'Almost Great'

Henry Oliver poses an interesting question: “What should be on a list of almost Great Books?” Consider it less a critical exercise than a parlor game. Think of the books you have admired and enjoyed, and perhaps reread, that lie beyond the canonical borders, the Dante/Shakespeare/Tolstoy axis. Oliver considers his own list “personal and partial,” as it should be. Here’s my Top Ten (+ two), listed as the titles occurred to me: 

Henry Mayhew: London Labour and the London Poor (1851)

 

Whittaker Chambers: Witness (1952)

 

Anton Chekhov: Sakhalin Island (1895)

 

Charles Montagu Doughty: Travels in Arabia Deserta (1888)

 

A.J. Liebling: Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris (1962)

 

Walter Savage Landor: Imaginary Conversations (1824-29)

 

Ronald Knox: Enthusiasm: A Chapter in the History of Religion (1950)

 

The Complete Essays of J.V. Cunningham (2024)

 

Guy Davenport: The Geography of the Imagination (1981)

 

Jonathan Swift: A Journal to Stella (1766)

 

Michael Oakeshott: Rationalism in Politics (1962)

 

James Boswell: The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785)

 

Walter de la Mare: Memoirs of a Midget (1921)