Customer Reviews

Masterpieces of World Literature

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"Literature" here means fiction and non-fiction -- great works of philosophy and political theory are included alongside famous novels, plays, and poems.

This book covers 275 of the "great books" of the western canon. (Make no mistake: this is unabashedly the Western Civ definition of Great Books. It also lacks racial diversity -- but see "Masterpieces of African-American Literature in the same series.)

For each work covered, the book gives a well-written, concise plot summary; descriptions of major characters; all the important facts of date and authorship; and a critical evaluation.

The list of authors is too long to give here. But since $35 is nothing to sneeze at -- and you need to know if the book covers works you're interested in -- here's a sampling: Shakespeare, Proust, Henry James, Tolstoy, Yeats, Trollope, Nietzsche, Coleridge, Dostoevsky, Thomas Mann, Edith Wharton, Voltaire, Chaucer, Kafka, Kant, St, Augustine, Dickens, Plato, Ibsen, Henry Adams, Jane Austen, Emerson, Thoreau, Goethe, Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Freud, Jung, Marx, Flaubert, Virginia Woolf, Sartre, Camus, Euripides, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, etc., etc.

Whether you feel you have an incomplete education or you've just forgotten the basics of the books you read (or were supposed to read!) in high school and college -- this is the book for you. As it says on the flap copy" Invaluable for syudents and fascinating to every dedicated reader.

Of the available references of its kind, this one is the best. However, the latest compilation pales beside its 1952 counterpart which has 510 entries, compared to the 270 entries in this volume. This "new" edition has larger type and revised entries. Some of the articles/summaries are actually better than earlier versions.

However, none of the works of (for example) Thomas Wolfe, among others, are included in this new edition. I suppose the editors wished to keep the new volume as lean and basic as possible. They managed to do so in mostly an excellent way, but at the expense of omitting some essential literary masterpieces.

I do recommend this book, but definitely don't throw out your early editions of the title!

This work provides summaries of the stories of two- hundred and seventy ' classic works' of Western Literature. It provides information about the characters of the work, the settings of the work. It can be truly helpful in ' straightening out' some of the confusion we often have after reading a book- no matter how much we have loved and concentrated in it.
It seems to me that this book is especially geared to helping students who are taking courses on these particular books. But it can also I think help in another way, help the reader get certain things ' straight' before doing the real reading on their own.
And this is the other, perhaps obvious point. No summary of a work is the work itself. And no information given about the work can substitute for the experience of reading the work.
Many clever students will of course substitute these summaries for the reading, write their papers and take their tests succcessfully. But they will have missed the crucial thing, the real act of reading.
So this is a tool, my sense is an excellent tool, but no substitute for the real thing.

I'm using my second copy of this book, the first being lost to a wayward mug of coffee. And while one dear and brilliant friend scoffed at this tome, labelling it a "Collection of Cliff Notes for the Coffee Table," for me it's a wonderful reference tool and I quickly bought a replacement.

Nicely organized, dependable, big. I love this book - and if he's right, it's cheating to own Masterpieces of World Literature rather than buying copies of all the works it references, then I don't care.

I recommend this book for purchase. It really comes in handy.

- Reba Kennedy

One of the most consistently useful tomes in my library. What a shame that it never came out in paperback, and is now completely out of print.

Have you ever read a classic that had nothing to say to you? You honestly start to think, "What the H.? Am I dumb? Is this over my head? What was I supposed to be getting out of this? Why does this book have the reputation it does?"

That's where this book comes in. For over a hundred major classics, Magill lays out: 1) a list of characters; 2) a plot synopsis (all several paragraphs long); and 3) a critical evaluation that attempts to explain why the book is considered to be a masterpiece or, failing that, why it was so ground-breaking.

This book has helped me a lot over the years. In particular, it has helped me respect books I didn't care for, leaving me with a feeling that, while they may not have moved me, I could at least understand why they were so famous. That's something.

Note: this book came out before political correctness had devastated the academy, so it covers pretty much the conventional Western canon, and not books such as "The Color Purple," "Beloved," "Farewell to Manzanar," etc.

Note also: the author, Frank Magill, also did a "Masterpieces of Philosophy" and a "Masterpieces of American Literature."

Fascinating break-down of the best literature published. Well-written with a lot of background information. Exceptional!!

"Masterpieces of World Literature" provides critical summaries of about 270 literary classics, in alphabetical order (beginning with Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner and ending with Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights). Each work has the following information:
Type of Work
Author
Type of Plot
Time of Plot
Locale
Year of first publication
Principal characters
The Story (summary)
Critical Evaluation

Some of the information is not provided in cases where this information is simply not known. I consider this an excellent introductory resource to world literature, though it is by no means comprehensive nor in-depth. This is a handsome collection of critical summaries, but does not provide a thorough analysis of each work of literature. The key words here are "critical summaries" and in that sense, this book delivers.

I read quite a few of the books discussed here. I found most of the descriptions to be helpful, refreshing my memory about books I read years ago.

Rather than comment on the many helpful descriptions, I'll just mention two that I found less than helpful. I felt that these two descriptions completely missed the mark and I was very disappointed in them.

Remembrance of Things Past, by Marcel Proust. Reading the description contained in this book, I was extremely disillusioned. I felt that if the author could so completely miss the points of this book and misrepresent this book, how accurate are the other descriptions, the ones of books I haven't read. Marcel, Albertine, Swann and Odette were all fairly unrecognizable to me in this book, though I enjoyed all of them very much in Proust's work.

Ulysses by James Joyce. Again, I was extremely disappointed in what I read here. The character descriptions and plot summary bore little resemblance to the book that I read, and the critical evaluation struck me as pointless. Leo and Molly Bloom were both almost completely misunderstood in this book, as far as I can determine. I was hoping to be pleased with what I read. I didn't come to this book intending to be critical of it.

What I wanted was a book that would simply summarize the stories of many of the classics, and with the exception of these two, I think this book has done a commendable job.

Covers the great works extremely well. Breaks the characters and stories down very well. Fells as if you have read the great works themselves. Much like an advanced Cliff Notes.

This was my fault, but this is not the book I was supposed to get. I'm pretty sure that I searched using the ISBN, but not 100%. I will be more careful next time.