Tuesday, October 20, 1998

Modern Library: 100 Best Novels

First posted 6/9/2020.

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Modern Library:

100 Best Novels

Modern Library assembled top 100 lists of the best novels and non-fiction books based on online votes. The poll for the novels closed on October 20, 1998 with 217,520 votes cast. Here are the results:

  1. James Joyce Ulysses (1922)
  2. F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby (1925)
  3. James Joyce A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
  4. Vladimir Nabokov Lolita (1955)
  5. Aldous Huxley Brave New World (1932)
  6. William Faulkner The Sound and the Fury (1929)
  7. Joseph Heller Catch-22 (1961)
  8. Arthur Koestler Darkness at Noon (1940)
  9. D.H. Lawrence Sons and Lovers (1913)
  10. John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath (1939)

  11. Malcolm Lowry Under the Volcano (1947)
  12. Samuel Butler The Way of All Flesh (1903)
  13. George Orwell 1984 (1949)
  14. Robert Graves I, Claudius (1934)
  15. Virginia Woolf To the Lighthouse (1927)
  16. Theodore Dreiser An American Tragedy (1925)
  17. Carson McCullers The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940)
  18. Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)
  19. Ralph Ellison Invisible Man (1952)
  20. Richard Wright Native Son (1940)

  21. Saul Bellow Henderson the Rain King (1959)
  22. John O’Hara Appointment in Samarra (1934)
  23. John Dos Passos U.S.A. (Trilogy) (1936)
  24. Sherwood Anderson Winesburg, Ohio (1919)
  25. E.M. Forster A Passage to India (1924)
  26. Henry James The Wings of the Dove (1902)
  27. Henry James The Ambassadors (1903)
  28. F. Scott Fitzgerald Tender Is the Night (1934)
  29. James T. Farrell The Studs Lonigan Trilogy (1935)
  30. Ford Madox Ford The Good Soldier (1915)

  31. George Orwell Animal Farm (1954)
  32. Henry James The Golden Bowl (1904)
  33. Theodore Dreiser Sister Carrie (1900)
  34. Evelyn Waugh A Handful of Dust (1934)
  35. William Faulkner As I Lay Dying (1930)
  36. Robert Penn Warren All the King’s Men (1946)
  37. Thornton Wilder The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1928)
  38. E.M. Forster Howards End (1910)
  39. James Baldwin Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)
  40. Graham Greene The Heart of the Matter (1948)

  41. William Golding Lord of the Flies (1954)
  42. James Dickey Deliverance (1970)
  43. Anthony Powell A Dance to the Music of Time (Series) (1975)
  44. Aldous Huxley Point Counter Point (1928)
  45. Ernest Hemingway The Sun Also Rises (1926)
  46. Joseph Conrad The Secret Agent (1926)
  47. Joseph Conrad Nostromo (1904)
  48. D.H. Lawrence The Rainbow (1915)
  49. D.H. Lawrence Women in Love (1920)
  50. Henry Miller Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  51. Norman Mailer The Naked and the Dead (1948)
  52. Philip Roth Portnoy’s Complaint (1969)
  53. Vladimir Nabokov Pale Fire (1962)
  54. William Faulkner Light in August (1932)
  55. Jack Kerouac On the Road (1957)
  56. Dashiell Hammett The Maltese Falcon (1929)
  57. Ford Madox Ford Parade’s End (1928)
  58. Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence (1920)
  59. Max Beerbohm Zuleika Dobson (1911)
  60. Walker Percy The Moviegoer (1961)

  61. Willa Cather Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927)
  62. James Jones From Here to Eternity (1951)
  63. John Cheever The Wapshot Chronicles (1958)
  64. J.D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye (1951)
  65. Anthony Burgess A Clockwork Orange (1962)
  66. W. Somerset Maugham Of Human Bondage (1915)
  67. Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness (1899)
  68. Sinclair Lewis Main Street (1920)
  69. Edith Wharton The House of Mirth (1905)
  70. Lawrence Durrell The Alexandria Quartet (1960)

  71. Richard Hughes A High Wind in Jamaica (1929)
  72. V.S. Naipaul A House for Mr. Biswas (1961)
  73. Nathanael West The Day of the Locust (1939)
  74. Ernest Hemingway A Farewell to Arms (1929)
  75. Evelyn Waugh Scoop (1938)
  76. Muriel Spark The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1960)
  77. James Joyce Finnegan’s Wake (1941)
  78. Rudyard Kipling Kim (1901)
  79. E.M. Forster A Room with a View (1908)
  80. Evelyn Waugh Brideshead Revisited (1945)

  81. Saul Bellow The Adventures of Augie March (1953)
  82. Wallace Stegner Angle of Repose (1971)
  83. V.S. Naipaul A Bend in the River (1979)
  84. Elizabeth Bowen The Death of the Heart (1938)
  85. Joseph Conrad Lord Jim (1900)
  86. E.L. Doctorow Ragtime (1975)
  87. Arnold Bennett The Old Wives’ Tale (1908)
  88. Jack London The Call of the Wild (1903)
  89. Henry Green Loving (1945)
  90. Salman Rushdie Midnight’s Children (1981)

  91. Erskine Caldwell Tobacco Road (1932)
  92. William Kennedy Ironweed (1983)
  93. John Fowles The Magus (1965)
  94. Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)
  95. Iris Murdoch Under the Net (1954)
  96. William Styron Sophie’s Choice (1979)
  97. Paul Bowles The Sheltering Sky (1949)
  98. James M. Cain The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934)
  99. J.P. Donleavy The Ginger Man (1955)
  100. Booth Tarkington The Magnificent Ambersons (1919)

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