The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written

The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written: The History of Thought from Ancient Times to Today

Author(s)

Martin Seymour-Smith

Country

United Kingdom

Language

English

Publisher

Citadel

Publication date

September, 1998

Media type

Print (hardcover andpaperback)

The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written: The History of Thought from Ancient Times to Today (1998) is a book of intellectual historywritten by Martin Seymour-Smith, a British poet, critic, and biographer.
[1]

Chronological list
The one hundred most influential books, according to Seymour-Smith, in the approximate chronological order he gives:

Author or source

Title

Date

Public domain?

Chinese classic texts

I Ching

11th century BCE

yes

Jewish scripture

Hebrew Bible

8th4th century BCE

yes

Author or source

Title

Date

Public domain?

Homer

Iliad and Odyssey

8th early 7th century BCE

yes

Hindu scripture

Upanishads

9th century BC

yes

Lao Tsu

Tao Te Ching

4th century BCE

yes

Zoroastrian scripture

Avesta

1st millennium BC yes 3rd century CE

Confucius

Analects

5th4th century BCE

yes

Thucydides

History of the Peloponnesian War

5th century BCE

yes

Hippocrates

Works

400 BC

yes

10

Aristotle

Works

4th century BCE

yes

11

Herodotus

Histories

5th century BCE

yes

12

Plato

The Republic

380 BCE

yes

13

Euclid

Elements

280 BCE

yes

14

Theravada Buddhist scripture

Dhammapada (Path of the Dharma) 252 BCE

yes

Author or source

Title

Date

Public domain?

15

Virgil

Aeneid

19 BCE

yes

16

Lucretius

De Rerum Natura

55 BCE

yes

17

Philo of Alexandria

Allegorical Expositions of the Holy Laws

1st century CE

yes

18

Christian scripture

New Testament

ca. 50100 CE

yes

19

Plutarch

Parallel Lives

120 CE

yes

20

Cornelius Tacitus

Annals, From the Death of the Divine Augustus

120 CE

yes

21

Valentinus

Gospel of Truth (Gnostic text)

2nd century

yes

22

Marcus Aurelius

Meditations

167

yes

23

Sextus Empiricus

Outlines of Pyrrhonism

150210 CE

yes

24

Plotinus

Enneads

3rd century

yes

25

Augustine of Hippo

Confessions

400 CE

yes

26

Muslim scripture

Quran

7th century

yes

27

Moses Maimonides

Guide for the Perplexed

1190

yes

Author or source

Title

Date

Public domain?

28

Text of Judaic mysticism

Kabbalah

12th century

yes

29

Thomas Aquinas

Summa Theologiae

12661273

yes

30

Dante Alighieri

The Divine Comedy

1321

yes

31

Desiderius Erasmus

In Praise of Folly

1509

yes

32

Niccol Machiavelli

The Prince

1532

yes

33

Martin Luther

On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church

1520

yes

34

Franois Rabelais

Gargantua and Pantagruel

1532 and 1534

yes

35

John Calvin

Institutes of the Christian Religion

1536

yes

36

Nicolaus Copernicus

On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres

1543

yes

37

Michel de Montaigne

Essays

1580

yes

38

Miguel de Cervantes

Don Quixote

1605 and 1615

yes

39

Johannes Kepler

Harmony of the Worlds

1619

yes

40

Francis Bacon

Novum Organum

1620

yes

Author or source

Title

Date

Public domain?

41

William Shakespeare

First Folio

1623

yes

42

Galileo Galilei

Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems

1632

yes

43

Ren Descartes

Discourse on Method

1637

yes

44

Thomas Hobbes

Leviathan

1651

yes

45

Gottfried Leibniz

Works

16631716

yes

46

Blaise Pascal

Penses

1670

yes

47

Baruch de Spinoza

Ethics

1677

yes

48

John Bunyan

Pilgrim's Progress

16781684

yes

49

Isaac Newton

Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy

1687

yes

50

John Locke

Essay Concerning Human Understanding

1689

yes

51

George Berkeley

Treatise Concerning the Principles of 1710, revised 1734 yes Human Knowledge

52

Giambattista Vico

The New Science

1725, revised 1744 yes

Author or source

Title

Date

Public domain?

53

David Hume

A Treatise of Human Nature

17391740

yes

54

Denis Diderot (ed.)

Encyclopdie

17511772

yes

55

Samuel Johnson

A Dictionary of the English Language

1755

yes

56

Voltaire

Candide

1759

yes

57

Thomas Paine

Common Sense

1776

yes

58

Adam Smith

The Wealth of Nations

1776

yes

59

Edward Gibbon

The History of the Decline and Fall of 17761787 the Roman Empire

yes

60

Immanuel Kant

Critique of Pure Reason

1781, revised 1787 yes

61

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Confessions

1781

yes

62

Edmund Burke

Reflections on the Revolution in France

1790

yes

63

Mary Wollstonecraft

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

1792

yes

64

William Godwin

An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice

1793

yes

Author or source

Title

Date

Public domain?

65

Thomas Robert Malthus

An Essay on the Principle of Population

1798, revised 1803 yes

66

George Wilhelm Friedrich Phenomenology of Spirit Hegel

1807

yes

67

Arthur Schopenhauer

The World as Will and Idea

1819

yes

68

Auguste Comte

The Course in Positive Philosophy

18301842

yes

69

Carl von Clausewitz

On War

1832

yes

70

Sren Kierkegaard

Either/Or

1843

yes

71

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

Communist Manifesto

1848

yes

72

Henry David Thoreau

Civil Disobedience

1849

yes

73

Charles Darwin

The Origin of Species

1859

yes

74

John Stuart Mill

On Liberty

1859

yes

75

Herbert Spencer

First Principles

1862

yes

76

Gregor Mendel

Experiments on Plant Hybridization

1866

yes

Author or source

Title

Date

Public domain?

77

Leo Tolstoy

War and Peace

18681869

yes

78

James Clerk Maxwell

A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism

1873

yes

79

Friedrich Nietzsche

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

18831885

yes

80

Sigmund Freud

The Interpretation of Dreams

1900

yes

81

William James

Pragmatism

1908

yes

82

Albert Einstein

Relativity

1916

yes

83

Vilfredo Pareto

The Mind and Society

1916

yes

84

Carl Jung

Psychological Types

1921

85

Martin Buber

I and Thou

1923

86

Franz Kafka

The Trial

1925

yes

87

Karl Popper

The Logic of Scientific Discovery

1934

88

John Maynard Keynes

General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money

1936

yes

89

Jean-Paul Sartre

Being and Nothingness

1943

Author or source

Title

Date

Public domain?

90

Friedrich von Hayek

The Road to Serfdom

1944

91

Simone de Beauvoir

The Second Sex

1948

92

Norbert Wiener

Cybernetics

1948, revised 1961

93

George Orwell

Nineteen Eighty-Four

1949

94

George Gurdjieff

Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson

1950

95

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Philosophical Investigations

1953

96

Noam Chomsky

Syntactic Structures

1957

97

Thomas Kuhn

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

1962, revised 1970

98

Betty Friedan

The Feminine Mystique

1963

99

Mao Zedong (attributed)

Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong (Little Red Book)

1966

100 B. F. Skinner

Beyond Freedom and Dignity

1971