Arts & Culture Books

This is the largest and most varied shelf in the library: nearly the entire works of William Shakespeare, ancient epic poetry, and one of the most influential works ever written about the afterlife, all under one roof. It spans genuinely different reading experiences — a stage play is meant to be read differently than an epic poem, and both differ again from a sonnet sequence. Homer's Odyssey and Dante's Divine Comedy are separated by roughly 2,000 years but share a basic structure: a long journey through extraordinary places that doubles as commentary on the world the author actually lived in. If drama or poetry feels intimidating on the page, reading it aloud (or listening while you follow along) usually makes the rhythm click faster than silent reading does.

Where to start

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

Every play and poem Shakespeare wrote, in one collection — start with a comedy if tragedy feels heavy.

Where to start

The Odyssey Rendered into English prose for the use of those who cannot read the original

Odysseus's ten-year journey home from Troy — the template for basically every quest story since.

Where to start

The divine comedy

Dante's guided tour through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven — one of the most influential poems ever written.

112 books total in this collection, free to read with synchronized LibriVox audio.

The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People

Oscar Wilde

Arts & Culture Books

The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People

Beowulf: An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem

A Doll's House : a play

The Odyssey&#13; Rendered into English prose for the use of those who cannot read the original

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

The divine comedy

Pygmalion

Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell

Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Purgatory

Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Paradise

Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Complete

Divine Comedy, Cary's Translation, Hell

Divine Comedy, Cary's Translation, Purgatory

Divine Comedy, Cary's Translation, Paradise

Divine Comedy, Cary's Translation, Complete

La Divina Commedia di Dante: Inferno

La Divina Commedia di Dante: Purgatorio

La Divina Commedia di Dante: Paradiso

La Divina Commedia di Dante

Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell

Sword Blades and Poppy Seed

The Congo, and Other Poems

The Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684

Charmides, and Other Poems

Poems

The Man Against the Sky: A Book of Poems

The Three Taverns: A Book of Poems

Shakespeare's Sonnets

A Reading of Life, with Other Poems

Venus and Adonis

The Dark Lady of the Sonnets

Poems, with The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Grass of Parnassus

First Project Gutenberg Collection of Edgar Allan Poe

The Raven

Tamburlaine the Great — Part 1

Mrs. Warren's Profession

King Henry VI, Part 1

King Henry VI, Part 2

King Henry VI, Part 3

King Richard III

The Comedy of Errors

The Sonnets

Titus Andronicus

The Taming of the Shrew

The Two Gentlemen of Verona

Love's Labour's Lost

King John

King Richard II

Romeo and Juliet

A Midsummer Night's Dream

The Merchant of Venice

King Henry IV, Part 1

The Merry Wives of Windsor

King Henry IV, Part 2

Much Ado about Nothing

King Henry V

Julius Caesar

As You Like It

Hamlet

Twelfth Night

Troilus and Cressida

All's Well That Ends Well

Measure for Measure

Othello

King Lear

The Tragedy of Macbeth

Antony and Cleopatra

Coriolanus

Timon of Athens

Cymbeline

The Winter's Tale

The Tempest

King Henry VIII

A Lover's Complaint

Selected Poems of Oscar Wilde

The Nibelungenlied

The Little Book of Modern Verse&#13; A Selection from the Work of Contemporaneous American Poets

The Second Book of Modern Verse&#13; A Selection from the Work of Contemporaneous American Poets

The Odyssey Rendered into English prose for the use of those who cannot read the original

The Little Book of Modern Verse A Selection from the Work of Contemporaneous American Poets

The Second Book of Modern Verse A Selection from the Work of Contemporaneous American Poets