What should be on a list of almost Great Books?

Give your suggestions in the comments

On Twitter, Oliver Traldi writes (I’m compiling two tweets)

Had an idea of making an “almost-Great Books” syllabus, which might include things like

• The best expressions of worldviews which ended up losing

• The second-best expressions of worldviews which ended up winning

• Less-known works by canonical authors

• Books that were hugely popular among intellectuals but are no longer read

Some examples might be the Fable of the Bees, Sartor Resartus, Social Statics etc.

What would you put on it?

Here is the original tweet. The other “great books discourse” you can and should safely ignore.

I am not well-read enough to answer this thoroughly, and my list will be personal and partial, not to mention that ChatGPT will do a better job, but a few names that came to mind for me are: Robert Henryson’s Fables and Troilus, William Godwin’s Caleb Williams, Petrarch’s Secretum, Carlyle’s On Heroes, Guizot’s History of Civilization, Maitland’s History of English Law, Pater Studies in the Renaissance. I find some of the works in this category really quite dull. Sartor Resartus was unreadable. Others that I might like to include like books of Elizabethan madrigals and song lyrics I am not sure would be a priority on such a list. Does Theory of Moral Sentiments count? Or The Golden Ass? Pragmatism? I believe some Great Books programmes read The Canterbury Tales but not Troilus and Criseyde, that is probably the best option I can think of. Vico I found too dull to read, same with Newman, but they must count, and I intend to try again with both. In the English biography tradition, I would like to add Walton’s Lives. And the blessed Aubrey maybe. Herrick might not be substantial enough on his own, but the “silver poets” of the seventeenth century used to be much more popular and could stand to be revived a little. Locke’s Letters of Toleration, Areopagitica, Cato’s Letters, Burke’s minor works, Darwin’s Beagle voyage, some Rabelais, Swift’s pamphlets and related works, DeQuincey, maybe even Bolingbroke all presumably qualify. Presumably Racine and Moliere are already on Great Books reading lists? And Cicero? And what about The Anglo Saxon Chronicle, boring though it may be.

What would you all include?