What Are The Oldest Books You Have Read?

[Robert Zwilling]

Does Shakespeare and Charles Dickens count?

They should count. I forgot the dates Shakespeare was writing, his writing seems to be timeless.

 

[biodroid]

I read Great Expectations and a few Shakespeare plays (Macbeth, King Lear, Julius Caesar) for school, not by my will as I most probably would never have read them in my own time.

 

[Extollager]

Movie maker Werner Herzog relishes the Catalogue of Dwarfs from medieval Iceland. Go to 1:06:

 

[leoflynnwriter]

The oldest book I've read is probably Around the World in 80 days by Jules Verne.

 

[Valtharius]

Does the monolith in my backyard count as a book?

 

[Bick]

Does the monolith in my backyard count as a book?

No

 

[Lostinspace]

My first thought on seeing this was naturally Gilgamesh, like several others. However, the constraint "in its original language" was soon suggested. That left me with Book 1 of the Aeneid and Book IV of Ceasar's Gallic Wars, neither of which I was reading for pleasure. If we exclude those and also Chaucer that I was also reading because I had to take an exam, things become complicated. I have books such as the poems of Catullus and Horace with alternate pages of the original and the modern translation. However, I have not really read the original. Similarly, I have looked at Sir Gawain and the Green Knight but only to realise that it is much too difficult. I don't think that my Malory is the original either.

So I start thinking that it must be Shakespeare or Marlowe but then my memory kicks in. About fifty years ago I knew a very clever female student who was studying early Elizabethan playwrights and she needed rude mechanicals such as myself, I was reading chemistry, to do things such as changing light bulbs. One thing led to another and I distinctly recall reading Thomas Kyd's Spanish Tragedy.

 

[AE35Unit]

Oldest book I've read is Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole

 

[stephen g parks]

As others have said, The Odyssey by Homer would probably be the oldest non-religious text

Others:
The Art of War by Sun Zi (~300 BC)
The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer (1392)
Le Morte D'Arthur by Thomas Malory (1469)
Then we get into Shakespeare

Oldest book I own:
1st edition (NOT authenticated), Eothen, or Traces of Travel Brought Home from the East by Alexander William Kinglake (1844)

 

[Valtharius]

As others have said, The Odyssey by Homer would probably be the oldest non-religious text

Isn't The Odyssey a religious text?

 

[Extollager]

I'm not the original poster of this thread. The original posting clearly implies that modern translations of old works do count as old works.

But I think it's worth at least supplementing that approach with the approach that deals with works in their original languages. It seems strange to me to think of a translation that was done by someone who was born in (say) 1986 and that was published this year, as an old book, whether or not the translator worked with an ancient text.

For example, Sarah Ruden's translations of the Gospels. The original texts are two millennia old but her book just came out two months ago. Is her book an "old book"?

Sarah Ruden

Sarah Ruden is a leading translator of the ancient literature of the West, including both essential Greek and Roman Classics and sacred literature.

sarahruden.com

(This example is offered just to make the point specified -- I haven't forgotten that the original poster, in a subsequent posting, said religious texts shouldn't count for this thread.)

So I think it would be interesting to hear from further contributors here about, sure, ancient works in modern translations, but also about old works in their original language (perhaps with notes and small editorial adjustments in punctuation, capitalization, expansion of conventional contractions, etc., e.g. turning yt to "that" -- see document linked below).

https://bcgcertification.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Hill-W141.pdf

 

[stephen g parks]

Isn't The Odyssey a religious text?

No. It's the story of Odysseus, King of Ithaca as he tries to get home from the Trojan war. Spoiler: It takes him a decade. There may be gods in the story but it's not a religious text.

 

[M. Robert Gibson]

I haven't forgotten that the original poster, in a subsequent posting, said religious texts shouldn't count for this thread

OP Here. I later retracted that constraint on the grounds it was too confusing...

Oh go on then, anything goes

I do like the added qualification of reading in the original language, which totally destroys my original list, leaving me with Frankenstein and Gulliver's Travels.
However, I had forgotten to add my 'O' Level English literature travails and Julius Caesar. - 1599. Cheers Willie