Imaginative Literature

by Robert Maynard Hutchins (Editor), Mortimer J. Adler (Editor), Clifton Fadiman (Associate Editor)

Genres: Classics

727 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

Robert Maynard Hutchins (LL.B., Yale Law School, 1925; B.A., Yale University, 1921) was an educational philosopher, dean of Yale Law School (1927-1929), and president (1929–1945) and chancellor (1945–1951) of the University of Chicago.

While he was president of the University of Chicago, Hutchins implemented wide-ranging and controversial reforms of the University, including the elimination of varsity football. The most far-reaching reforms involved the undergraduate College of the University of Chicago, which was retooled into a novel pedagogical system built on Great Books, Socratic dialogue, comprehensive examinations and early entrance to college. Although the substance of this Hutchins Plan was abandoned by the University shortly after Hutchins resigned in 1951, an adapted version of the program survives at Shimer College in Chicago.

Editor-in-Chief of Great Books of the Western World and Gateway to the Great Books; co-editor of The Great Ideas Today; Chairman of the Board of Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica (1943-1974).
He was the husband of novelist Maude Hutchins.

Reviews

[A · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are some really, really amazing stories in this collection. This is part of a series called the "Gateway to the Great Books" which is an add-on to the "Great Books of the Western World". The "Gateway" contains shorts works instead of the longer works of the "Great Books" series. This specific book contains short stories, and they come from the most eminent authors around.

My favorite stories were "The Apple-Tree" by John Galsworthy (an amazing love story), "First Love" by Ivan Turgenev (the best story I've ever read - very touching), "The Rocking-Horse Winner" by D.H. Lawrence, and "The Three Hermits" by Leo Tolstoy (an embodiment in prose of what it means to be a Christian). But all of the stories here have been selected because they are at the apex of the craft, and I would recommend this collection (plus the first story collection, GGB #2), to all.

---------------
Here is a full list of the stories in this collection (from Wikipedia):

Volume 3: Imaginative Literature II

Stephen Crane, "The Open Boat"
Herman Melville, "Billy Budd"
Ivan Bunin, "The Gentleman from San Francisco"
Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Rappaccini's Daughter"
George Eliot, "The Lifted Veil"
Lucius Apuleius, "Cupid and Psyche" from The Golden Ass
Ivan Turgenev, "First Love"
Fyodor Dostoevsky, "White Nights"
John Galsworthy, "The Apple-Tree"
Gustave Flaubert, "The Legend of St. Julian the Hospitaller"
F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz"
Honoré de Balzac, "A Passion in the Desert"
Anton Chekhov, "The Darling"
Isaac Singer, "The Spinoza of Market Street"
Alexander Pushkin, "The Queen of Spades"
D. H. Lawrence, "The Rocking-Horse Winner"
Henry James, "The Pupil"
Thomas Mann, "Mario and the Magician"
Isak Dinesen, "Sorrow-Acre"
Leo Tolstoy, "The Death of Ivan Ilyich"; "The Three Hermits"; "What Men Live By"

[Ci · Rating 5 out of 5]

This heavy tome contains exemplary works from a selected set of authors. As a first read, I focused on authors that I have not yet read and would like to explore their styles and contents for further closer read. I have found that Isaac B. Singer a great story teller with a brisk and lively pace, exploring philosophic ideas and human conditions in his "The Spinoza of Market Street" (I reviewed fully elsewhere), Ivan Bunin with his more elaborate yet still lively depiction of life and its catastrophe ("The Gentleman from San Francisco"). However I fail in full appreciation of Pushkin in his "Queen of Spades", nor Galsworthy's "Apple-Tree". I am delightfully surprised by the otherworldly tone and style in George Eliot's "The Lifted Veil".

There are other authors that I like but will leave their works for future reading (Chekov, Flaubert, Dostoevsky, Mann etc).

This is an excellent volume through its introduction of writers of varied styles and contents.