425 Greatest Books of All Time

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The 425 Greatest Books of All Time[1] was a list finalized in 1994 on Usenet. As assembled by the expert participants in Usenet's rec.arts.books newsgroup, it incorporated at least eight highly regarded previous lists, including Anthony Burgess' 1984 list of Ninety-nine Novels.

During the mid-1990s, this list was easily accessible on Usenet. Despite its obvious value, it eventually fell between the cracks and would have vanished entirely were it not for Robert Grumbine, who rescued the list and made it available on RadixNet. The list is not in evidence elsewhere on the Internet, although it is cited in the Internet Movie Database.

The lists were assembled as a group effort during the years 1989-94. The earliest, collated by Alexander H. McIntire, Jr. of the University of Miami's Graduate School of International Studies, gave recommendations of works found in the following sources:

The Lifetime Reading Plan by Clifton Fadiman. (l)
Great Books of the Western World, Mortimer J. Adler, Editor. (g)
Great Books of the Twentieth Century, as proposed by Adler. (t)
"Books for the College-Bound Student," in Books and the Teen-aged Reader. (c)
The College and Adult Reading List of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). (e)
Books for You, the secondary-level reading list of the NCTE. (b)
"List for the College-Preparatory Student" in Reading in the Secondary School. (s)
"One Hundred Significant Books" from Good Reading (Committee on College Reading). (r)

McIntire prefaced his list with these observations:

Some considerations:

Many of the books followed by c, s, b, or e are what I call "teacherly" books--those seen as suitable for secondary English curricula because of literary merit or perceived wholesomeness. They represent, in some case, the biases, professional and personal, of generations of English teachers.

The books followed by l, g, t, or r might be more legitimately considered "important," either for literary merit or historical importance. They include most of the core "classics" of the Western literary canon and important works of the social and natural sciences.

Obviously, the same problems of canonicity and ethnic bias that pertain in scholastic debate today can be seen in this list. The major reason for including the "teacherly" works is to offer some alternatives--there are more works by female writers and at least some by non-white writers there. By that same token, the orientation is weighted toward American titles in 19th and 20th Century works, and toward Western works generally.

Any serious reader will have quarrels with this list. That is as it should be. I have not fudged here. I stress this point to avoid conflict. I did not choose the books included here. To take the smallest example, I don't know why King Lear is not included in the Shakespeare list. I would, however, challenge any serious reader to look through here without finding at least something that sparks your attention and sends you off to the library.

Finally, realize that these lists are timebound. Many of the original compilations were made in the 1950s and 1960s [when people still read, says my anti-television bias]. There are works here that seemed to be important at the time, but which have wavered in their reputation in the last two or three decades. I would welcome any helpful comments or reasonable sources to add to the database that underlies this project.

Andrew Duchowski of Texas A&M and Mike Morris were responsible for the final 1994 list, and Robert Grumbine collected it in 1999-2000 in his site of book lists. It is posted here in an author/title format as it originally appeared on Usenet.

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