This information was stored on a now-defunct, anonymous, but otherwise sensibly constructed "GeoCities" web page at this mow-defunct URL: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Troy/5187/gre.html . The author asserted, and the evidence below seems plausibly to support, that s/he had collected six previous GRE literature exams and tallied how many times each author and major work appeared as the subject of a question. Because this evidence first appears in the Internet Archive's survey of sites in 2000 (see below), it probably includes evidence from the mid-1990s. Because the canon changes only slowly, students probably can continue to rely on this for the "core" texts and authors, adding those which major anthologies have added since the page was last updated (2005). If this is your information, accept my gratitude for your work in assembling it and please forgive my well-intentioned hijacking of it via the Internet Archive. When Yahoo! closed down GeoCities without offering access to an archive, a page filled with provocative information was lost. --Arnie Sanders, Goucher College
| Search Results for Jan 01, 1996 - Nov 27, 2009 | |||||||||||||
| 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 |
| 0 pages | 0 pages | 0 pages | 0 pages | 3 pages | 2 pages | 3 pages | 1 pages | 1 pages | 1 pages | 0 pages | 0 pages | 1 pages | 0 pages |
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May 17, 2000 * Jun 14, 2000 * Oct 06, 2000 * |
Jun 26, 2001 * Dec 03, 2001 * |
Feb 13, 2002 * Aug 30, 2002 * Oct 16, 2002 * |
Apr 07, 2003 * |
Nov 25, 2004 * |
Dec 14, 2005 * |
Feb 28, 2008 * |
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The anonymous author's text begins below this point.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The first number after the title of the book is the total number of times the work appeared in all of the six tests. The second number is the number of tests out of six that it appeared upon. For example, Milton's Paradise Lost appeared 27 times on five tests. The works are arranged here in order of the number of total questions that appeared on the six tests. Clear? Good.
| Author | Title/Work | Appeared | # of Tests |
|---|---|---|---|
| Milton, John | Paradise Lost | 27 | 5 |
| Chaucer, Geoffrey | Canterbury Tales | 22 | 7 |
| Shakespeare, William | King Lear | 20 | 5 |
| Pope, Alexander | The Rape of the Lock | 17 | 5 |
| Anonymous | Beowulf | 13 | 6 |
| Swift, Jonathan | Gulliver's Travels | 13 | 5 |
| Shakespeare, William | The Tempest | 13 | 5 |
| Marlowe, Christopher | Doctor Faustus | 12 | 5 |
| Gray, Thomas | Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard | 11 | 4 |
| Thoreau, Henry David | Walden | 11 | 5 |
| Spenser, Edmund | The Faerie Queene | 11 | 3 |
| Alighieri, Dante | The Divine Comedy | 10 | 3 |
| Sophocles | Oedipus Rex | 10 | 4 |
| Faulkner, William | The Sound and the Fury | 10 | 4 |
| Shakespeare, William | MacBeth | 10 | 3 |
| Arnold, Matthew | Dover Beach | 9 | 5 |
| Dickens, Charles | Great Expectations | 9 | 3 |
| Swift, Jonathan | A Modest Proposal | 9 | 3 |
| Shaw, George Bernard | Arms and the Man | 8 | 5 |
| Plato | The Republic | 8 | 5 |
| Keats, John | Ode on a Grecian Urn | 8 | 4 |
| Shakespeare, William | Othello | 8 | 4 |
| Jonson, Ben | Volpone | 8 | 4 |
| Homer | The Iliad | 8 | 1 |
| Fielding, Henry | Tom Jones | 7 | 5 |
| Tennyson, Alfred Lord | Ulysses | 7 | 4 |
| Joyce, James | Ulysses | 7 | 4 |
| Congreve, William | The Way of the World | 7 | 4 |
| Bronte, Emily | Wuthering Heights | 7 | 4 |
| Dryden, John | All for Love | 7 | 3 |
| Fitzgerald, F. Scott | The Great Gatsby | 7 | 3 |
| Shakespeare, William | Hamlet | 7 | 3 |
| Forster, E.M. | Howard's End | 7 | 3 |
| Milton, John | Lycidas | 7 | 3 |
| Homer | The Odyssey | 7 | 3 |
| Johnson, Samuel | The Preface to Shakespeare | 7 | 3 |
| Byron, George Lord | Don Juan | 7 | 2 |
| Milton, John | Comus | 6 | 4 |
| Pope, Alexander | An Essay on Criticism | 6 | 4 |
| Anonymous | Everyman | 6 | 5 |
| Hardy, Thomas | Jude the Obscure | 6 | 4 |
| Wordsworth, William | Lyrical Ballads | 6 | 4 |
| Shelley, Percy Bysshe | Ozymandius | 6 | 4 |
| Richardson, Samuel | Pamela | 6 | 4 |
| Sheridan | The Rivals | 6 | 4 |
| Sterne, Laurance | Tristram Shandy | 6 | 4 |
| Tolstoy, Leo | War and Peace | 6 | 4 |
| Eliot, T.S. | The Waste Land | 6 | 4 |
| Shakespeare, William | Henry IV, Part 1 | 6 | 3 |
| Shakespeare, William | As You Like It | 6 | 3 |
| Johnson, Samuel | History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia | 6 | 3 |
| Amis, Kingsley | Lucky Jim | 6 | 3 |
| Melville, Herman | Moby Dick | 6 | 3 |
| Malory, Sir Thomas | Le Morte D'Arthur | 6 | 3 |
| Johnson, Samuel | The Vanity of Human Wishes | 6 | 3 |
| Dickens, Charles | Hard Times | 6 | 2 |
| Shelley, Percy Bysshe | Ode to the West Wind | 5 | 5 |
| Forster, E.M. | A Passage to India | 5 | 4 |
| Aristotle | The Poetics | 5 | 4 |
| Goldsmith, Oliver | She Stoops to Conquer | 5 | 4 |
| Anonymous | Sir Gawain and the Green Knight | 5 | 4 |
| Eliot, T.S. | Tradition and the Individual Talent | 5 | 3 |
| Chaucer, Geoffrey | Troilus and Criseyde | 5 | 3 |
| Thackerey, William | Vanity Fair | 5 | 3 |
| Spenser, Edmund | The Shepheardes Calender | 5 | 3 |
| Shakespeare, William | Romeo and Juliet | 5 | 3 |
| Faulkner, William | A Rose for Emily | 5 | 3 |
| Spenser, Edmund | Amoretti | 5 | 3 |
| Coleridge, S.T. | Biographica Literaria | 5 | 3 |
| Dostoevsky | Crime and Punishment | 5 | 3 |
| Dickens, Charles | David Copperfield | 5 | 3 |
| Thomas, Dylan | Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night | 5 | 3 |
| Webster, John | The Duchess of Malfi | 5 | 3 |
| Pope, Alexander | An Essay on Man | 5 | 3 |
| Steinbeck, John | The Grapes of Wrath | 5 | 2 |
| Hemingway, Ernest | Hills Like White Elephants | 5 | 2 |
| Johnson, Samuel | Life of Cowley | 5 | 2 |
| Etherege, Sir George | The Man of Mode | 5 | 2 |
| Browning, Robert | My Last Duchess | 5 | 2 |
| Eliot, T.S. | Journey of the Magi | 5 | 1 |
| Tennyson, Alfred Lord | In Memoriam A.H.H. | 4 | 4 |
| Eliot, T.S. | The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock | 4 | 4 |
| Flaubert, Gustave | Madame Bovary | 4 | 4 |
| Cervantes | Don Quixote | 4 | 4 |
| Joyce, James | Dubliners | 4 | 3 |
| Austen, Jane | Emma | 4 | 3 |
| Shaw, George Bernard | Major Barbara | 4 | 3 |
| Eliot, George | Adam Bede | 4 | 3 |
| Melville, Herman | Bartleby the Scrivener | 4 | 3 |
| Huxley, Aldous | Brave New World | 4 | 3 |
| Milton, John | Samson Agonistes | 4 | 3 |
| Wilde, Oscar | The Importance of Being Earnest | 4 | 3 |
| Moliere | Tartuffe | 4 | 3 |
| Boswell, James | The Life of Samuel Johnson | 4 | 3 |
| O'Neill, Eugene | Mourning Becomes Electra | 4 | 3 |
| Edwards, Jonathan | Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God | 4 | 3 |
| Butler, Samuel | The Way of All Flesh | 4 | 3 |
| Wright, Richard | Native Son | 4 | 2 |
| Sophocles | Antigone | 4 | 2 |
| Conrad, Joseph | Heart of Darkness | 4 | 2 |
| Anonymous | Sir Patrick Spens | 4 | 2 |
| Hawthorne, Nathanial | The Scarlet Letter | 4 | 2 |
| Orwell, George | Shooting an Elephant | 4 | 2 |
| Woolf, Virginia | To the Lighthouse | 4 | 2 |
| Wycherley, William | The Country Wife | 4 | 2 |
| Wilde, Oscar | The Critic as Artist | 4 | 2 |
| Swift, Jonathan | A Description of a City Shower | 4 | 2 |
| Frost, Robert | Design | 4 | 2 |
| Villon, Francois/Rossetti | The Ballad of the Dead Ladies | 4 | 2 |
| Mill, J.S. | On Liberty | 4 | 2 |
| Marlowe, Christopher | The Passionate Shepherd to His Love | 4 | 2 |
| Wilde, Oscar | The Picture of Dorian Gray | 4 | 2 |
| Shakespeare, William | Richard II | 4 | 2 |
| Fielding, Henry | Joseph Andrews | 4 | 2 |
| Defoe, Daniel | Moll Flanders | 4 | 2 |
| Twain, Mark | Huckleberry Finn | 4 | 2 |
| Bruegel | Icarus (painting) | 4 | 1 |
| Plath, Sylvia | The Mirror | 4 | 1 |
| Raleigh, Sir Walter | The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd | 4 | 1 |
| Keats, John | Ode on Melancholy | 4 | 1 |
| Dickenson, Emily | If I Could Stop | 4 | 1 |
| Holmes, Oliver Wendell | The Chambered Nautilus | 4 | 1 |
| The Venerable Bede | Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum | 4 | 1 |
| Virgil | The Aeneid | 3 | 3 |
| Burney, Fanny | Evelina | 3 | 3 |
| Thomas, Dylan | Fern Hill | 3 | 3 |
| Keats, John | Endymion | 3 | 3 |
| Milton, John | Areopagitica | 3 | 3 |
| Voltaire | Candide | 3 | 3 |
| Heller, Joseph | Catch .22 | 3 | 3 |
| Miller, Arthur | The Crucible | 3 | 2 |
| Joyce, James | The Dead | 3 | 2 |
| Boccaccio | Decameron | 3 | 2 |
| Tolstoy, Leo | Anna Karenina | 3 | 2 |
| Dickens, Charles | Bleak House | 3 | 2 |
| Godwin, William | Caleb Williams | 3 | 2 |
| Miller, Arthur | All My Sons | 3 | 2 |
| Meredith, George | The Egoist | 3 | 2 |
| Finch, Anne | Adam Pos'd | 3 | 1 |
| Burns, Robert | Ae Fond Kiss | 3 | 1 |
| Paine, Thomas | The Age of Reason | 3 | 1 |
| Mencken, H.L. | The American Language | 3 | 1 |
| Donne, John | An Anatomy of the World | 3 | 1 |
| Fleming, William | Arts and Ideas | 3 | 1 |
| Raleigh, Sir Walter | The Author's Epitaph, Made by Himself | 3 | 1 |
| Wilde, Oscar | The Ballad of Reading Gaol | 3 | 1 |
| Browning, Robert | The Bishop Orders His Tomb | 3 | 1 |
| Cooper, James Fenimore | The Deerslayer | 3 | 1 |
| Sidney, Sir Philip | The Defense of Poesy | 3 | 1 |
| Yeats, William Butler | The Dolls | 3 | 1 |
| Stevenson, Robert Louis | Dr. Jekyll | 3 | 1 |
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