AUCASSIN AND NICOLETTE

Auerbach, Berthold
  On the Height

Austen, Jane
  Sense and Sensibility
  Pride and Prejudice
  Northanger Abbey
  Mansfield Park
  Emma
  Persuasion

Balzac, Honore de
  Eugenie Grandet
  Old Goriot
  Magic Skin
  Quest of the Absolute

Beckford, William
  History of the Caliph Vathek

Behn, Aphra
  Oroonoko

Bergerac, Cyrano de
  Voyage to the Moon

Bjoernson, Bjoernstjerne
  Arne
  In God’s Way

Black, William
  Daughter of Heth

Blackmore, R.D. 
  Lorna Doone

Boccaccio
  Decameron

A Complete Index of the world’s greatest books will be found at the end of Volume XX.

INTRODUCTION

An enterprise such as the world’s greatest books is to be judged from two different standpoints.  It may be judged with respect to its specific achievement—­the material of which it consists; or it may be judged with regard to its general utility in the scheme of literature to which it belongs.

In an age which is sometimes ironically called “remarkable” for its commercialism, nothing has been more truly remarkable than the advancement in learning as well as in material progress; and of all the instruments that have contributed to this end, none has been more effective, perhaps, than the practical popularisation of literature.

In the world’s greatest books an attempt has been made to effect a compendium of the world’s best literature in a form that shall be at once accessible to every one and still faithful to its originals; or, in other words, it has been sought to allow the original author to tell his own story over again in his own language, but in the shortest possible space.

Such a method differs entirely from all those in which an author is represented, either by one or more extracts from his work, or else by a formal summary or criticism of it in a language not his own.  And, since the style and language of an original is what often constitutes the wings upon which alone its thought will fly, to have access to its thought without its form is too often to possess a skeleton without the spirit which alone could animate it.

Notwithstanding this, however, we are aware that even the world’s greatest books will not escape the criticism of a small class of people who will profess to object to this, as to any kind of interference with an author’s original—­in reply to which it can only be said that such objections are seldom, if ever, made in the true interests of learning, or in a genuine spirit of inquiry, and too often only proceed from a knowledge of books or love of them which goes no deeper than their title-page.