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Guide 01
The Collection
Poetry & epics: where to start
The Odyssey/books/The-Odyssey-Homer by Homer. The original adventure, ten years at sea.
The Iliad/books/The-Iliad-Homer by Homer. The rage of Achilles and the cost of war.
The Divine Comedy/books/The-divine-comedy-Dante-Alighieri by Dante Alighieri. Hell, Purgatory and Paradise with Virgil as guide.
Beowulf/books/Beowulf-Unknown by Anonymous. Grendel, his mother and a dragon.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight/books/Sir-Gawayne-and-the-Green-Knight-Unknown by Anonymous. A green giant's Christmas game.
Chaucer's Works, Volume 2→ Boethius and Troilus/books/Chaucers-Works-Volume-2-Boethius-and-Troilus-Geoffrey-Chaucer by Geoffrey Chaucer. Troilus and Criseyde, in Chaucer's Middle English.
The Faerie Queene, Book I/books/Spensers-The-Faerie-Queene-Book-I-Edmund-Spenser by Edmund Spenser (1590). An Elizabethan ancestor of modern fantasy.
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare/books/The-Complete-Works-of-William-Shakespeare-William-Shakespeare by William Shakespeare. Every sonnet and play.
Don Juan/books/Don-Juan-George-Gordon-Byron-Baron-Byron by Lord Byron (1819–1824). Byron's comic, scandalous epic.
The Metamorphoses of Ovid, Books I–VII/books/The-Metamorphoses-of-Ovid-Books-I-VII-Ovid by Ovid (8 CE). The myths of transformation.
Ash-Wednesday/books/Ash-Wednesday-T-S-Eliot by T. S. Eliot (1930). Eliot's sequence on faith and doubt (1930).
Guide 02
About This Collection
About poetry & epics
The oldest stories we have are poems: Homer's epics, Beowulf, the knights of Camelot. This collection runs from those foundations through Dante, Chaucer and Spenser to Shakespeare, Byron's comic Don Juan and T. S.
Eliot's Ash-Wednesday, which entered the US public domain in 2026. The reader keeps line breaks intact, so verse looks the way the poet meant it.
Coming to the library
Readers ask us for Leaves of Grass (Whitman), Emily Dickinson's poems, Paradise Lost (Milton) and The Waste
Guide 03
New From Independent Authors (Hidden Until 3+ Qualify)
New voices in the same tradition
Up to six independent titles chosen by the desk, each with the line “If you liked {classic}, try {new book}.ˮ
Questions about this shelf
Which translation of the Odyssey is this?
Each book page names its translator. Older translations range from Pope's rhymed couplets to Butler's plain prose.
Is T. S. Eliot in the public domain?
His work published in 1930 or earlier, including Ash-Wednesday, is in the US public domain. It's still under copyright in the UK and EU until 2035.