Hm, maybe Joseph Conrad?

William Faulkner

Edith Wharton
Graham Greene
John Steinbeck

Jane Austen

J.R.R. Tolkien
Charles Dickens
Charlotte Bronte

A great idea for a thread! Thanks!

George Gissing
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Emile Zola
Honore de Balzac

I agree with all the authors named so far, but just to get throw a genre author in the mix I'll say Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Not only is he known for Sherlock Holmes, but he wrote some fine horror stories and science fiction (Lost World).

My second choice would be the prolific P.G. Wodehouse for humor writing. Reading all of his books would take you a while.

The Washington Post's Michael Dirda came out with a new book, "Classics for Pleasure", that discusses several authors that may not be read as much today as they were in the past. Dirda discusses in different essays why the author should still be read today. Some of the authors include: Georgette Heyer, G.K. Chesterton, Edward Gorey, William Roughead, and E. Nesbit. It's a good book to find out about some authors from the past. Although, I have to say that Dirda's first book about books, "Readings", is my favorite of his.

Frank Herbert - classic Sci Fi.

What about George Orwell? He has a large selection to choose from. Or Eugene O'Neill? We could add a playwright to the mix that way.

For those of us in the US at least:

Mark Twain
E.A. Poe
Joel Chandler Harris
E. Hemingway
James Michener

Stephen King, the modern Shakespeare.

Definitely Orwell, and Charles Baldwin.
Steinbeck, Camus, Charles Brockden Brown, Cheever, Carver (just finished a series of shorts by him), Dumas, Ralph Ellison, Jay McInerey, Bret Easton Ellis....I could go on and on and on.

I'm not real partial to Hemingway, but hey...that's what makes this fun!

F. Scott Fitzgerald, George Eliot, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Harper Lee, for starters. But I've already got some disagreements with some of the above.

And for playwrights you'd better read Tennesee Williams! There are no poets here, except EAP and The Bard! Poets are essential authors. So I'd have to throw in Chaucher, Donne and Dickenson.

>Although, I have to say that Dirda's first book about books, "Readings", is my favorite of his.

Oh yes.

Excellent choices. BTW I am assuming we are going international here, right?

elliot thats a good reminder about genre, we sometimes forget (heck often forget) that some great literature is indeed in the genre secion of the store

>I second Frank Herbert
>Heinlein
>Kurt Vonnegut
>Ray Bradbury
>Arthur C Clark
>Neil Gaiman

I agree about Orwell, as well as Adolf Huxley. I always put them together because I read them both at the same time in HS.

>Stephen King, the modern Shakespeare.

Could you explain what you mean. The two authors are a disconnect for me (not denying that King is a essential author in terms of importance to his genre and quality of his work, but Shakespear?)

I don't know if this is a nationality thing, but -

Definitely Orwell, and Charles Baldwin.
Steinbeck, Camus, Charles Brockden Brown, , Carver (just finished a series of shorts by him), Dumas, Ralph Ellison, Jay McInerey, Bret Easton Ellis....I could go on and on and on.

- of those authors, I have never encountered Brown, Cheever, Carver or McInerey.

For my part, I will add Agatha Christie, David Mitchell (at least for Cloud Atlas) and possibly Peter Carey, for although I don't like his work much, he is well thought of.

What?!! No one's mentioned Alexander Dumas! For shame! For shame! ;-) (Wait -- I think jasonmi mentioned him...)

But seriously, I'd go with Alexander Dumas, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Conan Doyle.

I think a few others that should be considered are :

Oscar Wilde
Edith Wharton
Hermann Hesse
Erich Maria Remarque (if nothing else for All Quiet On The Western Front
Sophocles (we needed a Greek in here somewhere!)

You could add Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler for some good hard-boiled detective fiction.

But back off, back off.

The title is "Essential Authors", not just "Authors I have enjoyed a lot of..."

I think we're in danger of just throwing in authors' names. For example, who is Carver and why should he (or she?) be essential? Charles Baldwin and James Baldwin - are they related? and are they really essential? I don't want to come over as a literary snob, but I'd find it hard to be convinced that any author I actually haven't even heard of could be considered essential...!

Can I suggest that we try again - in a little more of a controlled manner? How about a few rules?

1) You're limited to two authors
2) You don't need to justify the author (though you can if you want), but if you don't, you may be challenged to defend him or her. (For example, I think that Cloud Atlas is an essential book, but I don't think that David Mitchell is yet established enough to be an essential author.)
3) You don't need to repeat anyone.

Otherwise, we'll just end up with a random list.

Anyone want to (re-)start ?

I think we talked about this in the other thread too - what is essential? But IIRC we went by your rules in that one too, and came up with an excellent list. I wouldn't be hurt if we start again. You want to start another thread, or just start here?

"But back off, back off.

The title is "Essential Authors", not just "Authors I have enjoyed a lot of..."

I think we're in danger of just throwing in authors' names. For example, who is Carver and why should he (or she?) be essential? Charles Baldwin and James Baldwin - are they related? and are they really essential? I don't want to come over as a literary snob, but I'd find it hard to be convinced that any author I actually haven't even heard of could be considered essential...!

Can I suggest that we try again - in a little more of a controlled manner? How about a few rules? "

Um....no.

I disagree with those rules. If we have those rules, then we throw out Stephen King and Shakespear, both of which we're people who made remarkable use of what was currently popular in their times. They're both money makers and that was their primary concern.

Secondly, we reduce ourselves to arguing particular passages and works and merits; why a particular author 'should' or shouldn't be included in this list.

I'm sorry; but I don't agree with those rules.

Martin, I agree with your rules for several reasons:

1. By essential authors, I take it to mean authors that have impacted the world of books in some large way, in which case, both Shakespeare and Stephen King belong.

2. I had been trying to think of a way we could organize the list and I had also noticed that LIKEABLE authors are not the same as ESSENTIAL authors.

3. Selfishly, I will probably use this list of authors to draw upon when (IF) the TBR pile ever twindles.

HOWEVER, I suggest we add a rule:
Rule 4: You must list two of the MOST essential titles this author wrote, in your own opinion.

That being said, my two entries are:

Jules Verne - 19th c. France - his imagination jump-started everyone's imagination with:
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Journey to the Center of the Earth

George Gissing - 19th c. England - the original "starving writer in the garret". He wrote about the lower classes in London in all of their raw reality. Where Dickens saw humor, Gissing saw through to the true lives beneath. His writing is amazing, and he is my favorite author, bar none. Besides, Martin probably made another 25p bet with himself that I would mention Gissing first. Two of Gissing's most essential works:
New Grub Street
The Odd Women

PAM

I'm sorry, but you still haven't defined, in this case, what 'essential' means. I mean, Tom Clancy has certainly impacted the world of books in a large way, just as some romantic authors (both modern and 18th century), have....but that really doesn't make them 'essential', however. Would interesting science fiction fall into that category? If so, then Jules Verne is right there....but then again, so is a more modern author like Hertzog.

In what context are we using the term 'essential'? Without that definition, we really can't make any decisions.

ESSENTIAL: 1. Pertaining to the real character of a thing, 2. indespensible, most important, 3. pure; being the best of its kind, 4. having real substance.
source: The Winston Encyclopedic Dictionary, copyright: 1931

I think the point you are missing is that this is supposed to be FUN, not applied physics, but fun.

PAM

Twobigdogs, I agree. It is/was fun. Then we suddenly had rules. That's why I asked about the definition. By the definition you provided, I can see where ALL the authors mentioned fit into the 'essential' category.

>I don't want to come over as a literary snob, but I'd find it hard to be convinced that any author I actually haven't even heard of could be considered essential...!

I think martin has a point. However jason, so do you. I want to provide you with some background: we previously had a thread about essential works for RP, and in that thread thought it would be interesting to put together a list of essential authors. We discussed what we thought essential was, and so the 'rules' were written to make a definition that, even tho we might not agree with it, gave us some structure. We did have fun, and came up with a rather diverse list. But your question about what is essential perhaps should be, to whom? Are we talking about just general readers like ourselves, or students, scholars, other writers? That will make a big difference in what we choose and why.

Perhaps a better way would be to say what author should every reader have in her bookself, or have read? That then separates 'essential' from 'books we enjoy that we want to share with others'. Perhaps?

>Secondly, we reduce ourselves to arguing particular passages and works and merits; why a particular author 'should' or shouldn't be included in this list.

Thats part of the fun tho - this is a book discussion forum, and some of our best discussions have been of similar topics. We don't tend to argue here btw. Its all pretty friendly, but the discussions have been interesting. And since no one is really judging or has any real dog in the fight, it really doesn't matter.

Jason

The point I was trying to make was that throwing out a list of authors doesn't seem to me to have a lot of point. It's just a random list of authors.

All I'm trying to do is limit the list to people that we (RP) feel that are essential (in whatever sense you choose to mean it), as opposed to just favourite.

For example, it's well known on here that two of my favourite authors are Paul Gallico and Stan Barstow. I'd strongly encourage anyone to read them. But I don't think I'd go so far as to say that either of them are "essential" reading. I'd say that Barstow was an important writer, because of his leading role in the "realism" movement in the UK in the early sixties - I'd certainly say that A Kind of Loving was an essential book - but I couldn't in all honesty even argue that Gallico was an important writer. But I'd still encourage people to read him, as he wrote some terrific books!

And I don't quite understand your point about Stephen King and Shakespeare - either of your points, come to that. Why do the rules I suggested ban either Stephen King or Shakespeare? I think that Shakespeare would be hard to leave off any list of essential authors, no matter how it was put together, and a very good case could be put for Stephen King. And out of curiousity, as Cindy asked - why do you consider that Stephen King is "the modern Shakespeare"? I don't quite see the connection between them.

Pam - you're quite right, I'm now 25p up. (Shall I invest it wisely or squander it on riotous living?) And I like your suggestion, too.

So here are my two. Though I think someone has to mention Shakespeare, I don't feel qualified to add my "two best" in any meaningful way. Therefore...

1) Charles Dickens. Does his name really need to be justified? But the two books I will suggest as "essential Dickens" (and plenty of people would argue with me!) are Oliver Twist and Great Expectations. Oliver Twist is one of the earliest novels which told of the squalor and poverty of London in a realistic way, but which also had sympathetic characters in that world; Great Expectations is a terrific story with some of Dicken's most memorable characters, and one where the hero of our story (Pip) is, perhaps unusually for Dickens, not a paragon of virtue throughout the whole book.

2) George Orwell. Again, does he really need justifying? My two "essential" books are Nineteen Eighty Four which I don't think I need say any more about, and Coming Up for Air which, apart from being a cracking yarn, is a wonderful summary of the world in a small village at the start of the century, and also a fascinating analysis of the way that world had changed by the end of the thirties.

Along with Chekhov and Hemingway, Raymond Carver has had a profound impact on many modern short story writers, and was instrumental in the 'Dirty Realism' school of writing, very much in the Chekhovian vein. His story, Cathedral, is a greatly realised story of immense power.

My list of essential authors would include:

Moses (Even though the Old Testament took its present form about 600 years after his time and he was almost certainly a composite figure).
Dickens
Shakespeare - His influence speaks for itself.
Dostoyevsky - No writer delved deeper into the human mind, especially the criminal mind, than Dostoyevsky.
Tolstoy
Chekhov
Virginia Woolf

My candidates, also personal favourites:
Thomas Mann, T.S. Eliot, George Eliot, Francis Bacon, Michel Montaigne, Francois Villon, Charles Baudelaire, William Blake, Henrik Ibsen, John Donne, Homer, Walt Whitman, Andrew Marvell, Eugene O'Neill.

I'm about to faint dead away....I scanned the mentioned authors....did anyone mention my favorite...Thomas Hardy?
Forgive me if these failing eyes missed his name.
JMHO:
Should one even mention King and Shakespeare in the same breath? Sorry if I am missing something here!

We need some women authors here

Dawn Powell: Time to be Born, the Locusts Have No King

Louisa May Alcott: Little Women, Jo's Boys

Mary Shelley: Frankenstien should count as two

Can we include poets? Emily Dickensan and Sylvia Plath (talk about two sides of the mood spectrum!)

Gustave Flaubert - Madame Bovary
Edith Wharton - The Age of Innocence
Alan Paton - Too Late the Phalarope (Apartheid in South Africa)
W.G. Sebald - Austerlitz
Anne Frank - The Diary of Anne Frank
Chaucer - Canterbury Tales
T.S. Eliot - The Four Quartets
Any poetry by Mary Oliver

Okay, okay, I'll play by the rules.

I would say as essential, that is, should be on everyone's shelves...Mark Twain (and perhaps it would be something like Life on the Miss. and A Conneticut Yankee... as opposed to the well known ones), and John Stienbeck.

No-one else is, Jason. I wouldn't worry! But I'd accept your choices without a qualm.

But I'd still like to know why you consider Stephen King (whom I do not dispute to be the exemplar of horror, and whose Dark Tower series is truly excellent!) to be the modern Shakespeare?

I really don't see why Stephen King should be on the list at all, to me essential means that it enhances one's literary education, that it reflects the era it was written while at the same time bearing a message that is universal. It should be something that if you never read you would be shorted somehow. Shakspeare does this but Stephen King? not to me anyway.

Wilkie Collins. Not only because he is considered the father of the modern mystery novel (without which I would have nothing to read) but because his novels dealt with social issues (i.e. opium addiction) and addressed women's issues at a time when women weren't supposed to have any and if they did, no one was interested.

I would second (or third?) Raymond Carver, actually. Picassocat stated it very well. He could take a story and strip it down to the most fundamental elements--yet his characters are so alive. I would agree with the choice of "Cathedral" and would add his collection "Short Cuts." (Robert Altman actually directed a pretty decent adaptation of "Short Cuts" a few years back.)

Since I seem to be in the short story mode, I would also say that Flannery O'Connor is an essential author. Her works epitomize both the Southern Gothic and the Grotesque styles. I wouldn't say that she's my favorite author in the world, but she was good at her craft and her startling climaxes are unforgettable. The two works I would recommend would be "A Good Man is Hard to Find" and "Everything that Rises Must Converge".

Thank you for this wonderful thread! You can be sure my TBR shelf will suffer for it!