So, here is my Top-Ten Favorite Authors list. I am also endeavoring to include an example, or two, of their works of literature that I particularly admire. This list is in no particular order, and includes--
- Homer-- What can I say? The Iliad and The Odyssey are two of the greatest epic poems known to humanity, and ripping good yarns at that! I highly recommend the translations by Robert Fagles too. They are masterfully done, and incredibly lyrical.
- Aeschylus-- Aeschylus' trilogy of tragedies, The Oresteia, is stunningly powerful. This is the story of the House of Atreus of Argos, and its journey from a dark and bleak legacy of treachery and vengeance to the establishment of a process for formal determination and atonement of guilt through the use of a trial and jury--the process that we now know as Justice. Again, I highly recommend reading the Fagles translation.
- Emily Dickinson-- The 'Belle of Amherst' is, in my humble opinion, perhaps the most important American writer to date. You simply must read her The Complete Poems. Her poetry is brilliant, powerful and evocative.
- John Keats-- Much like Dickinson, Keats is a singular and unique poetic voice; a 'Bright Star' that was dimmed all too soon, with his death at such a young age. Keats' Complete Poems is a volume that I continually visit.
- Jane Austen-- Austen's novels are some of the finest fiction in the English language; and her Persuasion and Emma are my two favorites.
- Charles Dickens-- In my opinion, Dickens may have been the Shakespeare of his day. His stories are steeped in the human experience and have great meaning even now. I highly recommend his novels, Bleak House and Our Mutual Friend.
- Thomas Hardy-- One of my favorite authors! Hardy's appraisal and characterization of the pastoral human experience in his fiction and poetry is almost unparalleled in my view. Whether intentional or not, I find in Hardy's poetry and novels the thread that reaches back to the ancient Greek tragedies that binds the story of Human Life inextricably with Fate and Destiny. Reading Hardy's Complete Poems, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, The Return of the Native, and Jude the Obscure was a transformative experience for me--I just look at Life differently now.
- Leo Tolstoy-- For me, Tolstoy's fiction is the voice of what it means to be Russian (similarly, I think that Anna Akhmatova is the 'poetic voice' of the Russians). In reading Tolstoy's War and Peace and Anna Karenina, the reader cannot help but inexorably become swept up in the passion, pathos, and drama of the heart and soul of the Russian peoples against the backdrop of that great land. I highly recommend the new translations of these two novels by the husband-wife team of Richard Pevear and Lara Volokhonsky.
- George Eliot-- In my view, Eliot is the giant of the Victorian pantheon of writers! Eliot's fiction is some of the most profoundly important literature that I have ever read. Like Tolstoy and Hugo, Eliot is didactic, but her teaching, moralizing, and philosophizing flows ever so smoothly from the printed page to the reader's consciousness. It makes sense and just rings True! While I love all of her books, my two favorites are The Mill on the Floss and the monumental Middlemarch.
- William Shakespeare-- Again, what can I say? Harold Bloom seems to see a Canon of Literature that is 'Shakespeare-centric' in that all literature revolves around the works of 'The Bard.' I don't disagree. Also, I love his sonnets and narrative poems!
