

E-text prepared by Ted Garvin, Keith M. Eckrich, and the Project Gutenberg
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ONE HUNDRED BEST BOOKS

With Commentary and an Essay on Books and Reading

by

JOHN COWPER POWYS

1916







PREFACE

This selection of "One hundred best books" is made after a different
method and with a different purpose from the selections already in
existence. Those apparently are designed to stuff the minds of young
persons with an accumulation of "standard learning" calculated to
alarm and discourage the boldest. The following list is frankly
subjective in its choice; being indeed the selection of one
individual, wandering at large and in freedom through these "realms of
gold."

The compiler holds the view that in expressing his own predilection,
he is also supplying the need of kindred minds; minds that read purely
for the pleasure of reading, and have no sinister wish to transform
themselves by that process into what are called "cultivated persons."
The compiler feels that any one who succeeds in reading, with
reasonable receptivity, the books in this list, must become, at the
end, a person with whom it would be a delight to share that most
classic of all pleasurable arts--the art of intelligent conversation.



BOOKS AND READING

There is scarcely any question, the sudden explosion of which out of a
clear sky, excites more charming perturbation in the mind of a
man--professionally, as they say