The Woolsey Basics: Part Two
Explore The Woolsey Basics: Part Two with a curated list of essential Woolsey books. Discover foundational reads for deepening your knowledge and understanding.
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The Picture of Dorian Gray
by Oscar Wilde
The handsome appearance of dissolute young Dorian Gray remains unchanged while the features in his portrait become distorted as his degeneration progresses.
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Prince of Foxes
by Samuel Shellabarger
Set in Renaissance Italy, this classic of American popular fiction is the story of Andrea Orsini, a peasant boy who rises to perform delicate political, military and romantic missions for Cesare Borgia. When first published in mid-20th century, Orson Welles was cast as Borgia in the film version. Tyrone Power as Orsini.
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Tom Jones
by Henry Fielding
Tom Jones is widely regarded as one of the first and most influential English novels. It is certainly the funniest. Tom Jones, the hero of the book, is introduced to the reader as the ward of a liberal Somerset squire. Tom is a generous but slightly wild and feckless country boy with a weakness for young women.
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Utopia
by Thomas More
First published in Latin in 1516, Utopia was the work of Sir Thomas More (1477–1535), the brilliant humanist, scholar, and churchman executed by Henry VIII for his refusal to accept the king as the supreme head of the Church of England. In this work, which gave its name to the whole genre of books and movements hypothesizing an ideal society, More envisioned a patriarchal island kingdom that practiced religious tolerance, in which everybody worked, no one has more than his fellows, all goods were community-owned, and violence, bloodshed, and vice nonexistent. Based to some extent on the writings of Plato and other earlier authors, Utopia nevertheless contained much that was original with More. In the nearly 500 years since the book's publication, there have been many attempts at establishing "Utopias" both in theory and in practice. All of them, however, seem to embody ideas already present in More's classic treatise: optimistic faith in human nature, emphasis on the environment and proper education, nostalgia for a lost innocence, and other positive elements. In this new, inexpensive edition, readers can study for themselves the essentials of More's utopian vision and how, although the ideal society he envisioned is still unrealized, at least some of his proposals have come to pass in today's world.
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Vanity Fair
by William Makepeace Thackeray
Chronicles the exploits of Becky Sharp, an unscrupulous young woman who is determined to achieve wealth and social success.
