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And, actually, I took mav to be framing the intended specificity of his question in his final red highlight. 
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Capital Kiwi > my list in the previous post stands, if only because if I fiddled with it I'd be like Wow - torn between umpteen different authors
"umpteen authors" : too true Cap!
And I didn't mention the fascinating books about Hawaii and its people or the wonderful books I've read from China like "The Mustard Seed Garden" and David Kidd's "Peking Story." Then too, the Japanese "Tales of Kanji"!
I find it interesting that most all of the books listed here are for European and American authors. What books would a native of China or Japan, or India or Saudi Arabia put down as their canon?
I guess it's all in what we are exposed to : for instance I know a lot of European History from reading, whereas my older son who graduated from the University of Hawaii can reel off the Chinese history and dynastic info and the Japanese Emporers and Shoguns etc. I'm sure his list would be quite different from mine, and not just because of the ages and "times!"
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Having been away a few days, this is great to come back to. Thanks to all comers in an interesting conversation - new voices welcomed too! I guess what I had in mind was this, to attempt a reframe in more explcit terms: 1 Name the ten authors of literature in English you consider most important and representative of enduring qualities, consistent with 2 Your own (formative) experience, culture, country of domicile etc I wasn't asking for the list of authors you felt had had most impact on you (which might be more to do with content, sometimes?), although this may be the basis of another fun comparison. I was quite assuming there would be (possibly wide) variation in responses, and as mentioned also open to the argument that the whole idea of a canon is redundant. But it's an interesting proposition to make yourself try and face, isn't it? I was also not originally proposing to try and agree a concensus canon at the death... but hey, we can try if anyone wants! Completely convinced I am by your argument, AnnaS, btw - another sub is coming on in my team! It's another strange feature of this exercise (for me at least) to realise there are certain authors and works that really have shaped my understanding and use of language yet whaich I take utterly for granted, like that. AA Milne is possibly another, though with Pooh & Co I probably have to struggle to carefully separate out the case for 'creative use of language' and 'dear old friends of developing years' (content). And yes, though there are hundreds of works I have enjoyed or taken some substance from, that is not quite the same thing, I think, as the recognition that the author's use of language itself has somehow changed your understanding of the possibilities of magic at work. But yes, CK, it's an artificial construct, of course, and I completely agree about a prescriptive meaning to 'required': I would never want any book rammed down anyone's throat under any circumstances. That's why I suggested this is a bit of a game - even if taken in different ways by different players (AYL...)
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old hand
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with Pooh & Co I probably have to struggle to carefully separate out the case for 'creative use of language' and 'dear old friends of developing years'What, you've never played "Pooh sticks" or said "Oh, bother"?
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old hand
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> 2 Your own (formative) experience, culture, country of domicile etc
I left out all those personal choices because I thought they were not universal enough. Instead of submitting my list over again I will write authors names under headings. What dictates this - is the love of the language.
Word play (and fun?) : Lewis Carrol and Shakespeare
Style : Maugham, Swift, Hazlit.
Structure : Shakespeare, Moliere, Wilde, Ibsen, Annouilh
Wit : Wilde, G.K Chesterton, Atre
"Easterness in the English" : Sarojini Naidu, Nissim Ezekiel, Tagore, Khayyam/Fitzgerald, Arundhati Roy
Simplicity (in writing and subject matter) : R.K Narayan, Ruskin Bond, Vikram Seth, Maupassant
Characterisation: Shakespeare, Carrol (Mock turtle?)
Imagination : George Lucas, Salman Rushdie, Asimov, Orwell, Carrol
Fieriness (or sensousness) :Emily Bronte, all Urdu Shayars (poets), Yeats also Khayyam
Reality : Chekov
For their stories : Harper lee, Jane Austen
Okay - two of this list don't even write in English - Atre and the Urdu Shayars, but they do add to my love of English. I think languages are linked. If you like something in one language you look for it or generate it in another. I have also included the translations because they have added to my love of English (or language in general).
-----
Come back Shanks.
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Perhaps the individual writers are not as important as the quantity and variety of works one has read.
I look at all your lists and realize that even if many of the authors are considered masters, or “must reads,” I have read very little by most of them. I <know of> Austen, Keats, Byron and Hemingway but have never read any of their works. The same goes for most of the authors listed, yet, I have a better than average grasp of the English language and my writing skills are quite good.
I do not attribute my knowledge to reading a prescribed set of authors but to my voracious appetite at reading anything I got my hands on.
Why is reading William Shakespeare more important than reading Asimov; or Reader’s Digest for that matter?
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wwh, are you to tell me that there is nothing to be learned from "The Star-bellied Sneetches", The Grinch Who Stole Christmas", "The Lorax", "The Battle of the Butter", etc.? There is a rhythm to Seuss' language that teaches the value of phrasing besides the obvious moral teachings.
consuelo
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Dear Consuelo: I read Dr. Seuss to all of my five kids, but I said I would not put it on a list of "required" reading.
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Why is reading William Shakespeare more important than reading Asimov; or Reader’s Digest for that matter?This is surely the rub regarding the value of a canon. My understanding would be this: that some authors use and abuse language in such a creative way that they stretch the possibilities for all who come after them. So, while as a devoted reader of breakfast cereal boxes I know exactly what you mean about breadth of experience, I think some writers offer us a depth of experience that is not available even by say giving a hundred typewriters to a hundred monkeys in the Readers' Digest building for a hundred years... 
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wwh,
"but imagine requiring the reading of Dr. Seuss' entertaining but hardly educational works" I am not objecting to the first part, only the last three words. 'Nuff said.
consuelo
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