Pantheon-Engraving

pantheum vetustate corruptum cum omni cultu restituerunt

Welcome to The Mookse and the Gripes Pantheon, a personal list of some of my favorite authors whose work I talk about most often, here and there. My main criterion for compiling this list was this: once I finish a book by the author, I want to read everything that author has written.

The plan, then, is to do just that. This is aspirational and not necessarily something I’m going to fret about as time goes by. For me, this will function as a kind of checklist which may be added to periodically as I find I can’t leave an author out of my Pantheon. Links are to reviews I’ve posted on this site. For foreign-language authors, the lists below contain what is available in English translation, though the dates to the side are original publication dates.

I got this idea from Kim at Reading Matters (here is her list of “My Favourite Authors”) and Simon from Savidge Reads (here is his “Hall of Fame”).


Jane Austen (1775—1817)

  • Sense and Sensibility (1811)
  • Pride and Prejudice (1813)
  • Mansfield Park (1814)
  • Emma (1815)
  • Northanger Abbey (1818)
  • Persuasion (1818)

César Aira (1949— )


Roberto Bolaño (1953—2003)


Willa Cather (1873 – 1947)

  • The Troll Garden (1905; stories)
  • Alexander’s Bridge (1912)
  • O Pioneers! (1913)
  • The Song of the Lark (1915)
  • My Ántonia (1918)
  • Youth and the Bright Medusa (1920; stories)
  • One of Ours (1922)
  • A Lost Lady (1923)
  • The Professor’s House (1925)
  • My Mortal Enemy (1926)
  • Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927)
  • Shadows on the Rock (1931)
  • Obscure Destinies (1932; stories)
  • Lucy Grayheart (1935)
  • Not Under Forty (1936; essays)
  • Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940)
  • The Old Beauty and Others (1948; stories)

J.M. Coetzee (1940—)


Louise Erdrich (1954— )

  • Love Medicine (1984)
  • The Beet Queen (1986)
  • Tracks (1988)
  • The Bingo Palace (1994)
  • Tales of Burning Love (1997)
  • The Antelope Wife (1998)
  • The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse (2001)
  • The Master Butchers Singing Club (2003)
  • Four Souls (2004)
  • The Painted Drum (2005)
  • The Plague of Doves (2008)
  • Shadow Tag (2010)
  • The Round House (2012)
  • LaRose (2016)
  • Future Home of the Living God (2017)
  • The Night Watchman (2020)

Penelope Fitzgerald (1916—2000)


László Krasznahorkai (1954— )


Javier Marías (1951— )


William Maxwell (1908—2000)


Cormac McCarthy (1933— )


Carson McCullers (1917—1967)

  • The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940)
  • Reflections in a Golden Eye (1941)
  • The Member of the Wedding (1946)
  • The Ballad of the Sad Café (1951)
  • Clock Without Hands (1961)

Alice Munro (1931— )


Flannery O’Connor (1925—1964)

  • Wise Blood (1952)
  • A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1955)
  • The Violent Bear It Away (1960)
  • Everything That Rises Must Converge (1965)

Cynthia Ozick (1928— )

  • Trust (1966)
  • Envy, or Yiddish in America (1969)
  • The Pagan Rabbi and Other Stories (1971)
  • Bloodshed and Three Novellas (1976)
  • Levitation: Five Fictions (1982)
  • The Cannibal Galaxy (1983)
  • The Messiah of Stockholm (1987)
  • The Shawl (1989)
  • The Puttermesser Papers (1997)
  • Heir to the Glimmering World (2004)
  • Dictation: A Quartet (2007)
  • Foreign Bodies (2010)
  • Antiquities (2021)

Marilynne Robinson (1943— )


Philip Roth (1933—2018)


W.G. Sebald (1944—2001)


Muriel Spark (1918—2006)


Elizabeth Taylor (1912—1975)

  • At Mrs. Lippincote’s (1945)
  • Palladian (1946)
  • A View of the Harbour (1947)
  • A Wreath of Roses (1949)
  • A Game of Hide and Seek (1951)
  • The Sleeping Beauty (1953)
  • Angel (1957)
  • In a Summer Season (1961)
  • The Soul of Kindness (1964)
  • The Wedding Group (1968)
  • Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont (1971)
  • Blaming (1976)
  • You’ll Enjoy It When You Get There (2014; stories)

William Trevor (1928—2016)

  • A Standard of Behaviour (1958)
  • The Old Boys (1964)
  • The Boarding House (1965)
  • The Love Department (1966)
  • The Day We Got Drunk on Cake and Other Stories (1967)
  • Mrs Eckdorf in O’Neill’s Hotel (1969)
  • Miss Gomez and the Brethren (1971)
  • The Ballroom of Romance and Other Stories (1972)
  • Elizabeth Alone (1973)
  • The Last Lunch of the Season (1973)
  • Angels at the Ritz and Other Stories (1975)
  • The Children of Dynmouth (1976)
  • Lovers of Their Time (1978)
  • The Distant Past (1979)
  • Other People’s Worlds (1980)
  • Beyond the Pale (1981)
  • Fools of Fortune (1983)
  • The News from Ireland and Other Stories (1986)
  • Nights at the Alexandra (1987)
  • The Silence in the Garden (1988)
  • Family Sins and Other Stories (1989)
  • Two Lives (1991)
  • Felicia’s Journey (1994)
  • After Rain (1996)
  • Death in Summer (1998)
  • The Hill Bachelors (2000)
  • The Story of Lucy Gault (2002)
  • A Bit on the Side (2004)
  • Cheating at Canasta (2007)
  • Love and Summer (2009)
  • Last Stories (2018)

Eudora Welty (1909—2001)

  • The Robber Bridegroom (1942)
  • Delta Wedding (1946)
  • The Ponder Heart (1954)
  • Losing Battles (1970)
  • The Optimist’s Daughter (1972)

John Williams (1922—1994)