This is a very good thought experiment. Who are the five authors that most 20th c writers have read but most 21st c writers have not?
— T. Greer (@Scholars_Stage) March 7, 2026
What about 19th c writers? https://t.co/s2ttoUJBrN
Some works of literature are considered essential reading or even classics in the past, but cease to be popular or highly regarded and thus fade from the Burkean parlor of inter-generational discussion.
For example, as we noted in the past, Herman Wouk's 1951 novel The Caine Mutiny was lauded as great literature at the time of its release and was required reading for many colleges, but is no longer a book that one could assume that most people have read.
X user T. Greer poses an interesting question: which Nineteenth Century works were essential foci of public discourse, but have since faded away from it?
My immediate answer is Lays of Ancient Rome by Thomas Babington Macaulay, which was among the most widely read works of Victorian literature (as a child, Winston Churchill memorized it). But contemporary critics, including Matthew Arnold, disparaged it as trash. Arnold's perspective is apparently confirmed by its absence from literary discussion in subsequent times.