I can’t place the blame for my low score solely at Calvino’s feet; part of it has to go towards those who collected and published his essays in such a manner. This collection attempts to do 2 things: 1. Tell readers why they should read the classics (something I’m not convinced most of the essays were originally intended to do), and 2. Establish a literary canon according to Calvino. To the first goal, only the first essay really works, and to be fair it is a great essay. The rest of this collection range from mildly interesting to utterly dull if you have not read the work in question. They’re generally more interesting if you are familiar with the source material, but that kind of defeats the purpose of the title of this collection. To the second goal, if this is a canon of 35 classic authors/works, where are the women? Publishers such as Persophone have shown that the classic canon is deeply biased and many amazing female writers were lost throughout history, but even putting that aside, there are PLENTY of well known classic women writers that mainstream canons recognise. Was there really no room next to Dickens and Flaubert and Twain for a Bronte or Austen or Eliot or Gaskell? Calvino even addresses the topic of misogyny in one of his essay, yet throughout this collection we don’t get much more than a passing mention of Virginia Woolf, and Gertrude Stein appearing in an endnote. Perhaps Calvino has written more on women previously and the essays did not make the final cut for this collection, but it honestly soured what was already a below average reading experience for me.

I love literary essays, writing about books, and the classics, so this SHOULD have been just my kind of collection, but it just wasn’t.