You Gotta Know

You Gotta Know These Works of Literature

The following table lists the 100 most-frequently referenced works of literature in NAQT questions as of October 1, 2005. While you really gotta know their authors, these are also some of the works about which more substantive questions are written, so teams should be prepared for questions on their characters, plots, settings, and circumstances of creation. The Bible was excluded from this list because its total would swamp the other work.

This is an update of the July 2001 You Gotta Know article.

Rank	Title	Genre	Creator	Date	Freq.
1	Hamlet	Drama	William Shakespeare	1601	130
2	The Tempest	Drama	William Shakespeare	1611	91
3	Macbeth	Drama	William Shakespeare	1606	85
4	Iliad	Poem	Homer	8th century BC	82
5	Pride and Prejudice	Novel	Jane Austen	1813	78
6	Moby-Dick	Novel	Herman Melville	1851	78
7	The Great Gatsby	Novel	F(rancis) Scott (Key) Fitzgerald	1925	73
8	Paradise Lost	Poem	John Milton	1667	72
9	Faust	Poem	Johann Wolfgang von Goethe	1808	71
10	King Lear	Drama	William Shakespeare	1605	71
11	The Merchant of Venice	Drama	William Shakespeare	1596	71
12	1984	Novel	George Orwell	1948	71
13	A Midsummer Night's Dream	Drama	William Shakespeare	1595	69
14	The Scarlet Letter	Novel	Nathaniel Hawthorne	1850	69
15	Crime and Punishment	Novel	Fyodor (Mikhaylovich) Dostoyevsky	1866	67
16	Romeo and Juliet	Drama	William Shakespeare	1594	65
17	As You Like It	Drama	William Shakespeare	1599	64
18	Oedipus Tyrannus	Drama	Sophocles	430 BC	64
19	Jane Eyre	Novel	Charlotte Brontë	1847	64
20	The Divine Comedy	Poem	Dante Alighieri	1314	63
21	The Canterbury Tales	Poem	Geoffrey Chaucer	1387	63
22	Othello	Drama	William Shakespeare	1622	62
23	Candide	Novel	Voltaire	1759	60
24	Little Women	Novel	Louisa May Alcott	1868	59
25	Vanity Fair	Novel	William Makepeace Thackeray	1848	59
26	Billy Budd: Foretopman	Novel	Herman Melville	1891	59
27	Julius Caesar	Drama	William Shakespeare	1599	59
28	Our Town	Drama	Thornton (Niven) Wilder	1938	59
29	Aeneid	Poem	Virgil	19 BC	59
30	To Kill a Mockingbird	Novel	(Nelle) Harper Lee	1960	58
31	A Streetcar Named Desire	Drama	(Thomas Lanier) "Tennessee" Williams	1947	58
32	War and Peace	Novel	(Lev Nikolayevich) "Leo" Tolstoy	1865	58
33	Les Misérables	Novel	Victor(-Marie) Hugo	1862	57
34	The Grapes of Wrath	Novel	John (Ernst) Steinbeck	1939	57
35	A Farewell to Arms	Novel	Ernest (Miller) Hemingway	1929	57
36	A Tale of Two Cities	Novel	Charles (John Huffam) Dickens	1859	57
37	Odyssey	Poem	Homer	8th century BC	57
38	Chicago	Poem	Carl (August) Sandburg	1916	56
39	Heart of Darkness	Novella	Joseph Conrad	1902	56
40	The Call of the Wild	Novel	Jack London	1903	56
41	Much Ado about Nothing	Drama	William Shakespeare	1598	56
42	For Whom the Bell Tolls	Novel	Ernest (Miller) Hemingway	1940	56
43	Anna Karenina	Novel	(Lev Nikolayevich) "Leo" Tolstoy	1877	55
44	Uncle Tom's Cabin	Novel	Harriet Beecher Stowe	1852	55
45	The Waste Land	Poem	T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot	1922	55
46	Pilgrim's Progress	Novel	John Bunyan	1678	54
47	The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn	Novel	Mark Twain	1884	54
48	The Red Badge of Courage	Novel	Stephen Crane	1895	53
49	Pygmalion	Drama	George Bernard Shaw	1912	52
50	Twelfth Night	Drama	William Shakespeare	1623	51
51	The Jungle	Novel	Upton (Beall) Sinclair	1906	51
52	Ulysses	Novel	James (Augustine Aloysius) Joyce	1922	51
53	Lolita	Novel	Vladimir (Vladimirovich) Nabokov	1955	51
54	Long Day's Journey Into Night	Drama	Eugene (Gladstone) O'Neill	1956	50
55	The Catcher in the Rye	Novel	J(erome) D(avid) Salinger	1951	49
56	A Doll's House	Drama	Henrik (Johan) Ibsen	1879	48
57	The Taming of the Shrew	Drama	William Shakespeare	1593	48
58	Don Quixote	Novel	Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra	1605	48
59	Great Expectations	Novel	Charles (John Huffam) Dickens	1861	48
60	Wuthering Heights	Novel	Emily Brontë	1847	48
61	Animal Farm	Novel	George Orwell	1945	47
62	Brave New World	Novel	Aldous (Leonard) Huxley	1932	47
63	Things Fall Apart	Novel	(Albert) Chinua(lumogu) Achebe	1958	47
64	The Three Musketeers	Novel	Alexandre Dumas (père)	1844	47
65	The Sun Also Rises	Novel	Ernest (Miller) Hemingway	1926	46
66	Oliver Twist	Novel	Charles (John Huffam) Dickens	1838	46
67	The Count of Monte Cristo	Novel	Alexandre Dumas (père)	1845	46
68	David Copperfield	Novel	Charles (John Huffam) Dickens	1850	46
69	One Hundred Years of Solitude	Novel	Gabriel García Márquez	1967	45
70	The Crucible	Drama	Arthur Miller	1953	45
71	A Raisin in the Sun	Drama	Lorraine Hansberry	1959	45
72	The Tyger	Poem	William Blake	1794	45
73	Beowulf	Poem	Anonymous	8th century	44
74	The Rime of the Ancient Mariner	Poem	Samuel Taylor Coleridge	1797	44
75	Catch-22	Novel	Joseph Heller	1961	44
76	Ivanhoe	Novel	Sir Walter Scott	1820	44
77	All the King's Men	Novel	Robert Penn Warren	1946	44
78	The House of the Seven Gables	Novel	Nathaniel Hawthorne	1851	43
79	Tess of the d'Urbervilles	Novel	Thomas Hardy	1891	42
80	Death of a Salesman	Drama	Arthur Miller	1949	42
81	The Merry Wives of Windsor	Drama	William Shakespeare	1600	41
82	Antigone	Drama	Sophocles	441 BC	41
83	Lord of the Flies	Novel	William (Gerald) Golding	1954	41
84	Ode on a Grecian Urn	Poem	John Keats	1819	41
85	Inferno	Poem	Dante Alighieri	c. 1310-1314	41
86	Decameron	Poem	Giovanni Boccaccio	1353	40
87	The Rape of the Lock	Poem	Alexander Pope	1714	40
88	The Adventures of Tom Sawyer	Novel	Mark Twain	1876	40
89	Main Street	Novel	(Harry) Sinclair Lewis	1920	40
90	Sense and Sensibility	Novel	Jane Austen	1811	40
91	Slaughterhouse Five	Novel	Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.	1969	39
92	All Quiet on the Western Front	Novel	Erich Maria Remarque	1929	39
93	The Color Purple	Novel	Alice (Malsenior) Walker	1982	39
94	The Sound and the Fury	Novel	William (Cuthbert) Faulkner	1929	39
95	Richard III	Drama	William Shakespeare	1593	39
96	Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?	Drama	Edward (Franklin) Albee	1961	39
97	Lyrical Ballads	Collection	William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge	1798	39
98	The Glass Menagerie	Drama	(Thomas Lanier) "Tennessee" Williams	1945	38
99	Absalom, Absalom!	Novel	William (Cuthbert) Faulkner	1936	38
100	The Turn of the Screw	Novel	Henry James	1898	38

NAQT has complete lists of the works of literature, non-fiction, art, and music that have been mentioned in its questions, sorted by frequency, available for purchase by coaches or teams for use as study guides.

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