These are the tentative list of 100 Best Classic Books(100 at the moment) for “500 Best Books originally written in English for Japanese Audience”.
One of the definitions of “Classics”is “The books which
survived the test of time”, but that time itself is hard to define. Therefore,
as a matter of convenience, I choose the books which were published before 1950. Some of Science Fiction novels, Mysteries, and Thrillers are introduced in a “Fiction” page because they are less known to Japanese audience.
Again, this tentative list is made for Japanese audience. I
have lists for fiction
books, nonfiction
books,and children’s
books separately.
This list is not completed and I would like your input.
The following are the criteria I used for the tentative list.
1) Relatively easy to read.
2) Enjoyable, fun, or satisfying.
3) Still in print and available in Japan.
クラシックの定義としては「Survive
the test of time」が重要な条件ですが、この「time」が何年かを決めるのが悩ましいところです。通常は、第二次世界大戦後の作品がContemporary
literature（現代文学）と見なされていますので、便宜上、現代文学ではないものを「クラシック文学」とすることにしました。
このリストは、最終候補を選ぶ前の段階のリストです。これから加わる作品もあれば、リストから外れる作品もあります。ここよりも、本文でおすすめしたい作品は中に含まれていません。
*** *** *** ***
児童書
(Children’s books)
The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902)
The Wind in the Willows (1908)
The Velveteen Rabbit (1922)
Winnie-the-Pooh (1926)
The Little Engine That Could (1930) by Plat & Munck
Curious George (1941)
Runaway Bunny (1942) by Margaret Wise Brown
Madeline(1939) by
Ludwig Bemelmans
Goodnight Moon (1947)
＊＊＊
A Christmas Carol* (1843)
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
Little Women* (1868)
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer * (1876)
Black Beauty (1877)
The Happy Prince **(1892)
The Jungle Books* (1894)
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)
Peter Pan (1904)
The Railway Children (1906) by
Nesbit
Anne of Green Gables (1908)
A Little Princess(1888) & The Secret Garden** (1911)
The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle (1922)
The Little House books (1932 〜） by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Mary Poppins (1934)
The Black Stallion (1941)
大人向け（For
adult readers)
Hamlet (1601)and others by William Shakespeare
Robinson Crusoe (1719)
Gulliver’s Travels (1726)
The Monk (1796)
Pride and Prejudice(1813), and others by Jane Austen
Frankenstein(1818)
The Last of the Mohicans (1826)
Great Expectations (1860) and others by Charles Dickens
Jane Eyre(1847)
Wuthering Heights (1847)
Vanity Fair (1848)
Nature (1849) by Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Scarlet Letter (1850)
Moby Dick (1851)
Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)
Walden (1854)
North and South
(1855)
Leaves of Grass
* (1855) by Walt Whitman(多くの小説で引用されている作品）
Middlemarch (1871) by George Eliot
The Way We Live Now
by Anthony Trollope (1875)
Treasure Island (1883)
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)
A Study in Scarlet (1887), & other Sherlock
Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James(1881)
Three Men in a Boat(1889) by Jerome K. Jerom
The Picture of Dorian Gray** (1890), The Importance of Being
Earnest** (1895) by Oscar Wilde
The Selected Poems by Emily Dickinson(1890)
Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy(1891)
The Time Machine (1895)
Dracula (1897)
The Awakening (1899)
Lord Jim (1900) & Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
The Best of O’Henry(1904) by O’Henry
The Call of the Wild, White Fang and Other Stories by Jack
London (1906)
A Room with a View (1908)
Daddy-Long-Legs (1912)
Pygmalion (1913)
The Moon And Sixpence (1919)
Very Good, Jeeves (1919)
The Age of Innocence (1920)
Ulysses (1922)
The Waste Land (1922)
A Passage to India (1924)
The Great Gatsby (1925)
Mrs. Dalloway (1925)
These Old
Shades (1926) by Georgette Heyer(現代のロマンス小説家のお手本となっている作家）
The Sun Also
Rises (1926)
Ashenden (1927) by William Somerset Maugham
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd* (1926), and other
mysteries by Agatha Christie
The Roman Hat Mystery (Ellery Queen Detective #1) (1929) by Ellery Queen
The Collected Short Stories of Saki(1930) by Saki
The Maltese Falcon (1930) by Dashiell
Hammett
Brave New World (1932)
Gone with the Wind* (1936)
Their Eyes Were Watching God
(1937)
The Ghost Stories of Edith (1937) Edith Wharton
Rebecca* (1938)
The Fall of the House of Usher (1839) and Other Tales by Edgar
Allan Poe*
The Grapes of Wrath (1939) & Of Mice and Men
Death of a Salesman (1940)
近代クラシック Modern Classic
Animal Farm (1945) by George Orwell
A Streetcar Named Desire(1947) by Tennessee Williams
The Catcher in the Rye (1951) by J. D. Salinger
The Old Man and the Sea (1952) by Ernest Hemingway
Waiting for
Godot by Samuel Beckett (1952,脚本）
Lord of the Flies* (1954) by William Golding
A Fable by William Faulkner (1954)
Lolita (1955) by Vladimir Nabokov
Seize the Day
(Penguin Classics) (1956) by Saul Bellow
My Family and
Other Animals (1956) by Gerald Durrell
Goodbye, Columbus (1958) by Philip Roth
The Bell(1958) by Iris Murdoch
To Kill A Mockingbird**(1960) by Harper Lee
Rabbit, Run (1960) John Updike
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest *(1962) by Ken Kesey
A Clockwork Orange (1962) Anthony Burgess
On the Road (1967) by Jack Kerouac
The Godfather (1969) by Mario Puzo
***** The following classics are also onsidered.*****
Atlas Shrugged (1957) by Ayn Rand(説明が必要な本なので、フィクションに移動）
Ramona Quimby series (1955) by Beverly Cleary
Harry the Dirty Dog(1956) by by Gene Zion, Margaret Bloy Graham
The Dark Is Rising (1973) by Susan Cooper
The Mist of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote(1958)（すでに他の本を紹介しているから）
Cold Comfort Farm (1932)
Death Comes
for the Archbishop (1927)
Make Way For Lucia (1920)
Alexandria
Quartet (1961)
The Wheels on the Bus by Paul O. Zeilinsky
A Death in the Family
Go Tell It on the Mountain
The Canterbury Tales
The Red Badge of Courage
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
An American Tragedy
The Mill on the Floss
Selected Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson
As I Lay Dying
The Night
Before Christmas (1869)
100 Best-Loved Poems (Dover Thrift Editions)
Great Short Poems (Dover Thrift Editions)
Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
The 39 Steps
The Innocent
Voyage (a High Wind in Jamaica) by Richard Hughes (Not available)
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
The Sound and the Fury
Tom Jones
The Good Soldier
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
The Woman Warrior
Babbitt
The Crucible
A Good Man is Hard to Find
Long Day’s Journey into Night
The Crying of Lot 49
All Quiet on the Western Front
Call It Sleep
Ceremony
The Wind Boy
Things Fall Apart
Jenny and the Cat Club by Esther Averill
The Gashlycrumb Tinies(1963) by Edward Gorey
The Rabbits’ Wedding by Garth Williams