Six Degrees of the Modern Library
From the mid 1950's to the mid 1960's, the Modern Library editors placed recommended reading lists of Modern Library titles currently in print on the dust jackets. The recommendations were based on what the editors thought readers of that title would also enjoy. Almost all Regular dust jacket types i, j, and k and Giant dust jacket types Ge, Gf, and Gg contained the lists. A few titles, such as the Modern Library Dictionary, did not have a list. On type i and Ge dust jackets the lists were on the rear inside flap. On type j, k, Gf, and Gg the lists were on the dust jacket back panel. The earlier jackets (i and Ge) had either 4 or 5 titles listed. Given more space on the rear jacket panel, the later jackets (j, k, Gf and Gg) had as many as 25 (or more) titles listed.
The Six Degrees of the Modern Library provides those recommended lists, and will track them up to six degrees away from a given title. For example, Tale of Two Cities is in the recommended list for Our Mutual Friend, and is thus one degree away. Eminent Victorians is not in the recommended list for Our Mutual Friend, but it IS in the list for Tale of Two Cities. Thus, Eminent Victorians is two degrees away from Our Mutual Friend.
Given the limited number of jacket types these recommended lists appeared on, titles available here are restricted to those in print during the period of time between 1954 and 1966. Still, that is quite a few ML titles.
Read a new book, as recommended by the Marketing boys at ML, based on a favorite title you have already read. Or, just see where the trail leads from one ML title to another. Have fun. See what is within six degrees of your favorite title.
[A] [B] [C] [D] [E] [F] [G] [H] [I] [J] [K] [L] [M] [N] [O] [P] [Q] [R] [S] [T] [U] [V] [W] [XYZ]
A
African Queen (Forester)
Ah, Wilderness and Two Other Plays (O'Neill)
All the King's Men (Warren)
Apologia Pro Vita Sua (Newman)
Appointment In Samarra (O'Hara)
Autobiography (Cellini)
Autobiography (Franklin)
B
Best American Humorous Short Stories (Misc)
Best Russian Short Stories (Misc)
Best Short Stories (Henry)
Best Stories (Maupassant)
Brothers Karamazov (Dostoyevsky)
C
Camille (Dumas)
Candide and Other Writings (Voltaire)
Canterbury Tales (Chaucer)
Catcher in the Rye (Salinger)
Clarissa (Richardson S.)
Cloister and the Hearth (Reade)
Collected Stories (Parker)
Complete Essays and Other Writings (Emerson)
Complete Poetry and Selected Prose (Donne)
Complete Poetry and Selected Prose (Milton)
Comprehensive Anthology of American Poetry (Misc)
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (Twain)
D
Darkness at Noon (Koestler)
Dead Souls (Gogol)
Dictionary: A Modern Selection (Johnson)
Dodsworth (Lewis)
Don Juan (Byron)
Droll Stories (Balzac)
Dubliners (Joyce)
E
Education of Henry Adams (Adams)
Eight Famous Elizabethan Plays (Misc)
Eight Plays (Moliere)
Eight Spanish Plays of the Golden Age (Misc)
Eminent Victorians (Strachey)
Emperor Jones/Anna Christie/Hairy Ape (O'Neill)
F
Famous Ghost Stories (Misc)
Fathers and Sons (Turgenev)
Federalist (Misc)
Five Great Modern Irish Plays (Misc)
Fortitude (Walpole)
Four Plays (Shaw G.B.)
Fourteen Great Detective Stories (Misc)
G
Ghosts/Doll's House/Enemy of the People/Borkman (Ibsen)
Go Down Moses (Faulkner)
God's Little Acre (Caldwell)
Good Earth (Buck)
Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck)
Great Ages and Ideas of the Jewish People (Misc)
Great German Short Novels and Stories (Misc)
Great Modern Short Stories (Misc)
Great Spanish Stories (Misc)
H
Henry Esmond (Thackeray)
History of the Great American Fortunes (Myers)
Human Nature and Conduct (Dewey)
Humphry Clinker (Smollett)
Hunchback of Notre Dame (Hugo)
I
I, Claudius (Graves)
Interpretation of Dreams (Freud)
Irish Fairy & Folk Tales (Misc)
J
Joseph Andrews (Fielding)
Journals (Emerson)
K
Kim (Kipling)
L
Late George Apley (Marquand)
Leaves of Grass (Whitman)
Life of Jesus (Renan)
Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects (Vasari)
Long Voyage Home (O'Neill)
Looking Backward (Bellamy)
Lord Jim (Conrad)
Lust for Life (Stone)
M
Madame Bovary (Flaubert)
Man's Fate (Malraux)
Marius the Epicurean (Pater)
Medieval Romances (Misc)
Messer Marco Polo (Byrne)
Moll Flanders (Defoe)
N
Nana (Zola)
O
Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck)
Our Mutual Friend (Dickens)
Outline of Psychoanalysis (Misc)
P
Pale Horse, Pale Rider (Porter)
Pathfinder (Cooper)
Pensees and the Provincial Letters (Pascal)
Pere Goriot and Eugenie Grandet (Balzac)
Philosophical Writings (Descartes)
Philosophy of Schopenhauer (Schopenhauer)
Philosophy of Spinoza (Spinoza)
Pickwick Papers (Dickens)
Picture of Dorian Gray/De Profundis (Wilde)
Plays (Wilde)
Poems (Longfellow)
Poems and Fairy Tales (Wilde)
Poorhouse Fair/Rabbit, Run (Updike)
Prince and The Discourses (Machiavelli)
R
Rainbow (Lawrence)
Red and the Black (Stendhal)
Republic (Plato)
Rise of Silas Lapham (Howells)
Roan Stallion (Jeffers)
S
Sanctuary (Faulkner)
Scarlet Letter (Hawthorne)
Selected Essays (Tolstoy)
Selected Papers (Russells)
Selected Poems (Dickinson)
Selected Poetry (Spenser)
Selected Stories (Wodehouse)
Selected Verse (Nash)
Seven Famous Greek Plays (Misc)
Seven Gothic Tales (Dinesen)
She/King Solomon's Mines (Haggard)
Shock of Recognition (Misc)
Short Novels (Tolstoy)
Sister Carrie (Dreiser)
Six Plays by Corneille & Racine (Corneille etc.)
Sons and Lovers (Lawrence)
Sound and the Fury & As I lay Dying (Faulkner)
Stories of Modern Italy (Misc)
Studs Lonigan (Farrell)
T
Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
Theory of the Leisure Class (Veblen)
Three Famous French Romances (Misc)
Thurber Carnival (Thurber)
Treasury of Damon Runyon (Runyon)
Trial (Kafka)
Tristram Shandy (Sterne)
Turn of the Screw (James H.)
Twentieth Century American Poetry (Misc)
Two Novels (Malamud)
V
Vanity Fair (Thackeray)
Varieties of Religious Experience (James W.)
Victory (Conrad)
W
Way of All Flesh (Butler)
What Cheer (Misc)
Winesburg, Ohio (Anderson)
Within a Budding Grove (Proust)
Wuthering Heights (Bronte E.)
Total number of titles = 138