Easton Press: Great Books of the 20th Century :The Missing 25 in 2015

I'm starting this thread to help those who want to collect the original 50 books in Easton Press's 'Great Books of the 20th Century' series. This series started at 50 books, but at some point in time shifted to just 25.

My personal opinion is that the original 50 book set is the best series produced by Easton Press -- based on literary content relevant to modern society.

I'll post 3 lists: 1) The original set of 50 books, 2) The current (as of 205) list of 25 books, and 3) the missing 25.

Edited: I added a 4th list, titled 4) They Mystery 3.

See posts below in which SilentInAway referenced a thread from 2011, where Tom41 has a list of 53 books in the series. Presumably he received these 3 books directly from EP very early in the collection. I do not see these books generally included on lists when searching this set on the web, but the titles do seem like they could very well have been included. If Tom41 sees this thread, perhaps he can enlighten us a bit more on these 3 books. They are listed after the first list of the Original 50 books.

The Original 50 Books:--------------------------------------------------

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
All Quiet On The Western Front by Remarque
All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
The Ambassadors by Henry James
Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
The Call of the Wild by Jack London
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Light in August by William Faulkner
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
Native Son by Richard A. Wright
Night by Elie Wiesel
Nineteen Eighty-four by George Orwell
Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
Rabbit, Run by John Updike
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
The Stranger by Albert Camus
Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
The Trial by Franz Kafka
Ulysses by James Joyce
Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence

The Mystery 3 (From Tom41) --------------------------------------------------------------
From Here to Eternity by James Jones
The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
Siddhartha by Herman Hesse

The Current 25 Books (as of 2015, June) :--------------------------------------------------

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
The Call of the Wild by Jack London
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
The Stranger by Albert Camus
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
Light in August by William Faulkner
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
The Trial by Franz Kafka
Ulysses by James Joyce

The Missing 25 Books (as of 2015, June) :--------------------------------------------------

The Ambassadors by Henry James
Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges
Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
Native Son by Richard A. Wright
Night by Elie Wiesel
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
Rabbit, Run by John Updike
Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence

-Shawn

Thanks for putting your time into creating these lists, this is very helpful since I am interested in collecting this set.

For those interested in covers...click here.

I actually own all fifty books in editions from Easton Press, but eight of them are editions that predate the Great Books of the 20th Century series.

The covers for these eight titles are mostly different from those in the series...but if you're interested...click here. (Two of these are two-volume editions--so there are ten books).

>1 sdawson:

Although I'm sure we all definitely appreciate the time you put into compiling this list, you could have saved yourself some effort by searching this group for past discussions of the Great Books of the 20th Century series.

In this thread from 2011, there is not only a copy of the then newly-shortened list, but also a list of the 53 (!!) books that EP has included in this series at one time or another. That list was compiled by Tom41, who has been tracking books by EP Item code for many years.

That said, I'm sure that newer subscribers to the 20C series will find your "missing books" list very useful as they attempt to track down titles on the secondary market.

>4 SilentInAWay:

Cool set of covers.

Thanks for the link. I appreciate it. Although I do find some value in doing independent compilations from the books physically sitting on my shelf and comparing that to the lists of others.

It appears the 3 extra books in the list compiled by Tom41 are

From Here to Eternity by James Jones
The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
Siddhartha by Herman Hesse

It does seem like those could have been in an early edition of the 50 books, presumably replaced later by three other books. I have not seen those in official EP literature though. It would be interesting to see if the 'Collectors Notes' for those three books.

I do not have those three in my collection. I have cleaned up my tags to remove the three other Ayn Rand books from my tagged collection of the 50 books. (So Atlas Shrugged is not longer marked as such in my collection).

But now I want to get my hands on those three, as I have no versions of any of them from any publisher on my shelves. Here is my current set of covers as well, most taken at a slightly different angle than yours:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/sdawson&tag=Easton%2BPress%2BGreat%2BBoo...

I own this great library in its entirety, I think it took about 5 years to collect all the books. I've always loved the smell of books, the look of books on shelves, having a free hour to just read in a comfortable chair. When I was in grade school, a family friend had a large collection, I think, of Franklin Mint titles. When I had a decent disposable income, I started collecting Easton Press books.

I've read about a third of them. My favorite titles are
The Grapes of Wrath
1984
Night

I really enjoyed The Power and the Glory - me, an atheist, rooting for the hunted Catholic priest!
Portnoy's Complaint was hilarious, I have enjoyed Roth's The Plot Against America as well
I could not put down Gone With The Wind. I can see why it was immediately put to film, it reads like the movie, very compelling read.
The Color Purple was also a very engrossing, enjoyable book.
Another 'made for the cinema' book that was very enjoyable was One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest' I can just feel Jack Nicholson as the protaganist.
The Stranger a shorter novel, but not to be missed.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland lots of great illustrations, and delicious prose.

Other favorites:
Native Son
In Cold Blood
Babbitt

Didn't really care for:
Slaughterhouse 5
The Great Gatsby
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison.

I got about halfway through Henry James' Portrait of a Lady - was there a point to this novel? As such, I am reluctant to begin The Ambassadors.

Titles I want to read, undecided:
Lolita
The Trial
A Day In The Life
The Heart Is A Lonley Hunter
On The Road
All The President's Men (as of this writing, late Summer 2020, this might be a very timely read?)