Chapter XII: Classic Stories for Young People

The boy or girl who has grown up without reading Robinson Crusoe, the Arabian Nights and Gulliver’s Travels is to be pitied; but it is to be presumed that there are few such. These books are good alike for young and old.

For young children fairy tales are usually considered the first to become familiar with, and of these the best are Grimm’s and Hans Christian Andersen’s. There are many volumes variously edited, and all are fairly good. A modern fairy tale that is also a classic is Kingsley’s Water Babies, and even better are Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Kipling’s Jungle Book.

There are also Æsop’s Fables.

But when boys and girls get a little older they want to find what is to them a really good book. I know none better than Louisa M. Alcott’s Little Women. It is the story of four girls and a boy; but boys will like it almost as well as the girls will.

Boys will be especially interested in the lives of great men, and of these none is better than Franklin’s Autobiography. He tells just how he worked, and what he did, and how he succeeded, and tells it in simple, natural English. And next to this one will like a good life of Washington or Lincoln, of which there are many.

Hawthorne wrote many good stories for young people, and of these the simplest are his Wonder Book and Tanglewood Tales from the ancient Greek, and his Biographical Stories of Great Men. But readers a little older will like even better such stories as “The Snow-Image,” “The Great Stone Face,” etc.

There is a remarkable book not very much known, entitled Moby-Dick, or the Great White Whale, by Herman Melville. It is not all as interesting as the last part, in which this giant whale named Moby-Dick is hunted down and killed, though not until he has sunk the ship and boats of the men who have pursued him and taken his life.

For adventure there are no more classic books than Kingsley’s Hereward the Wake, and Stevenson’s Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and David Balfour, and some will wish to read his beautiful Child’s Garden of Verse. Not quite so literary but equally interesting are The Boys of Seventy-Six, Green Mountain Boys, Scottish Chiefs, Thaddeus of Warsaw, Dana’s Two Years before the Mast, and The Swiss Family Robinson.

Last of all we must mention Tom Brown’s Schooldays, which, though very English, is very interesting. John Halifax, Gentleman, by Miss Mulock, is also a fine English story.

Though not stories precisely, Lamb’s Tales from Shakspere and Dickens’s Child’s History of England are quite as fascinating as if they were genuine stories.

In these days the Bible seems to be neglected somewhat, and not all children are familiar with the fine stories for young people with which the Old Testament is filled. There are, to be sure, uninteresting genealogies and other things mixed in with the stories; but there is nothing in Grimm or Andersen to equal the stories of Adam and Eve, of Cain and Abel, of Noah and the Flood, of David and Goliath, of Daniel in the Lion’s Den, and of Jonah and the Whale.

INDEX OF RECOMMENDED BOOKS

(With Dates)

The following are the books the author would choose for a small public or private library for general reading. Of course this list should be supplemented by a judicious selection of books on history, science, and economics, as well as works of reference:

Books for young people are marked “juv.”

Joseph Addison (1672-1719), 74
Essays from the Spectator.

Louise M. Alcott (1833-1888), 122
Little Women (juv.)

Alice in Wonderland, (juv.), by Lewis Carroll, 122

Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875), 122
Fairy Tales (juv.)

Æsop’s Fables (75 B. C.) (juv.), 122

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), 64, 79
Culture and Anarchy.
Poems.

Arabian Nights (1450-1704-’07) (juv.), 88

Jane Austen (1775-1817), 115
Sense and Sensibility.
Pride and Prejudice.
Emma.

Francis Bacon (1561-1626), 74
Essays.

Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850), 100
The Country Doctor.
Eugenie Grandet.
Père Goriot.
The Duchess de Langeais.
The Alkahest.
César Birotteau.
Cousin Pons.

J. M. Barrie (1860- ), 80
The Little Minister.
A Window In Thrums.
Sentimental Tommy.
Tommy and Grizel.

Bible, 123

R. D. Blackmore (1825-1900)
Lorna Doone.

Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson (1792)

Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855), 115
Jane Eyre

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)
Poems

Robert Browning (1812-1889), 58
Poems

William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), 61
Poems

Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873), 100
The Last Days of Pompeii.

John Bunyan (1628-1688), 84
Pilgrim’s Progress.

Robert Burns (1759-1796), 62
Poems.

George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824), 61
Poems

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), 76
Essays.

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616), 84
Don Quixote.

Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) (1835- )
Innocents Abroad
Huckleberry Finn (juv.)
Joan of Arc (juv.)

S. T. Coleridge (1772-1834), 64
Poems

James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851), 100
The Spy (juv.)
The Last of the Mohicans.
The Prairie.
The Pathfinder.
The Deerslayer.

Dinah Maria Craik (Miss Mulock) (1826-1887), 123
John Halifax, Gentleman (juv.)

Richard Henry Dana (1815-1882), 123
Two Years Before the Mast (juv.)

Daniel Defoe (1661-1731), 84
Robinson Crusoe (juv.)

Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859), 75
Confessions of an English Opium Eater.
The English Mail Coach.

Charles Dickens (1812-1870), 102
Pickwick.
Oliver Twist.
Old Curiosity Shop.
A Christmas Carol.
The Cricket on the Hearth (juv.)
Dombey & Son.
David Copperfield (juv.)
Little Dorrit.
A Tale of Two Cities.

Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)
Vivian Grey.

Sir A. Conan Doyle (1859- ), 118
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

Alexandre Dumas (1808-1870), 94
The Count of Monte Cristo.
The Three Musketeers.
Twenty Years After.
The Vicomte de Bragelonne.
The Black Tulip.

George Eliot (pseud.) (1819-1880), 114
Adam Bede.
Middlemarch.
Mill on the Floss.
Romola.
Silas Marner.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), 76
Essays.

Henry Fielding (1707-1754), 85
Tom Jones.

Edward FitzGerald (1809-1883), 64
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

Benj. Franklin (1706-1790)
Autobiography (juv.)
Poor Richard’s Almanac.

Mrs. Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (1810-1865), 115
Cranford.

Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774), 86
Vicar of Wakefield.
The Deserted Village.
She stoops to Conquer (play).

Green Mountain Boys.
By Elisa F. Pollard (juv.)

Grimm Brothers (1785-1863, 1786-1859), 122
Fairy Tales (juv.)

Edward Everett Hale (1822- ), 120
A Man Without a Country (juv.)

Thomas Hardy (1840- )
Far From the Madding Crowd.
Tess of the D’Urbervilles.

Bret Harte (1839-1902), 120
The Luck of Roaring Camp.
The Outcasts of Poker Flat.

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), 119, 122
Twice-Told Tales.
House of the Seven Gables.
The Scarlet Letter.
Blithedale Romance.
Mosses from an Old Manse.
Wonder Stories (juv.)
Tanglewood Tales (juv.)

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894), 61, 80
Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.
Poems.

Thomas Hughes (1828-1896), 123
Tom Brown’s Schooldays (juv.)

Victor Hugo (1802-1885), 97
Notre Dame.
Les Miserables.
Toilers of the Sea.

Washington Irving (1783-1859), 117
The Sketch-Book.
The Alhambra.
Knickerbocker’s History of New York.

John Keats (1795-1821), 61
Poems.

Rudyard Kipling (1865- ), 121
Soldiers Three, etc.
Jungle Book (juv.)
Kim.
Captains Courageous.

Charles Kingsley (1819-1875), 101, 122
Hypatia.
Westward, Ho!
Hereward the Wake (juv.)
Water Babies (juv.)

Charles Lamb (1775-1834), 75
Essays.
Tales from Shakspere (with Mary Lamb) (juv.)

Alain René Le Sage (1668-1747), 87
Gil Blas.

Charles Lever (1806-1872)
Charles O’Malley.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), 54
Poems (juv.)
Evangeline.
Hiawatha (juv.)
Courtship of Miles Standish.

James Russell Lowell (1819-1891)
Poems.

Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859), 77
Essays.
Lays of Ancient Rome (juv.)

Frederick Marryat (1792-1848)
Pacha of Many Tales.
The Phantom Ship.

Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893), 120
The Odd Number.

Meditations of Marcus Aurelius (121-180 A. D.).

Herman Melville (1819-1891), 123
Moby-Dick (juv.)

George Meredith (1828- )
The Ordeal of Richard Feveral.
Diana of the Crossways.

John Milton (1608-1674), 63
Poems.
Paradise Lost.

Donald Grant Mitchell (1822- ), 80
Reveries of a Bachelor, by Ik Marvel.

Gilbert Parker (1862- ), 121
Pierre and His People.
Seats of the Mighty.
Right of Way.

Paul and Virginia. By Bernardin de St. Pierre (1788)

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), 61, 117
Best Tales.
Best Poems and Essays.

Plutarch’s Lives (about 80 A. D.) (juv.)

Charles Reade (1814-1884), 101
Cloister and the Hearth.
It’s Never Too Late to Mend.

John Ruskin (1819-1900), 77
Sesame and Lilies.
Crown of Wild Olive.
Modern Painters.

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), 88
Guy Mannering.
Old Mortality.
The Antiquary.
Rob Roy.
The Heart of Midlothian.
The Bride of Lammermoor.
Ivanhoe.
The Monastery.
Kenilworth.
Quentin Durward.

William Shakspere (1564-1616), 65
Plays and Sonnets.

Scottish Chiefs, by Jane Porter.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), 61
Poems.

Henry Sienkiewicz (1845- ), 101
Quo Vadis.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), 121
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Treasure Island (juv.)
Prince Otto (juv.)

Frank Stockton (1834-1902), 120
The Lady or the Tiger?

Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896), 116
Uncle Tom’s Cabin (juv.)

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), 74
Gulliver’s Travels (juv.)

The Swiss Family Robinson (juv.), by J. R. Wyss.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), 57
Poems.

Wm. Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863), 105
Vanity Fair.
Pendennis.
Henry Esmond.
The Newcomes.

Count Leo Tolstoi (1828- ), 121
War and Peace.
Anna Karénina.
The Long Exile and other stories.

Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883), 121
Short Stories.

Lew Wallace (1827-1905), 101
Ben-Hur.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
Poems.

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892), 61
Poems.

Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman (1862- ), 115, 120
A New England Nun.
A Humble Romance and other short stories.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850), 62
Poems.

Emile Zola (1840-1902), 113
The Downfall.
Money.
Drink.

SUPPLEMENTARY LIST

Of titles suggested partly by Mr. Fred H. Hild, of the Chicago Public Library, and partly by Mr. W. I. Fletcher, editor of the American Library Association’s Index to General Literature and Librarian of Amherst College.

Books for young people are marked “juv.”

Aldrich, T. B.
Story of a Bad Boy (juv.)

Barrie, J. M.
Margaret Ogilvie.

Bellamy, Edward
Looking Backward.

Besant, Walter
All Sorts and Conditions of Men.

Bjornson
Arne; and The Fisher Lassie.

Black
The Princess of Thule.

Bowker, R. R.
The Arts of Life.

Brace, C. L.
Gesta Christi.

Brown, John
Rab and his friends, and Other Dogs and Men (juv.)

Bullfinch, Thos.
The Age of Chivalry (juv.)
The Age of Fable (juv.)

Bulwer-Lytton
My Novel.
Rienzi.
Eugene Aram.
The Caxtons.

Burroughs, John
Fresh Fields (juv.)
Locusts and Wild Honey.

Carlyle
Sartor Resartus.
Heroes and Hero-Worship.

Clemens (Mark Twain)
The Prince and the Pauper.
Tom Sawyer (juv.)

Collins, Wilkie
The Moonstone.

Emerson, R. W.
Representative Men.

Creasy, Edward S., Sir
Fifteen Decisive Battles.

Curtis, George W.
Prue and I.

Daudet
Tartarin of Tarascon.

Doyle
The White Company.

Dumas
The Queen’s Necklace.

Eggleston, Edward
The Hoosier School-Master (juv.)

Field, Eugene
A Little Book of Profitable Tales.
A Little Book Western Verse.

=TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES=

Simple typographical errors have been silently corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.

Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.

Inconsistent hyphens left as printed.