.
Coventry Patmore  Odes. 
James Thomson (Bysshe Vanolis)  The City of Dreadful Night. 
Oscar Wilde  Plays. The Picture of Dorian Gray. The Artist as Critic. Letters
John Davidson  Ballads and Songs. 
Ernest Dowson  Complete Poems. 
George Eliot  Adam Bede. Silas Marner. The Mill on the Floss. Middlemarch. Daniel Deronda. 
Robert Louis Stevenson  Essays. Kidnapped. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Treasure Island. The New Arabian Nights. The Master of Ballantrae. Weir of Hermiston.
William Morris  Early Romances. Poems. The Earthly Paradise. The Well at World's End. News from Nowhere. 
Bram Stoker  Dracula. 
George Macdonald  Lilith. At the Back of the North Wind. 

  GERMANY

  Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenburg  Hymns to the Night. Aphorisms. 
  Jacob and Willhelm Grimm  Fairy Tales. 
  Eduard Morike  Selected Poems. Mozart on His Way to Prague. 
  Theodor Storm  Immensee. Poems. 
  Gottfried Keller  Green Henry. Tales. 
  E. T. A. Hoffmann  The Devil's Elixir. Tales. 
  Jeremias Gotthelf  The Black Spider. 
  Adalbert Stifter  Indian Summer. Tales. 
  Friedrich Schlegel  Criticism and Aphorisms. 
  Georg Buchner  Danton's Death. Woyzeck. 
  Heinrich Heine  Complete Poems. 
  Richard Wagner  The Ring of the Nibelung. 
  Friedrich Nietzsche  The Birth of Tragedy. Beyond Good and Evil. On the Genealogy of Morals. The Will to Power.
  Theodor Fontane  Effi Briest. 
  Stefan George  Selected Poems. 

RUSSIA

Aleksandr Pushkin  Complete Prose Tales. Collected Poetry. Eugene Onegin. Narrative Poems.
Nikolay Gogol  The Complete Tales. Dead Souls. The Government Inspector
Mikhail Lermontov  Narrative Poems. A Hero of Our Time. 
Sergey Aksakov  A Family Chronicle. 
Aleksandr Herzen  My Past and Thoughts. From the Other Shore. 
Ivan Goncharov  The Frigate Pallada. Oblomov. 
Ivan Turgenev  A Sportsman's Notebook. A Month in the Country. Fathers and Sons.
Fyodor Dostoevsky  Notes from the Underground. Crime and Punishment. The Idiot. 
Leo Tolstoy  The Cossacks. War and Peace. Anna Karenina. A Confession.
Nikolay Leskov  Tales. 
Aleksandr Ostrovsky  The Storm. 
Nikolay Chernyshevsky  What Is to Be Done? 
Aleksandr Blok  The Twelve and Other Poems. 
Anton Chekhov  The Tales. The Major Plays. 

 THE UNITED STATES

Washington Irving The Sketch Book. 
William Cullen Bryant  Collected Poems. 
James Fenimore Cooper  The Deerslayer. 
John Greenleaf Whittier  Collected Poems 
Ralph Waldo Emerson  Nature. Essays, First and Second Series. Representative Men. The Conduct of Life. Journals. Poems.
Emily Dickinson  Complete Poems. 
Walt Whitman  Leaves of Grass, First Edition. Leaves of Grass, Third Edition. The Complete Poems. Specimen Days.
Nathaniel Hawthorne  The Scarlet Letter. Tales and Sketches. The The Marble Faun. Notebooks.
Herman Melville  Moby-Dick. The Piazza Tales. Billy Budd. Collected Poems. Clarel.
Edgar Allan Poe Poetry and Tales. Essays and Reviews. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. Eureka.
Jones Very  Essays and Poems. 
Frederick Goddard Tuckerman  The Cricket and Other Poems. 
Henry David Thoreau  Walden. Poems. Essays. 
Richard Henry Dana, Jr.  Two Years before the Mast. 
Frederick Douglass  Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow  Selected Poems. 
Sidney Lanier  Poems. 
Francis Parkman  France and England in North America. The The California and Oregon Trail.
Henry Adams  The Education of Henry Adams. Mont Saint Michel and Chartres
Ambrose Bierce  Collected Writings. 
Louisa May Alcott  Little Women. 
Charles W.Chestnutt  The Short Fiction. 
Kate Chopin  The Awakening. 
William Dean Howells  The Rise of Silas Lapham. A Modern Instance. 
Stephen Crane  The Red Badge of Courage. Stories and Poems. 
Henry James  The Portrait of a Lady. The Bostonians. The Princess Casamassima. The Awkward Age. Short Novels and Tales. The Ambassadors. The Wings of the Dove. The Golden Bowl.
Harold Frederic  The Damnation of Theron Ware. 
Mark Twain  Complete Short Stories. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The Devil's Racetrack. Number Forty-Four. The Mysterious Stranger. Pudd'nhead Wilson. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
William James The Varieties of Religious Experience. Pragmatism.
Frank Norris The Octopus 
Sarah Orne Jewett  The Country of the Pointed Firs and Other Stories
Trumbull Stickney  Poems. 

Continue on With:
The Chaotic Age. A Canonical Prophecy. Part IV of Harold Bloom's Western Canon


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