Classics for pleasure / Michael Dirda.

Includes index.

Playful imaginations. Lucian -- Denis Diderot -- Thomas Love Peacock -- Max Beerbohm -- Jaroslav Hašek -- Ivy Compton-Burnett -- S. J. Perelman -- Italo Calvino -- Edward Gorey -- Heroes of their time. Beowulf -- Abolqasem Ferdowsi -- The Icelandic sagas -- Christopher Marlowe -- Émile Zola -- Ernst Jünger -- James Agee -- Love's mysteries. Sappho -- Arthurian romances -- Marie-Madeleine de La Fayette -- Sören Kierkegaard -- George Meredith -- C. P. Cavafy -- Georgette Heyer -- Anna Akhmatova -- Daphne du Maurier -- Words from the wise. Lao-tse -- Heraclitus -- Cicero -- Erasmus -- The English religious tradition -- Benedict de Spinoza -- Samuel Johnson -- Everyday magic. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight -- The classic fairy tales -- E. T. A. Hoffmann -- Prosper Mérimée -- Frances Hodgson Burnett -- E. Nesbit/John Masefield -- Walter de la Mare -- Lives of consequence. Plutarch -- Girolamo Cardano -- John Aubrey -- Alexander Pope -- Jean-Jacques Rousseau -- Frederick Douglass -- Jacob Burckhardt -- Henry James -- W. H. Auden -- The dark side. John Webster -- Mary Shelley -- James Hogg -- Sheridan Le Fanu -- Bram Stoker -- M. R. James -- William Roughead -- H. P. Lovecraft -- Traveler's tales. Thomas More -- Daniel Defoe -- Xavier de Maistre -- Jules Verne -- J. K. Huysmans -- Isak Dinesen -- Robert Byron -- The way we live now. Petronius -- Elizabeth Gaskell -- Ivan Goncharov -- José Maria Eça de Queiros -- Anton Chekhov -- Jean Toomer -- Willa Cather -- Louis-Ferdinand Céline -- Zora Neale Hurston -- Eudora Welty -- Realms of adventure. H. Rider Haggard -- Arthur Conan Doyle -- Rudyard Kipling -- H. G. Wells -- G. K. Chesterton -- Agatha Christie -- Dashiell Hammett -- Encyclopedic Visions. Ovid -- Robert Burton -- Edward Gibbon -- J. G. Frazer -- H. W. Fowler -- Ezra Pound -- André Malraux -- Philip K. Dick.

In these delightful essays, Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Dirda introduces nearly ninety of the world's most entertaining books.