A Book That Examines or Takes Place in a Time Before the 18th Century

Updated January 13, 2026
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Beowulf : a new verse translation
Heaney, Seamus.
Paper Book
A brilliant and faithful rendering of the Anglo-Saxon epic from the Nobel laureate. Composed toward the end of the first millennium of our era, Beowulf is the elegiac narrative of the adventures of Beowulf, a Scandinavian hero who saves the Danes from the seemingly invincible...
The Odyssey
Homer.
Paper Book
The great epic of Western literature, translated by the acclaimed classicist Robert Fagles A Penguin Classic Robert Fagles, winner of the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and a 1996 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters,...
SHOGUN
CLAVELL, JAMES
Paper Book
FX/Hulu's Shōgun has won nineteen Emmy Awards, four Golden Globes, and four Critics Choice Awards, among many other accolades. The most talked about and awarded series on television. Read the book that started it all! The classic epic novel of feudal Japan that captured the heart of a...
Hamnet
O'Farrell, Maggie
Paper Book
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER * NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * Now a major motion picture starring Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Emily Watson, and Joe Alwyn, directed by ACADEMY AWARD® winner Chloé Zhao. The bestselling author of The Marriage Portrait...
The three musketeers
Dumas, Alexandre
Paper Book
"We read The Three Musketeers to experience a sense of romance and for the sheer excitement of the story," reflected Clifton Fadiman. "In these violent pages all is action, intrigue, suspense, surprise--an almost endless chain of duels, murders, love affairs, unmaskings, ambushes, hairbreadth...
The name of the rose
Eco, Umberto.
Paper Book
ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME * A spectacular best seller and now a classic, The Name of the Rose catapulted Umberto Eco, an Italian professor of semiotics turned novelist, to international prominence. An erudite murder mystery...
LADY TAN'S CIRCLE OF WOMEN
SEE, LISA
Paper Book
*NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!* From "one of those special writers capable of delivering both poetry and plot" (The New York Times Book Review) an immersive historical novel inspired by the true story of a woman physician in 15th-century China--perfect for fans of...

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