Top 90 Most Important Books in American Literature

The following list was sent to me by the College Board. It's a list of works of literature that they recommend that AP English Literature teachers teach. The methodology in this list, which is always kind of suspect in a subjective list such as this - is that college professors were polled and asked what works they were most likely to teach in their freshman classes. Then, the College Board looked at the number of times a work was mentioned in the Free Response section of the AP Lit test. Each star represents 10 mentions by professors/educators. No work with less than 10 mentions made the list, apparently.

I've only read 22 of these. Which makes me pretty pathetic, as an English teacher.

*Note: the management of this site in no way endorses this list or any assumptions therein*

TOP NOVELS
Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison – 15 stars
A Light in August – William Faulkner – 9 stars
Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain – 9 stars
Moby Dick – Herman Melville – 9 stars
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald – 8 stars
The Awakening - Kate Chopin – 8 stars
Billy Budd – Herman Melville – 7 stars
Catch 22 – Joseph Heller – 7 stars
The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne – 6 stars
Native Son – Richard Wright – 6 stars
Raisin in the Sun – Lorraine Hansberry – 6 stars
The Glass Menagerie – Tennessee Williams – 5 stars
The Color Purple – Alice Walker - 5 stars
Ceremony – Leslie Marmon Silko – 5 stars
As I Lay Dying – William Faulkner – 5 stars
Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston – 5 stars

4 Stars
Beloved – Toni Morrison
Song of Solomon – Toni Morrison
The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
Turn of the Screw – Henry James

3 stars
Death of a Salesman – Arthur Miller
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? – Edward Albee
The Sound and the Fury – Willaim Faulkner
The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
A Streetcar Named Desire – Tennessee Williams
Sula – Toni Morrison

2 stars
The Zoo Story – Edward Albee
Bless Me Ultima – Rudolfo Anaya
Go Tell It on the Mountain – James Baldwin
An American Tragedy – Theodore Dreiser
Absalom, Absalom – William Faulkner
House of Seven Gables – Nathaniel Hawthorne
Little Foxes – Lillian Hellman
A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
J.B. - Archibald MacLeish
All the King’s Men – Robert Penn Warren
The Crucible – Arthur Miller
Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton
The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
The Piano Lesson – August Wilson

1 star
The Dollmaker – Harriette Arnow
Monkey Bridge – Lan Cao
My Antonio – Willa Cather
Love Medicine – Louise Erdrich
The Bear – William Faulkner
A Gathering of Old Men – Ernest Gaines
A Lesson Before Dying - Ernest Gaines
Trifles – Susan Glaspell
Snow Falling on Cedars – David Guterson
Washington Square – Henry James
Typical American – Gish Jen
The Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man – James Johnson
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey
Woman Warrior – Maxine Hong Kingston
Separate Peace – John Knowles
Native Speaker – Chang-rae Lee
Angela’s Ashes – Frank McCourt
Armies of the Night – Norman Mailer
All the Pretty Horses – Cormac McCarthy
The Member of the Wedding – Carson McCullers
Benito Cereno – Herman Melville
A View From the Bridge – Arthur Miller
House Made of Dawn – N. Scott Momaday
The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison
Jasmine – Bharati Muhkerjee
Going After Cacciato – Tim O’Brien
The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien
In the Lake of the Woods – Tim O’Brien
Wise Blood – Flannery O’Connor
Long Day’s Journey Into Night – Eugene O’Neill
Mourning Becomes Electra – Eugene O’Neill
The Hairy Ape – Eugene O’Neill
Agnes of God – John Pielmeier
Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
The Shipping News - E. Annie Proulx
The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
Uncle Tom’s Cabin – Harriet Beecher Stowe
Civil Disobedience – Henry David Thoreau
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant – Anne Tyler
The Centaur – John Updike
Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut
Winter in the Blood – James Welch
Delta wedding – Eudora Welty
The Optimist’s Daughter – Eudora Welty
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof – Tennessee Williams
Desire Under the Elms – Tennessee Williams
Fences – August Wilson
Joe Turner’s Come and Gone – August Wilson
You Can’t Go Home Again – Thomas Wolfe