No bookshelf is complete without a list of the great works that everyone interested in the SF or fantasy genres should read:

• The Saga of the Volsungs, Together With Excerpts from the Nornagesthattr and Three Chapters from the Prose Edda
  George K. Anderson

  If you want a good, big, authentic dose of saga all in one place, this is great.

• Beowulf
  Burton Raffel (Translator)

  The first part of Beowulf, the haunting of the meadhall by Grendel, would in its day have been classified as pure horror. The last adventure, Beowulf's death facing the dragon, does kick this firmly into the fantasy field. Many surviving Old English sagas are historical; this one is dark, bloody, and spooky.

• Other Worlds: the Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon and Sun
  Cyrano de Bergerac.

  Bergerac the Gascon swordsman did exist, and was among the earliest writers of science fiction. Rather than travelling by magic ring, he expended a good deal of thought on methods that might allow him to fly.

• Mahabharata
  William Buck (translator and editor)

  This version has been described as reading like "a summary of an abridgement"; so it reads like a good story but the treatment is very liberal. Use it as an introduction to the tale of Great India, but if you want to move into the world of this period or to know the Mahabharata in more authentic detail, you will have to go to other versions. The scholarly ones are several volumes. Ostensibly, this is the story of two clans of cousins warring for control of the empire of northern India, but the miraculous or magical easily wanders in and out, and one section, the Bhagavadgita, is considered a central text on reconciling duty and religious ideals.

• Bulfinch's Mythology
  Thomas Bulfinch

  For something 150 years old, this is still plenty readable. Collecting his several separate books of The Age of Fable and such, Bulfinch's is a one-volume reference on the best-known Greek, Roman, Welsh, and Norse myths, along with Arthurian and Carlovingian stories. His purpose was to supply background for the reader who was always running into classical and other references in art: he illustrates with quotes from many poems of his period and earlier, whether Byron or Spenser. You must weigh advantages against disadvantages here. Good: one-volume, many stories including odd bits on lesser-known divinities and heroes, the story of the Nibelungenlied, and recountings in the heroic stories very close to sources like Malory so you get the hang of forsoothly diction. Bad: Latin names for Greek Deities, dramatist's and novelist's inventions given as genuine myth or folklore, the ignorance of his time on cultural matters our archaeologists and anthropologists have had a century and a half to better study, and recountings in the heroic stories very close to sources like Malory so you may feel you need a translation is you don't like this forsoothly stuff. It's probably best to consider this an introduction to early fantasy fiction, and use it as a guide to digging deeper.

• The Saga of the Volsungs: The Norse Epic of Sigurd the Dragon Slayer
  Jesse L. Byock (Editor and translator)

  Most translations of this oldest of the Norse sagas are prettified so that they make nice reading. This is a very literal translation, warts with beauty spots, and so will tell you much more about how the people thought, and covers the several generations of the family, not just Sigurd, so you get the werewolves and seers as well as the dragon. Note that the story is not exactly linear: Sigurd and Brunhild meet three different ways, any one of which can be considered "authentic". The notes and introduction are excellent, too.

• Early Irish Myths and Sagas (Penguin Classics)
  Jeffrey Gantz

As editor and translator, Gantz has assembled a good general selection of Irish early fantasy stories, not to be ignored by those wanting to get right to the roots of heroic fantasy. Covers from the Book of Invasions through the Red Branch Knights.

• The Mabinogion (Penguin Classics)
  Jeffrey Gantz

  Now we move into Welsh hero-myth and fantasy. Some of this you will recognize if you read Island of the Mighty and some you should enjoy as the earliest form of the Arthurian legends.

• Gilgamesh: Translated from the Sin-Leqi-Unninni Version Gilgamesh
  John Gardner, John Maier (Translator)

  The epic of Gilgamesh is the earliest preserved fiction or legend. Back in 2000 BC, the lines between the two were extremely fuzzy! Watch Gilgamesh terrorize his city! See the Goddess create Enkidu to tame him through friendship! Suffer with Gil when Enkidu dies, and he realises the same doom is his -- unless he can learn the secret of eternal life from Ut-napishtim, the "Sumerian Noah" now living forever at the rim of the world. Wild bulls, scorpion men, treacherous serpents -- plenty of thrills, but also a great deal of empathy with the inevitable pain of being human.

• The Epic of Gilgamesh
  Maureen G. Kovacs.  An alternate version, just in case you want to see the difference a translator makes.
  
  
• The Greek Myths
  Robert Graves. The one-volume version.

  Yes, the same Robert Graves who wrote I, Claudius and The White Goddess. This is not a nice, smooth, novel-like retelling of the Greek wonder stories to please an idle hour. Rather, it is a collection of as many variant stories on a subject as he could find in the many ancient authors, in order to try to glean cultural facts about pre-Classical civilization from them, and to show which stories are myths, which are sagas, and which are rather late, sophisticated theatrical dramas. You may be surprised how many of the familiar versions are in the last catagory.

• The Greek Myths, v. I
  Robert Graves

  This volume covers the creation myths, tales of the individual Gods, the wars with the Titans, Deukalion's Flood, and other early myths, into the start of the Age of Heroes with Perseus and Theseus.

• Greek Myths  
  Robert Graves

  Covers Oedipus, the curse of the House of Atreus, Herakles, The Argonauts, the tales of Troy, and the wanderings of Odysseus. Note that he does use slightly Latinized spellings, like Heracles, but not the Latin names, like Hercules.

• Grimm's Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm
  
• The Iliad (Penguin Classics)
  Homer, Robert Fagles (Translator)

  The Iliad is the tale of the wrath of Akhilles, not that of the entire Trojan War. It begins well after the Akhaeans have settled into their seige and ends with Akhilles still alive and the city unfallen. As such, it reads as a satisfying fantasy novel, with as much emphasis on personalities as on battle, adventure, and the interference of the Gods. It is a true example of pure fantasy, for while it is doubtful whether even the ancient Greeks believed the gods really were among them, they were uninhibited in their usage of the Olympians as expediters and scapegoats. Without their magical influence, this story falls completely apart.

• The Odyssey
  Homer, Robert Fitzgerald (Translator)

  It is traditional to attribute the Iliad and the Odyssey to the same author, but all the internal evidence is against it. The Iliad is written in a masculine POV by a Goddess-worshipper who mocks the Olympians. The Odyssey has for centuries been pointed out as rife with feminine concerns, the Olympians and patriarchalism are respected, and the author knew courts but not warriors. This has been called the earliest novel, probably written by a Sicialian noblewoman, full of the utterly fantastical in perils.

• The Tain Translated from the Irish Epic Tain Bo Cuailnge
  Thomas Kinsella (Translator)

  The Cattle Raid of Cooley is the largest single tale of Setanta, known as Cuchulain, "the Hound of Chulain", by whom all other Irish heroes are measured.

• Le Morte D'Arthur (The Penguin English Library)
  Sir Thomas Malory, Janet Cowen (editor)

  Almost all modern Arthurian legend can be traced to the work of Sir Thomas, who collected extant tales, neatened them up, and then added what he felt like adding (scientific folklorism was not his goal; entertainment in a glorious old tradition was). So this definitely falls into the fantasy fiction catagory.

• Utopia (Penguin Classics)
  Thomas More, Paul Turner (Translator)

  As has been said of others' work, this is good for a political tract, but rather boring as fiction. After recounting the ills of the day (some will sound very familiar -- the world is always going to hell in many of the same ways, generation upon generation), More creates a perfect state in the New World, to be called Utopia. This is where the word started!

• The Mahabharata: An English Version Based on Selected Verses
  C. V. Narasimhan (Editor)

  This version is far more authentic, being an actual translation of the original verses, and will give you more of the ancient flavor of the era.

• The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)
  R. K. Narayan, Kampar Ramayanam

  In moving to the Hindu epics, you should remember that these are sacred texts of a living religion. Even so, these can be great reading just as fantasy adventures. The Ramayana revolves around the exiled prince, Rama, whose beauteous wife, Sita, is abducted by the king of the demons, and rescued with the help of an alliance including Hanuman the Monkey-God.

• Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson : Tales from Norse Mythology Snorri Sturluson, Jean I. Young (Translator)

  Careful readers have pointed out that the Christian Sturluson had a hidden agenda in his collection of the old myths in Christianized Iceland, and emphasized the folk-tale aspects that would denigrate the Old Gods rather than looking for the grander aspects. Even so, we can be glad any of this was recorded and preserved! The Prose Edda is one of the pillars of The Northern Thing, as north European-style heroic fantasy is called by some practitioners (this includes not only Norse historical fantasy, by Tolkien's work and many another as well).

• The Complete Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea: a New Translation of Jules Verne's Science Fiction Classic
  Jules Verne

  Most of the older translations leave out thousands of words of the original French. If you want to read what Verne, not later editors, had to say, you'll want this version.

• The Time Machine
  H. G. Wells

  Wells established most of the major themes of science fiction time travel with this one tale. Almost too good to be on the Classics page (you don't have to grit your teeth to read through it), Wells is considered the first modern SF writer because his stuff remains readable. You'll also find it on the Time Travel shelf.