Some evidences are stronger than others, but one conclusion that seems well-supported is that when Joyce declared Ibsen the pinnacle of Western Civ, he'd hardly read anything else. Notice especially his enjoyment of Erckmann-Chatrian in 1898, which is unthinkable if he were reading widely, and the very limited allusions in his essays of 1898-1899. (An interesting challenge will be to deduce how Joyce discovered Ibsen despite this.)
1888
spelling, sums, geography, writing, Latin, and history. catechism? (bb44)
1889
Moore's Melodies (pc94) [poems]
1890
Mangnall's Historical and Misc. Questions [ebook]
Parley's Tales of Ancient and Modern Greece (and Rome) [ebook] (pc85)
1891
Life of Ignatius Loyola? (name scratched in library book, bb82) [multivolume?]
1892
Grimm and Andersen [etext] (sj44- Uncle William)
1893
book w/Raynold-- Dumas: Count of Monte Cristo [etext] (pc105, PoA)
something about Napoleon? (PoA)
1894
Byron [etext]
Newman (PoA) [etexts]
Lamb's Adventures of Ulysses [etext]
Lyster's poets (Byron- not Tennyson- Milton, Gray, Cowper, Goldsmith, Wordsworth, Scott, Southey, Campbell, Moore, Wolfe, Longfellow, Browning, Kingsley, Ferguson bb164), Ferguson's 'Mesegdra' [ebook] [cpc5-6]
Latin, French, Italian, arithmetic, algebra, Euclid (bb106)
Ovid [etexts]
Caesar [etexts]
Pressense [ebooks?]
Florian [French]
De Amici (bb112) [wiki?] [ebooks]
not Marryat? (PoA)
1895
Malory? (Dempsey in 1909, bb105) [etext]
Lamartine [ebooks]
de Maistre [?French] [?site]
Florian [ebooks?]
Aeneid [etexts] [etexts]
de Bello Gallico
Defoe's Robinson Crusoe [etext]
Scott's "Lord of the Isles"
Metastasio (bb115) [ebooks]
Lockhart's Life of Napoleon? (pc131) [ebook]
1896
not Scott or Dickens [etexts] (sj79)
Shelley? (sj99) [poems]
WS's Henry VIII (cw16)
Memoirs of Vidocq? (pc134) [ebook]
[Capel street possibles: Rabelais, Balzac, Zola, no Flaubert (pc139)] ???: Kipling, HG Wells, Conan Doyle; A Royal Divorce at Gaiety (? pc141)
1897
Milton? (Dempsey in 1909, bb105)
Ovid's Metamorphosis [etext]
Alvarez's grammar of Latin verse [cpc26 says 1900?] [ebook??]
Cicero [etexts]
de Witt [ebooks?]
Coppee [ebooks]
Milton
Gray [etext]
Goldsmith [etext] (bb129)
Meredith- Ordeal of Richard Feverel [etext] Tragic Comedians (jj2-53)
Hardy "A Tragedy of Two Ambitions" Tess [etext], Jude [etext] (sj74)
Kempis Imitation [etext] (pc142)
St Alphonsus Liguori, recommended by Sodality Manual (PoA) [ebooks]
Ingomar, by Halm [ebook] (PoA97)
Bulwer Lytton's Lady of Lyons (PoA97) [ebook]
English bio of Rousseau? (SH40) [ebooks]
1898
Livy [etexts]
Horace [etexts]
Erckmann-Chatrian (L'Invasion, L'Ami Fritz, Le Juif Polonais sj57), [Hathi]
Corneille [olb]
Julius Caesar (English??)
Macauley (bb139) [etext] [etext]
Hall Caine (cw22) [etext]
Machiavelli's History of Florence (pc145) [etext]
Ruskin's Mornings in Florence (pc152) [ebook]
Bulwer-Lytton's Lady of Lyons (PoA) [etext]
Yeats? (inspired "Moods"?)
likely: Yeats-Russell-Eglinton "Literary Ideals in Ireland" [more]
???20 March 1898-- Ibsen's 70th birthday (no London productions since 1897's Duck and Doll's (mm796)
Shaw's "Quintessence of Ibsenism"??? [ebook]
Ibsen "Master Builder" (sj84) [ebook]
11 Feb 1899 Ibsen night at L&H
1899
(cf 100 popular) imitating Carlyle [etext] Newman, Macauley, De Quincey [etext], Ruskin, etc (sj91)
Countess Kathleen [ebook]
When We Dead Awaken (sj95), Doll's House [etext], League of Youth (sj115), Hedda Gabler (sj130), Wild Duck [etext] (cw42), Ghosts (cw45) [etext] Pillars of Society (cw46) [etext] Enemy of the People (cw63) [etext] John Gabriel Borkman (cw66) [ebooks]
Shaw's "Quintessence of Ibsenism" (cw48)
Matthew Arnold (negatively cw26) [etext] [etext]
Wilkie Collins "Heart and Science" (cw28) [ebook]
Calderon (negatively cw40) [etext] [ebooks]
Haddon Chambers [ebooks]
Douglas Jerrold [ebooks]
Sudermann [lieder] [ebooks]
Lessing (also SH33) [etext] [etext]
Wagner (cw40)
Macbeth
Dante (cw42)
Rostand's Cyrano [etext]
[Beoerly]
Zola's L'Assommoir (Coupeau) (cw43) [olb]
Beerbohm Tree (cw44), [ebook] [olb]
Tasso (cw45, cpc120) [olb]
Turgenieff (cw64) [olb]
Sudermann's Magda (pc, sj87 wrong year) [ebook]
Aristotle: Poetics (cpc3) [etexts]
Pater [olb]
Yeats [olb]
Blake [olb]
Symbolists (cpc9)
Phillips' Paolo and Francesca 1900 (cpc4, jj2 58 [info] [ebook]
but cf: late Dec22: VI.B.10.86 "SD said he had read Motley's Rise of Dutch Republic (had read title)")
Maeterlinck: Allodine and Palomides, Melisande and Pelleas [French] (pc160) [olb]
D'Annunzio: Virgins of the Rocks (cpc108) [e-Ital] [olb]
Symons: Symbolist Movement in Literature (pub 1899) [ebook]
Yeats: Wind among the Reeds (jj2 83) [etext]
Pinero (dropped from Fortnightly, later: cw89) [etext]
Brandes? (cpc116) [Danish] [olb]
Machiavelli [etexts]
Maffei [olb?]
Monti (cpc120)
1900
National Library until closing at 10pm--
Tolstoy's short stories [etext]
Turgenev, A Sportsman's Notebook (sj98) [e?]
Turgenieff (cw64-- bluff???)
D'Annunzio: La Gioconda (pc160), La Citta Morta [etext] (jj2 77)
Hardy [etexts]
Meredith [olb]
Hauptmann's The Coming of Peace (pc164) [olb] [ebook]
D'Annunzio's The Child of Pleasure (pc167), La Gloria, Sogno da Tramonto (pc168)
imports: D'Annunzio
Verlaine
Maeterlinck [etext] [etext] [etext] [etext]
Sudermann's Frau Sorge, Es War, Geschwister
George Moore: Evelyn Innes, Sister Theresa, Celibates (sj98) [olb]
?gift from Vire: Cyrano (sj114)
dislike of Shakespeare [etexts] (sj100), of Milton [etexts] (jj2 59)
Bruno (sj121)
Blake (sj99)
Cavalcanti? (jj2 59, PoA176) [olb]
Aquinas? (jj2 60)
GM Mancini "Elementa Philosophiae ad mentem D. Thomae Aquinatis" (PoA176) [ebook]
Manzoni [etext]
Petrarch
Castiglione (cpc120)
Aristotle's Poetics, Psychology (PoA176)
Epictetus? (PoA187) [etexts] [etexts]
plays: Martyn's Heather Field [ebook]
Moore and Martyn's Bending of the Bough (cw68) [ebook]
Diarmuid and Grainne
12 guineas from Fortnightly Review spent on books?
1901
Theosophists: Blavatsky
Olcott (Theosophical Studies-- pc172, Buddhist Catechism jj2 76)
Besant
Leadbeater
de Molinos
St John of the Cross [etext] (PoA04)
St Theresa [etext]
St Catherine [etext]
Thomas a Kempis
Paracelsus (sj131)
Tolstoy's Fruits of Enlightenment (pc172) [ebook]
Huysmans' La Bas [ebook]
Bygmester Solness (pc160) Nar Vi Dode Vagnar (pc172)
Horton's Book of Images (pc171) [ebook]
Frith "Life of G Bruno, the Nolan" (cw69) [ebook]
Bjornson
Giacosa
Echegaray (cw70) [olb]
Bjornson's Beyond Our Power (jj2 75) [ebook]
George Moore: Esther Waters, Celibates, Vain Fortune (cw71, pc172, sj98 wrong year)
D'Annunzio's Il Fuoco (cw71 highest achievement) "Epiphany of Fire" subheading
Yeats' Wind among the Reeds [etext], Adoration of the Magi [ebook]
Moore's Esther Waters
Flaubert's Madame Bovary [etext]
Jakobsen
Pater (cw71) [etext] [etext]
Dowland
Henry VIII
Mangan (sj162)
antipathy for Browning (sj166) [etext]
Hauptmann "Vor Sonnenaufgang, Michael Kramer (cw72)
Hauptmann Hanneles Himmelfahrt (jj2 76)
Nietzsche? Michael Kramer (sj160)
Dante's Purgatorio
Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata [again] (Italian) (pc174) [etext]
Dante
Leopardi (cpc120) [Italian]
Fornaciari "Disegno Storico della Letteratura Italiana" (cpc121) -> Bruno, Vico
WM Adams The House of Hidden Places (Egyptology)
Mangan
Yeats' John Sherman (pc176) [ebook]
Whitman (quoted- Shine and Dark) [etext]
Coleridge [etexts]
Matthew Arnold [etext] [etext]
Bradley on WS
WP Ker
Saintsbury
Dowden [etext] (cpc25)
Corneille [etext]
Moliere [etexts]
Boileau
Fenelon [etext]
Voltaire [etexts]
Lanson
Taine
Brunetiere (cpc26)
Hamlet
Sidney [etext]
Spenser [poems]
Bacon
Milton (cpc26)
Petrarch
Dante
Castiglione's Courtier [etext]
Leopardi
Alfieri's Oreste (cpc26)
Aquinas via Boedder or Rickaby [etext] or De Wulf? (cpc36)
1902
Dante (jj2 75) [etexts]
Flaubert's Tentation (jj2 75)
Verlaine Les Poetes Maudits
Fogazzaro's Piccolo (pc160)
Baudelaire (cw75)
Novalis (cw76) [etext]
Wagner's Parsifal (cw76)
Poe [poems]
Swedenborg (PoA04) [etext] [etext]
Leopardi
Dowland (cw80)
Thomas Davis [etext]
D'Arcy MacGee
Denis Florence M'Carthy [etext] [etext]
Samuiel Ferguson [etext]
T.D. Sullivan
T.W. Rolleston (cw85) [poem]
D'Annunzio (sj166)
W.H. Mallock "Is Life Worth Living?" hated style (sj167)
prophecies of Joachim Abbas (pc180, PoA04)
Cornelius Agrippa? (PoA) [etext]
scorns Balzac (jj2 101) [etexts]
John Mitchel's Mangan
Yeats on Ferguson
Lionel Johnson on Mangan (cpc14-15)
Jacopone da Todi (cpc28)
anti: Cowper [etext], Addison [etext] (Sheehy, ?, jjir10)
1903
Riders to the Sea (pc206) [etext]
Dujardin's Lauriers (pc207)
Ben Jonson [poems]
Aristotle (jj2 120) [etexts]
Butler's Way of All Flesh [etext] (pc211)
FJ Myers Human Personality and its Survival... (pc212)
Father Browne's lectures on Homer (pc217)
Moore's The Untilled Field (pc222)
Benjamin Tucker [etext]
Nietzsche [etexts] (jj2 142)
possibly: Most, Malatesta, Stirner [e?], Bakunin, Kropotkin [etext], Elisee Reclus, Spencer (jj2 142)
Rimbaud (cpc29)
Ibsen's Peer Gynt [etext], Brand
Flaubert's St Julien, Bouvard et Pecuchet, Dictionary (cpc29)
Baudelaire
Verlaine
de Nerval
Heredia
Mallarme (cpc30)
anti: Huysmans (cpc29) [etext]
1904
Moore's The Lake (pc221), Untilled Field (sl44 11-19 to SJ)
Michael Sendivogius? (jj2 146, PoA04)
Lassalle, Aristotle (sl44 11-19 to SJ)
Henry James: only "Madonna of the Future" [etext] (sl45), Portrait of a Lady [etext] (cpc52)
Renan: Souvenirs (sl45)
Dowden's Life of Shelley? (cpc40)
Turgenev's Diary of a Superfluous Man (dd62) [etext]
1905
sl55: Renan's Life of Jesus [etext]
Correlli Sorrows of Satan, not Siren Voices
sl58: Henry James ("consecutively" [etexts]) "Confidence" [etext]
Anatole France "Monsieur Bergeret"
"Peter Simple" by Marryat
Hauptmann's Elga
Heijermans
?De Amicis
D'Annunzio's "Light under the Bushel" (to SJ 3-15-05)
