AP Literature recommended reading list

I went to a very small high school (the now-closed Frisco City High School in Alabama), and we didn’t have any advanced placement classes, except for maybe AP Biology.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with advanced placement classes, they were college preperatory classes in which you could actually earn college credit, that is, if you passed a standardized test at the end of the school year.

I think that I would have liked to have taken AP English or AP Literature, but like I said, it wasn’t offered at my school.

With that in mind, I ran across an interesting recommended reading list earlier this week - a list of all the works of literature that have been referred to on AP Literature exams since 1971.

Without further ado, here’s the list, which is rather lengthy, in alphabetical order:

A:
Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner
Adam Bede by George Eliot
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Aeneid by Virgil
Agnes of God by John Pielmeier
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
All My Sons by Arthur Miller
All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
America is in the Heart by Carlos Bulosan
An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
The American by Henry James
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Another Country by James Baldwin
Antigone by Sophocles
Anthony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare
Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Mordecai Richler
Armies of the Night by Norman Mailer
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
As You Like It by William Shakespeare
Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson
The Awakening by Kate Chopin

B
The Bear by William Faulkner
Beloved by Toni Morrison
A Bend in the River by V. S. Naipaul
Benito Cereno by Herman Melville
Billy Budd by Herman Melville
The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter
Black Boy by Richard Wright
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Bone: A Novel by Fae M. Ng
The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevski

C
Candida by George Bernard Shaw
Candide by Voltaire
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
The Caretaker by Harold Pinter
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams
Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood
The Centaur by John Updike
Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko
The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov
"Civil Disobedience" by Henry David Thoreau
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje
Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevski
"The Crisis" by Thomas Paine
The Crucible by Arthur Miller

D
Daisy Miller by Henry James
Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
"The Dead" by James Joyce
The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Delta Wedding by Eudora Welty
Desire under the Elms by Eugene O'Neill
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
The Diviners by Margaret Laurence
Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe
A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen
The Dollmaker by Harriet Arnot
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia
Dutchman by Amiri Baraka/Leroi Jones

E
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Emma by Jane Austen
An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen
Equus by Peter Shaffer
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
The Eumenides by Aeschylus (in The Orestia)

F
The Fall by Albert Camus
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
The Father by August Strindberg
Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
Faust by Johann Goethe
The Federalist by Alexander Hamilton
Fences by August Wilson
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
Fifth Business by Robertson Davis
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

G
A Gathering of Old Men by Ernest Gaines
A Gesture Life by Chang-Rae Lee
Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
Going After Cacciato by Tim O'Brien
The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

H
The Hairy Ape by Eugene O'Neill
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Hard Times by Charles Dickens
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene
Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen
Henry IV, Parts I and II by William Shakespeare
Henry V by William Shakespeare
The Homecoming by Harold Pinter
House Made of Dawn by N Scott Momaday
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne

I
The Iliad by Homer
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O'Brien
In the Time of Butterflies by Julia Alvarez
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

J
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee
J.B. by Archibald MacLeish
Joe Turner's Come and Gone by AugustWilson
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

K
King Lear by William Shakespeare

L
A Lesson before Dying by Ernest Gaines
Letters from an American Farmer by de Crevecoeur
Light in August by William Faulkner
The Little Foxes by Lillian Hellman
Long Day's Journey into Night by Eugene O'Neill
Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh
Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich
"Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T. S. Eliot
Lysistrata by Aristophanes

M
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw
Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Master Harold...and the Boys by Athol Fugard
The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy
M. Butterfly by David Henry Wang
Medea by Euripides
The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Middle Passage by V. S. Naipaul
A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
Monkey Bridge by Lan Cao
Mother Courage and Her Children by Berthold Brecht
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Mrs. Warren's Profession by George Bernard Shaw
Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare
Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot
"My Last Duchess" by Robert Browning
My Antonia by Willa Cather
My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok

N
Native Son by Richard Wright
Native Speaker by Chang-Rae Lee
1984 by George Orwell
No Exit by John Paul Sartre
No-No Boy by John Okada
Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevski

O
Obasan by Joy Kogawa
The Odyssey by Homer
Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
The Optimist's Daughter by D. H. Lawrence
The Orestia by Aeschylus
Orlando: A Biography by Virginia Woolf
Othello by William Shakespeare
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
Our Town by Thornton Wilder
Out of Africa by Isaak Dinesen

P
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
Pamela by Samuel Richardson
A Passage to India by E. M. Forster
Paradise Lost by John Milton
Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen
Père Goriot by Honore de Balzac
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Phaedre by Jean Racine
The Piano Lesson by August Wilson
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
The Plague by Albert Camus
Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov
Pocho by Jose Antonio Villarreal
Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
Praisesong for the Widow by Paule Marshall
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw

R
Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope
Redburn by Herman Melville
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Richard III by William Shakespeare
A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard

S
Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw
The Sandbox by Edward Albee
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Sent for You Yesterday by John Edgar Wideman
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence
The Stranger by Albert Camus
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
Sula by Toni Morrison
Surfacing by Margaret Atwood
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

T
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Tarftuffe by Moliere
The Tempest by William Shakespeare
Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zorah Neale Hurston
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Tracks by Louise Erdrich
The Trial by Franz Kafka
Trifles by Susan Glaspell
Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Typical American by Gish Jen

U
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

V
The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith
Victory by Joseph Conrad
Volpone by Ben Jonson

W
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
The Warden by Anthony Trollope
Washington Square by Henry James
The Wasteland by T. S. Eliot
Watch on the Rhine by Lillian Hellman
The Way of the World by William Congreve
The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
The Wild Duck by Henrik Ibsen
Winter in the Blood by James Welch
Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare
Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor
Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Z
The Zoo Story by Edward Albee
Zoot Suit by Luis Valdez

As you can see, this is a lengthy list, but it includes many famous works of literature. (If you’d like to see the original source for the list, visit www.fortbend.k12.tx.us/campuses/documents/Teacher/2008%5Cteacher_20081023_0845.pdf.) How many of these works have you had a chance to read? What did you think about them? Which would you recommend? Let us know in the comments section below.