The Greatest Works on Art and Literature
This selection of nonfictional works on art and literature is based on the continuing research carried out for The Greatest Literature of All Time and additional research into nonfiction works about art and literature works acclaimed by the world's readers, writers, critics and scholars.
It includes works about art and literature, including history and criticism in these fields, not works of art or literature themselves.
You may also be interested in The Greatest History or The Greatest Biographies.
This list is updated as new works are discovered and appreciation of older works evolves. Please note the revision date when citing the list.
Latest update: November 15, 2025
The 22 Greatest Works on Art and Literature
c.335 BCE
Poetics
by Aristotle, Greece
Nonfiction, originally Peri poietikês
19 BCE
The Art of Poetry
by Horace, Rome
Long poem, originally Ars Poetica
1550–1568 CE
Lives of the Artists
by Giorgio Vasari, Italy
Nonfiction, also known as The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects
1580
An Apology for Poetry
by Philip Sidney, England
Nonfiction, also knonw as The Defence of Poesy
1897
What Is Art?
by Leo Tolstoy, Russia
Nonfiction
1914–1954
The Letters of Vincent van Gogh
by Vincent Van Gogh, Netherlands
Nonfiction
1935
The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media
by Walter Benjamin, Germany
Nonfiction, originally Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit
1948
The Great Tradition
by F.R. Leavis, England
Nonfiction
1950
The Story of Art
by Ernst Gombrich, England
Nonfiction
1950
The Liberal Imagination
by Lionel Trilling, United States
Nonfiction, subtitled Essays on Literature and Society
1957
Anatomy of Criticism
by Northrop Frye, Canada
Nonfiction
1958
The Poetics of Space
by Gaston Bachelard, France
Nonfiction, originally La Poétique de l'Espace
1960
Art and Illusion
by Ernst Gombrich, England
Nonfiction, subtitled A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation
1966
Against Interpretation and Other Essays
by Susan Sontag, United States
Nonfiction
1968
Illuminations
by Walter Benjamin, Germany
Nonfiction, subtitled Essays and Reflections, originally Illuminationen
1972
Ways of Seeing
by John Berger, England
Nonfiction
1975
The Painted Word
by Thomas Wolfe, United States
Nonfiction
1980
The Shock of the New
by Robert Hughes, Australia
Nonfiction, subtitled Art and the Century of Change
1989
The Andy Warhol Diaries
ed. Pat Hackett, United States
Nonfiction
1994
The Western Canon
by Harold Bloom, United States
Nonfiction, subtitled The Books and School of the Ages
1997
After the End of Art
by Arthur C. Danto, United States
Nonfiction, subtitled Contemporary Art and the Pale of History
2015
Hold Still
by Sally Mann, United States
Nonfiction, subtitled A Memoir with Photographs
