Omar Khayyam—Fitzgerald's translation is widely available; the Penguin edition has a good introduction by Dick Davis. The translation by Peter Avery and John Heath-Stubbs is less dramatic as a work of English poetry, but more faithful to the Persian original.
Further reading: There is surprisingly little; try Ali Dashtis In Search of Omar Khayyam, tr. L.P. Elwell-Sutton.
D ante Alighieri—Among many other translations there are good versions of The Divine Comedy by John Ciardi (Norton);
Thomas G. Bergin (Harlan Davidson); Dorothy Sayers (Penguin); Allen Mandelbaum (U. of Califуrnia Press); Robert Pinsky (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). The translation by Charles S. Singleton (Princeton U. Press) inclines to the literal, but this has its value. Note also La Vita Nuova, tr. Barbara Reynolds (Penguin); On World Government (De Monarchia), tr. H. S. Schneider (Bobbs- Merrill); and the excellent Portable Dante (Viking).
Further reading: Francis Fergusson, Dante; Thomas G. Bergin, Dante; Jefferson Butler Fletcher, Dante; the essay on Dante in George Santayanas Three Philosophical Poets; the essay on Dante in T.S. Eliot's Selected Essays 1Q17-1Q32; Robin Kirkpatrick, Dante: The Divine Comedy. Good biography: P.J. Quinones, Dante Alighieri.
Luo kuan-chung—The best translation is by Moss Roberts, Three Kingdoms: A Historical Novel (U. Califуrnia Press). The older translation by C.H. Brewitt-Taylor, Romance of the Three Kingdoms (reprint, Tuttle) is acceptable.
Further reading: C.T. Hsia, The Classic Chinese Noveclass="underline" A Criticai Introduction covers ali major works of Chinese fiction, as does the briefer work by Chinas foremost twentieth-century writer, Lu Hsьn, A Brief History of Chinese Fiction, tr. by Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang.
Geoffrey Chaucer—Complete Works, ed. W. W. Skeat (Oxford U. Press). Canterbury Tales, tr. Nevill Coghill (Penguin), an excellent translation; also tr. David Wright (Vintage); tr. R. M. Lumiansky (prose, Washington Sq. Press). Portable Chaucer, ed. Theodore Morrison (Viking). Troilus and Crisseyde, tr. Nevill Coghill (Penguin). A Choice of Chaucer s Verse, ed. Nevill Coghill (Merrimack).
Further reading: John Livingston Lowes, Geoffrey Chaucer; Marchette Chute, Geoffrey Chaucer of England; D.S. Brewer, Chaucer, 3d ed.; G.G. Coulton, Chaucer and His England; S.S. Hussey, Chaucer: An Introduction; Donald R. Howard, Chaucer.
The Thousand and One Nights—The two classic Victorian translations are by Richard Burton (10 vols, 1885, and six supplementary vols., 1886-88), and by John Payne (9 vols, 1882-84, four supplementary vols., 1884-88). There are many reprints and abridge- ments of both; beware of censorship and of retellings for children.
Further reading: Robert Irvings The Arabian Nights: A Companion is an excellent guide to the stories, their historical con- text, and their translations. See also: Mia I. Gerhardt, The Art of Story-Telling: A Literary Study of the Thousand and One Nights, and Peter L. Caracciolo, The Arabian Nights in English Literature, a fascinating study of the influence of the tales on a wide range of English authors.
Niccolo Machiavelli—The Prince: many editions, including Airmont, Mentor, Oxford, Penguin, Everyman.
Further reading: The best biography is R. Ridolfi's Life of Niccolт Machiavelli. More recent: Quentin Skinner, Machiavelli.
Franзois Rabelais—A good translation of Gargantua and Pantagruel is by John M. Cohen (Penguin). See also Penguin's Portable Rabelais, ed. Samuel Putnam.
Further reading: The best one-volume life is the translation by Louis P.Roche of Jean Plattard's The Life of Franзois Rabelais, but this is hard to come by. Samuel Putnam's Rabelais: Man of the Renaissance is good, too. D.B. Wyndham Lewis's Doctor Rabelais, by a Catholic and a humorist, offers a sympathetic interpretation of both these aspects of Rabelais. Donald Frame's Franзois Rabelais: A Study is a good introductory book, and Mikhail Bakhtin's Rabelais and His World a penetrating one.
Journey to the West, attr. to Wu Ch'eng-en—There are two complete translations, by Anthony C. Yu (4 vols., U. Chicago Press) and by W.J.F. Jenner (3 vols., Foreign Languages Press, Beijing); the most popular version is Arthur Waleys inspired abridgement, Monkey (John Day; Grove paperback).
Further Reading: C.T. Hsia, The Classic Chinese Novel; even if you only read Waleys abridged Monkey, read the introduction to Anthony Yu's complete translation.
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne—Complete Essays, tr. Donald Frame (Stanford U. Press). Look also for the translation by John M. Cohen in Penguin. A new translation is by M.A. Screech, in two versions: The Complete Essays and The Essays: A Selection (both in Penguin).
Further reading: The best biography in English is Donald M. Frame's Montaigne. Marvin LowenthaTs The Autobiography of Michel de Montaigne arranges excerpts from the Essays so as to follow the course of Montaigne's life. Frame's Montaignes Discovery of Man is a serious, scholarly work. Two first-class essays: Virginia Woolf s in The Common Reader and Ralph Waldo Emerson's in The Portable Emerson.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra—Mentor has an acceptable abridged edition of Don Quixote. Penguin has a Portable Cervantes, containing the excellent Putnam translation. Also look for the Starkie translation (Signet) or the Cohen version (Penguin).
Further reading: The bibliography is of course enormous. Gerald Brenan's Literature of the Spanish People has a fine Cervantes chapter and is well worth reading complete. The old standard biography is still authoritative: F. Fitzmaurice-Kelly, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra: A Memoir. See also: J.W. Krutch, Five Masters; Mark Van Doren, Don Quixote's Profession; A.F.G. Bell,
Cervantes; Salvador de Madariaga, Don Quixote: An Introductory Essay in Psychology; Rudolph Schevill, Cervantes; R.L Predmore, Cervantes; William Byron, Cervantes; M. McKendrick, Cervantes.
William Shakespeare—Many publishers offer the individual plays in paperback. A good one-volume complete edition, however, is the thing to buy: S. Wells et al., William Shakespeare: The Complete Works (Oxford U. Press); Complete Plays and Poems, ed. W.A. Neilson and C.J. Hill; the Hardin Craig edition, revised by Craig and David Bevington; and those published by Riverside, Signet, Penguin, and Scott Foresman. The Portable Shakespeare (Viking) offers good selections.
Further reading: To aid in your reading of Shakespeare, we list several books, each approaching the subject from a different angle, each useful in a different way: M.C. Bradbrook, Shakespeare: The Poet in His World; A.C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy; Peter Quennell, Shakespeare; Northrop Frye on Shakespeare; G.B. Harrison, Introducing Shakespeare; Marchette Chute, Shakespeare ofLondon; Anthony Burgess, Shakespeare; A. Nicoll, Shakespeare in His Own Age; S. Schoenbaum, Shakespeare: The Globe and the World. Jan Kott's Shakespeare Our Contemporary is a stimulating modern view, of interest to those involved in production.