The Guardian: The Top 100 Novels

First posted 6/17/2020.

The Guardian: Top 100 Novels

In 2003, The Guardian’s Robert McCrum assembled a list of the greatest novels of all time. The list was presented in chronological order with no rankings. It was also published in The Observer. In 2015, McCrum revisited the list, this time focusing specifically on novels written in English. Once again, it was presented chronologically with no rankings. This list is an aggregate of the two lists. It is presented as a ranked list, based on the books’ overall ratings in Dave’s Book Database. The 50 titles which appeared on both lists are ranked first. J.D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye (1951) Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby (1925) George Orwell 1984 (1949) Vladimir Nabokov Lolita (1955) Lewis Carroll Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) Joseph Heller Catch-22 (1961) James Joyce Ulysses (1922) Charlotte Brontë Jane Eyre (1847) William Golding Lord of the Flies (1954) Mark Twain The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) Emily Brontë Wuthering Heights (1847) Herman Melville Moby-Dick (1851) Jack Kerouac On the Road (1957) Aldous Huxley Brave New World (1932) Louisa May Alcott Little Women (1869) Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter (1850) William Grahame The Wind in the Willows (1908) Mary Shelley Frankenstein (1818) Jonathan Swift Gulliver’s Travels (1726) Charles Dickens David Copperfield (1850) Jack London The Call of the Wild (1903) Oscar Wilde The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) Daniel Defoe Robinson Crusoe (1719) William Faulkner As I Lay Dying (1930) Virginia Woolf Mrs. Dalloway (1925) E.M. Forster A Passage to India (1924) John Bunyan The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) Jane Austen Emma (1816) William Makepeace Thackeray Vanity Fair (1848) Laurence Sterne The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (1759) Henry Fielding Tom Jones (aka “The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling”) (1749) Ford Madox Ford The Good Soldier (1915) Toni Morrison Song of Solomon (1977) Raymond Chandler The Big Sleep (1939) Muriel Spark The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1960) Thomas Hardy Jude the Obscure (1895) D.H. Lawrence The Rainbow (1915) Anthony Trollope The Way We Live Now (1875) Martin Amis Money: A Suicide Note (1984) Marilynn Robinson Housekeeping (1981) V.S. Naipaul A Bend in the River (1979) Evelyn Waugh Scoop (1938) Samuel Richardson Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady (1748) Jerome K. Jerome Three Men in a Boat (1889) John Buchan The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915) Kazuo Ishiguro An Artist of the Floating World (1986) Thomas Love Peacock Nightmare Abbey (1818) Benjamin Disraeli Sybil (1845) Elizabeth Taylor Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont (1971) Miguel de Cervantes Don Quixote (1615) J.R.R. Tolkien The Lord of the Rings (trilogy: 1954-55) John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath (1939) Gabriel García Márquez One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) E.B. White Charlotte’s Web (1952) Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness (1899) Ernest Hemingway The Sun Also Rises (1926) Leo Tolstoy Anna Karenina (1877) Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary (1857) George Eliot Middlemarch, a Study of Provincial Life (1872) Fyodor M. Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov (1880) Anthony Burgess A Clockwork Orange (1962) Chinua Achebe Things Fall Apart (1958) Salman Rushdie Midnight’s Children (1981) Alexandre Dumas The Count of Monte Cristo (1844) Truman Capote In Cold Blood (1966) Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence (1920) Marcel Proust In Search of Lost Time (1913) Franz Kafka The Trial (1925) Sylvia Plath The Bell Jar (1963) Philip Pullman The Golden Compass (aka “Northern Lights”) (1995) Henry James Portrait of a Lady (1881) Bram Stoker Dracula (1897) Stephen Crane The Red Badge of Courage (1895) Robert Penn Warren All the King’s Men (1946) Doris Lessing The Golden Notebook (1962) Henry Miller Tropic of Cancer (1934) Robert Louis Stevenson The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) Sinclair Lewis Babbitt (1922) Malcolm Lowry Under the Volcano (1947) Saul Bellow The Adventures of Augie March (1953) Philip Roth Portnoy’s Complaint (1969) Louis-Ferdinand Céline Journey to the End of Night (1932) W. Somerset Maugham Of Human Bondage (1915) Albert Camus The Plague (1947) Ian McEwan Atonement (2001) Dashiell Hammett The Maltese Falcon (1929) Wilkie Collins The Woman in White (1860) Gunter Grass The Tin Drum (1959) Rudyard Kipling Kim (1901) Saul Bellow Herzog (1964) Philip Roth American Pastoral (1998) John Dos Passos U.S.A. (trilogy: 1930-36) John Updike Rabbit Redux (1971) Joseph Conrad Nostromo (1904) Kingsley Amis Lucky Jim (1954) John le Carre Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974) Stella Gibbons Cold Comfort Farm (1932) Robert Louis Stevenson Kidnapped (1886) Pierre Choderos de Laclos Dangerous Liaisons (Les Liaisons Dangereuses) (1782) Resources and Related Links: The Guardian (10/12/2003). “The 100 Greatest Novels of All Time: The List” by Robert McCrum The Guardian (8/17/2015). “The 100 Best Novels Written in English: The Full List” by Robert McCrum The Observer (10/12/2003). “100 Greatest Novels of All Time”

BBC’s “The Big Read”: Top 100

Posted April 2003; updated 2/16/2019.

image from readandsurvive.com

In April 2003 the BBC asked for nominations for the nation’s best-loved novels. The results of “The Big Read” were originally posted here, but are also listed here.

1. J.R.R. Tolkien The Lord of the Rings (trilogy: 1954-1955)
2. Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice (1813)
3. Philip Pullman His Dark Materials (trilogy: 1995-2000)
4. Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979)
5. J.K. Rowling Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2000)
6. Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)
7. A.A. Milne Winnie-the-Pooh (1926)
8. George Orwell 1984 (1949)
9. C.S. Lewis The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1970)
10. Charlotte Brontë Jane Eyre (1847)

11. Joseph Heller Catch-22 (1961)
12. Emily Brontë Wuthering Heights (1847)
13. Sebastian Faulk Birdsong (1993)
14. Daphne Du Maurier Rebecca (1938)
15. J.D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye (1951)
16. William Grahame The Wind in the Willows (1908)
17. Charles Dickens Great Expectations (1861)
18. Louisa May Alcott Little Women (1869)
19. Louis DeBernieres Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (1994)
20. Leo Tolstoy War and Peace (1869)

21. Margaret Mitchell Gone with the Wind (1936)
22. J.K. Rowling Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (aka Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone) (1999)
23. J.K. Rowling Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (1998)
24. J.K. Rowling Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999)
25. J.R.R. Tolkien The Hobbit (1937)
26. Thomas Hardy Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891)
27. George Eliot Middlemarch, a Study of Provincial Life (1872)
28. John Irving A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989)
29. John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath (1939)
30. Lewis Carroll Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)

31. Jacqueline Wilson The Story of Tracy Beaker (1991)
32. Gabriel García Márquez One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967)
33. Ken Follet The Pillars of the Earth (1989)
34. Charles Dickens David Copperfield (1850)
35. Roald Dahl Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964)
36. Robert Louis Stevenson Treasure Island (1883)
37. Nevil Shute A Town Like Alice (1950)
38. Jane Austen Persuasion (1818)
39. Frank Herbert Dune (1965)
40. Jane Austen Emma (1816)

41. L.M. Montgomery Anne of Green Gables (1908)
42. Richard Adams Watership Down (1972)
43. F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby (1925)
44. Alexandre Dumas The Count of Monte Cristo (1844)
45. Evelyn Waugh Brideshead Revisited (1945)
46. George Orwell Animal Farm (1954)
47. Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol (1843)
48. Thomas Hardy Far from the Madding Crowd (1874)
49. Michelle Magorian Goodnight Mister Tom (1981)
50. Rosamunde Pitcher The Shell Seekers (1987)

51. Frances Hodgson Burnett The Secret Garden (1987)
52. John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men (1937)
53. Stephen King The Stand (1978)
54. Leo Tolstoy Anna Karenina (1877)
55. Vikram Seth A Suitable Boy (1993)
56. Roald Dahl The BFG (1982)
57. Arthur Ransome Swallows and Amazons (1930)
58. Anna Sewell Black Beauty (1877)
59. Eoin Colfer Artemis Fowl (series: 2001-2012)
60. Fyodor Dostoyevsky Crime and Punishment (1866)

61. Malorie Blackman Naughts and Crosses (2001)
62. Arthur Golden Memoirs of a Geisha (1997)
63. Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
64. Colleen McCullough The Thorn Birds (1977)
65. Terry Pratchett Mort (1987)
66. Enid Blyton The Magic Faraway Tree (1943)
67. John Fowles The Magus (1965)
68. Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman Good Omens (1990)
69. Terry Pratchett Guards! Guards! (1989)
70. William Golding Lord of the Flies (1954)

71. Patrick Süskind Perfume (1985)
72. Robert Tressell The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists (1914)
73. Terry Pratchett Night Watch (2002)
74. Roald Dahl Matilda (1988)
75. Helen Fielding Bridget Jones’s Diary (1996)
76. Donna Tartt The Secret History (1992)
77. Wilkie Collins The Woman in White (1860)
78. James Joyce Ulysses (1922)
79. Charles Dickens Bleak House (1853)
80. Jacqueline Wilson Double Act (1995)

81. Roald Dahl The Twits (1980)
82. Dodie Smith I Capture the Castle (1948)
83. Louis Sachar Holes (1999)
84. Mervyn Peake Gormenghast (series: 1946-1956)
85. Arundhati Roy The God of Small Things (1997)
86. Jacqueline Wilson Vicky Angel (200)
87. Aldous Huxley Brave New World (1932)
88. Stella Gibbons Cold Comfort Farm (1932)
89. Raymond E. Feist Magician (1982)
90. Jack Kerouac On the Road (1957)

91. Mario Puzo The Godfather (1969)
92. Jean M. Auel The Clan of the Cave Bear (1980)
93. Terry Pratchett The Colour of Magic (1983)
94. Paulo Coelho O Alquimista (The Alchemist) (1987)
95. Anya Seton Katherine (1954)
96. Jeffrey Archer Kane and Abel (1979)
97. Gabriel García Márquez Love in the Time of Cholera (1985)
98. Jacqueline Wilson Girls in Love (1997)
99. Meg Cabot The Princess Diaries (2000)
100. Salman Rushdie Midnight’s Children (1981)

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