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One Hundred Best Books
The Project Gutenberg eBook, One Hundred Best Books, by John Cowper Powys
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Title: One Hundred Best Books
Author: John Cowper Powys
Release Date: July 15, 2004 [eBook #12914]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ONE HUNDRED BEST BOOKS***
E-text prepared by Ted Garvin, Keith M. Eckrich, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreaders Team
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