This book introduces thirty-two key works of European literature in translation to ordinary readers. Ranging from Dante's Divine Comedy to Brecht's Threepenny Opera, Gaskell takes a canon of recognized literary classics and introduces each work, setting it in the literary and historical contexts of its times. The selection of works covers the main genres of poetry, prose, and drama, and the other authors included are Petrarch, Cillon, Ronsard, Montaigne, Cervantes, Moli Ëre, Voltaire, Rousseau, Goethe, Schiller, Pushkin, Lermontov, Blazac, Flaubert, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoievsky, Ibsen, Strindberg, Hamsun, Chekhov, Gorky, Zola, Fontane, Proust, Mann, Kafka, and Pirandello.