The ASE selection committee chose novels by writers like Dickens, Mark Twain, and Virginia Woolf who had earned a place within the literary canon-or who might reasonably be expected to do so, over time.
One remarkable characteristic of the ASE's is that so many of them are in any reckoning serious literature. This was not an accident. The Council on Books in Wartime made sure that the ASE's boasted a good sampling of serious modern fiction, from Thomas Mann to John Steinbeck.
Armed Forces personnel did not have to limit serious reading to fiction. Curious servicemen could read Joseph C. Grew's essays on the Japanese and Margaret Mead's anthropological studies.
Shakespeare was considered a little too serious for ASE's, but playwrights like Eugene O'Neill and George Bernard Shaw made the cut.
Charles Dickens. David Copperfield. Armed Services Edition [N-31]. UVa
Virginia Woolf. The Years. Armed Services Edition [772]. BAP
Charles Dickens. Pickwick Papers. Armed Services Edition [691]. UVa
Mark Twain. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Armed Services Edition [D-110]. UVa
W. Somerset Maugham. Of Human Bondage. Armed Services Edition. UVa
John Steinbeck. The Grapes of Wrath. Armed Services Edition [690]. UVa
Thomas Mann. Selected Short Stories of Thomas Mann. Armed Services Editions [L-28]. UVa
Joseph C. Grew. Report from Tokyo. Armed Services Edition [A-2]. UVa
Margaret Mead. Coming of Age in Samoa. Armed Services Edition [826]. UVa
George Bernard Shaw. Arms and the Man and Two Other Plays. Armed Services Edition [1005]. UVa
Eugene O'Neill. Selected Plays of Eugene O'Neill. Armed Services Edition [Q-35] UVa