The New Lifetime Reading Plan

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.

John Donne—Penguin has The Complete English Poems, as does Hendricks House. Modern Library has Poetry and Prose.

Further reading: The definitive biography is R.C. Baid's John Donne: A Life. See also: Wilbur Sanders,John Donne's Poetry; J.B. Leishman, The Monarch of Wit: An Analytical and Comparative Study of John Donne; Edmund Gosse, Life and Letters of John Donne (2 vols.); H.I. Faussett, John Donne, A Study in Discord; George Williamson, The Donne Tradition; Theodore Spencer, ed., A Garland for John Donne; T.S. Eliot's influential essay on "The Metaphysical Poets" in his Selected Essays.