University of Virginia Library

A. Reading.

The aim of this part of the requirement is to foster in the student the
habit of intelligent reading and to develop a taste for good literature, by

giving him a first-hand knowledge of some of its best specimens. He
should read the books carefully, but his attention should not be so fixed
upon details that he fails to appreciate the main purpose and charm of what
he reads.

With a view to large freedom of choice, the books provided for reading
are arranged in the following groups, from each of which at least two selections
are to be made, except as otherwise provided under Group 1.

Classics in Translation.

Group 1: The Old Testament, comprising at least the chief narrative
episodes in Genesis, Exodus, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, and Daniel,
together with the books of Ruth and Esther; The Odyssey, with the omission,
if desired, of Books I, II, III, IV, V, XV, XVI, XVII; The Iliad, with
the omission, if desired, of Books XI, XIII, XIV, XV, XVII, XXI; The
Æneid. The Odyssey, Iliad, and Æneid should be read in English translations
of recognized literary excellence.

For any selection from this group a selection from any other group
may be substituted.

Shakespeare.

Group 2: Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of
Venice, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet, King
John, Richard II, Richard III, Henry V, Coriolanus, Julius Cæsar, Macbeth,
Hamlet (if not chosen for study under B).

Prose Fiction.

Group 3: Malory's Morte d'Arthur (about 100 pages); Bunyan's Pilgrim's
Progress, Part I; Swift's Gulliver's Travels (voyages to Lilliput and to Brobdingnag);
Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Part I; Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield;
Frances Burney's Evelina; any one of Scott's Novels; any one of Jane Austen's
Novels; Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent, or The Absentee; any one of Dickens'
Novels; any one of Thackeray's Novels; any one of George Eliot's Novels;
Mrs. Gaskell's Cranford; Kingsley's Westward Ho! or Hereward, the Wake;
Reade's The Cloister and the Hearth; Blackmore's Lorna Doone; Hughes' Tom
Brown's Schooldays; Stevenson's Treasure Island, or Kidnapped, or Master of
Ballantrae; any one of Cooper's Novels; a selection of Poe's Tales; Hawthorne's
The House of the Seven Gables, or Twice-Told Tales, or Mosses from an Old
Manse; a collection of Short Stories by various standard writers.

Essays, Biography, Etc.

Group 4: Addison and Steele's The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers, or selections
from the Tatler and the Spectator (about 200 pages); selections from Boswell's
Life of Johnson (about 200 pages); Franklin's Autobiography; selections
from Irving's Sketch Book (about 200 pages), or his Life of Goldsmith; Southey's
Life of Nelson; selections from Lamb's Essays of Elia (about 100 pages);
selections from Lockhart's Life of Scott (about 200 pages); Thackeray's lectures

on Swift, Addison, and Steele, in the English Humorists; any one of the following
essays of Macaulay: Lord Clive, Warren Hastings, Milton, Addison, Goldsmith,
Frederick the Great, Madame d'Arblay; selections from Trevelyan's Life
of Macaulay (about 200 pages); Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies, or selections from
Ruskin's works (about 150 pages); Dana's Two Years Before the Mast; selections
from Lincoln's works, including at least the two Inaugurals, the Speeches
in Independence Hall and at Gettysburg, the Last Public Address, the Letter to
Horace Greeley, together with a brief memoir or estimate of Lincoln; Parkman's
The Oregon Trail; Thoreau's Walden; selections from Lowell's essays (about
150 pages); Holmes' The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table; Stevenson's An
Inland Voyage and Travels with a Donkey; Huxley's Autobiography and selections
from Lay Sermons, including the addresses On Improving Natural Knowledge,
A Liberal Education, and A Piece of Chalk; a collection of Essays by
Bacon, Lamb, DeQuincey, Hazlitt, Emerson and later writers; a collection of
Letters by various standard writers.

Poetry.

Group 5: Palgrave's Golden Treasury (First Series), Books II and III, with
special attention to Dryden, Collins, Cowper, and Burns; Palgrave's Golden
Treasury (First Series), Book IV, with special attention to Wordsworth, Keats,
and Shelley (if not chosen for study under B); Goldsmith's The Traveler and
The Deserted Village; Pope's The Rape of the Lock; a collection of English and
Scottish Ballads, as, for example, some Robin Hood ballads, The Battle of Otterburn,
King Estmere, Young Beichan, Bewick and Grahame, Sir Patrick Spens,
and a selection from later ballads; Coleridge's The Ancient Mariner, Christabel,
and Kubla Khan; Byron's Childe Harold, Canto III or IV, and The Prisoner of
Chillon; Scott's The Lady of the Lake, or Marmion; Macaulay's The Lays of
Ancient Rome, The Battle of Naseby, The Armada, Ivry; Tennyson's The
Princess, or Gareth and Lynette, Lancelot and Elaine, and Passing of Arthur;
Browning's Cavalier Tunes, The Lost Leader, How They Brought the Good
News from Ghent to Aix, Home Thoughts from Abroad, Home Thoughts from
the Sea, Incident of the French Camp, Hervé Riel, Pheidippides, My Last
Duchess, Up at a Villa—Down in the City, The Italian in England, The Patriot,
The Pied Piper, "De Gustibus," Instans Tyrannus; Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum,
and The Forsaken Merman; selections from American poetry, with special
attention to Poe, Lowell, Longfellow, and Whittier.