Recommended Reading List for the GRE Subject Test in Literature (a copy of the original page)

        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
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The anonymous author's text begins below this point.

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        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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