Writing: A timeline list of books and novels more than 100 years old
The novel "Frankenstein" was written 79 years before the novel "Dracula," and other things that surprised me...
One of the memes I made years ago, about writing books. #steveemigmemes
This list is the product of one of those things that starts one place, and keeps leading to other ideas. A book on the shelf in the library kept catching my eye when I walked by. The book was a full color, graphic book, but not a graphic novel, called Mary’s Monster, by Lita Judge. So I finally checked the book out and read it.
Through mostly art, well done watercolors, with minimal text, it tells the story of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, the woman who wrote the novel, Frankenstein. Much of her life was tragic, but she was also highly intelligent, and very well read. The most amazing things, to me, was that she wrote Frankenstein way back in 1818, and it was published when she was only 19. Nineteen. I became fascinated with her, and soon read Frankenstein. It’s not the book I thought it was, it’s something very different, and very deep. By then I was fascinated with the thoughts of Mary Shelley, at such a young age.
I learned she wrote another novel, The Last Man. It may be the first “post apocalyptic” novel ever written. I just finished reading The Last Man, which is about a plague destroying the human race, until there’s only one guy left. It’s not the gripping novel of revenge that Frankenstein is. It’s more of a long, thoughtful, meditation on human society, relationships, and what it is that makes our lives worth living.
In The Last Man, Mary Shelley mentioned well known novels in her day, Gulliver’s Travels (1726), and Robinson Crusoe (1719), both of which were about 100 years old when she was writing. I was thinking about how long ago, and how far apart, these novels were written, yet they are still well known today. In addition, I recently read Tarzan of the Apes (1912), by Edgar Rice Burroughs. So I’ve read a novel that was over 100 years old, and two novels that were 200 years old, and the last one mentioned novels now 300 years old.
I began to wonder where many of the other well known old pieces of literature fit in a timeline, compared to these, and to each other. So I started making a list of old novels, a couple of days ago, just to satisfy my own curiosity. When I printed out the original list, I thought of a couple other people who might like a copy, so I made extra copies. My original list had a couple mistakes, because I didn’t bother to proofread it. So I went back, fixed the mistakes, and started adding more books. Then even more. This is the finished list I ended up with, to satisfy my own curiosity.
List of well known books published before 1925… 100 years ago or more
2100-1400 BC- Epic of Gilgamesh (compiled later by Babylonian scribe Sin-leqi-unninni)
1450-1410 BC- Genesis (Torah/The Bible) attributed to Moses
700’s BC- The Iliad- attributed to Homer
700’s BC- The Odyssey- attributed to Homer- published in Greek in 1488
472 BC- The Persians- (play)- Aeschylus- earliest surviving play of his
429 BC- Oedipus Rex (play)- Sophocles
375 BC +/- - The Republic- Plato
300 BC +/- - Elements- Euclid- Writings compiled around this time- first published as a printed book in 1482
60-140 AD- Gospel of Thomas (Gnostic Christian gospel, not in the Bible)
90-110 AD- Gospel of John (Christian gospel that’s in the Bible)
700- 1000 AD- Beowulf- Nordic epic poem- author unknown (published in 1815)
1200-1210 AD- Parzival- epic poem- Wolfram von Eschenbach (early Arthurian/quest for the Holy Grail tale)
1314 AD +/- - Inferno- Dante Alighieri
1320 AD +/- - The Divine Comedy- Dante Alighieri
1387-1400- The Canterbury Tales written by Geoffrey Chaucer
1450 +/- - Gutenberg Printing Press first used commercially
1455- Gutenberg Bible- One of the first books printed on a printing press
1476- The Canterbury Tales- Geoffrey Chaucer- first book printing
1594- The Taming of the Shrew-( play)- William Shakespeare
1595- Romeo and Juliet- (play)- William Shakespeare
1597- The Merchant of Venice- (play)- William Shakespeare
1601- Hamlet- (play)- William Shakespeare
1605- Don Quixote- Miguel de Cervantes
1606- Macbeth- (play)- William Shakespeare
1719- Robinson Crusoe- Daniel Defoe
1726- Gulliver’s Travels- Jonathan Swift
1759- Candide- Voltaire
1813- Pride and Prejudice- Jane Austen
1818- Frankenstein- Mary Shelley- The first science fiction novel?
1826- The Last Man- Mary Shelley- The first “post-apocalyptic” novel?
1826- Last of the Mohicans- James Fenimore Cooper
1838- Oliver Twist- Charles Dickens
1841-1844- Essays #1 & #2 (including “Self Reliance”)- Ralph Waldo Emerson
1843- A Christmas Carol- Charles Dickens
1844- The Three Musketeers- Alexandre Dumas
1847- Jane Eyre- Charlotte Bronte
1847- Wuthering Heights- Emily Bronte
1850- The Scarlet Letter- Nathaniel Hawthorne
1851- Moby Dick- Herman Melville
1854- Walden- Henry David Thoreau
1856- Madame Bovary- Gustav Flaubert
1859- A Tale of Two Cities- Charles Dickens
1862- Les Miserable- Victor Hugo
1864- Journey to the Centre of the Earth- Jules Verne
1866- Crime and Punishment- Fyodor Dostoevsky
1869- War and Peace- Leo Tolstoy
1870- 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea- Jules Verne
1876- Tom Sawyer- Mark Twain
1877- Black Beauty- Anna Sewell
1878- Anna Karenina- Leo Tolstoy
1883- Treasure Island- Robert Louis Stevenson
1884- Huckleberry Finn- Mark Twain
1886- The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde- Robert Louis Stevenson
1887- A Study in Scarlet (the first Sherlock Holmes novel)- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
1890- The Picture of Dorian Gray- Oscar Wilde
1893- Pudd’nhead Wilson- Mark Twain
1895- Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc- Mark Twain
1895- The Time Machine- H.G. Wells
1897- Dracula- Bram Stoker
1897- The Invisible Man- H.G. Wells
1898- War of the Worlds- H.G. Wells
1912- A Princess of Mars (first John Carter sci-fi novel)- Edgar Rice Burroughs
1912- Tarzan of the Apes (published serially in a magazine)- Edgar Rice Burroughs
1913- In Search of Lost Time- Marcel Proust
1914- Tarzan of the Apes - Edgar Rice Burroughs (first published as a novel)
1915- The Metamorphosis- Franz Kafka
1919- Demian- Herman Hesse
1920- The Age of Innocence- Edith Wharton
1922- Ulysses- James Joyce
1922- Siddartha- Herman Hesse
1925- The Great Gatsby- F. Scott Fitzgerald
For the record, I’ve read 21 of the books on this list, counting Emerson’s Essays, parts 1 & 2, as one book. That actually surprised me. But then, it’s my list, and I put several of my favorites on it. There are plenty other works by some of these authors, which you can look up on your own, if you feel so motivated.
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