The All-Time Top 100 Works of Fiction

First posted 6/26/2018; updated 7/5/2020.

Fiction: Top 100 Novels

These are the best fiction books of all-time, according to an aggregate of more than 20 lists focused specifically on fiction books and another 50+ general book lists. Note: this list was originally posted in June 2018 and that version was used as the springboard for the Classic Novels Book Club. Check out the original list here. F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby (1925) Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) J.D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye (1951) George Orwell 1984 (1949) Miguel de Cervantes Don Quixote (1615) J.R.R. Tolkien The Lord of the Rings (trilogy: 1954-55) Joseph Heller Catch-22 (1961) Vladimir Nabokov Lolita (1955) John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath (1939) Lewis Carroll Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) James Joyce Ulysses (1922) Gabriel García Márquez One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice (1813) Herman Melville Moby-Dick (1851) William Golding Lord of the Flies (1954) Emily Brontë Wuthering Heights (1847) Leo Tolstoy War and Peace (1869) Mark Twain The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) J.K. Rowling Harry Potter (series: 1997-2007) J.R.R. Tolkien The Hobbit (1937) Fyodor Dostoyevsky Crime and Punishment (1866) Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness (1899) Charlotte Brontë Jane Eyre (1847) Toni Morrison Beloved (1987) Aldous Huxley Brave New World (1932) Margaret Mitchell Gone with the Wind (1936) Homer The Odyssey (800 B.C.) E.B. White Charlotte’s Web (1952) C.S. Lewis The Chronicles of Narnia (series: 1950-1956) Jack Kerouac On the Road (1957) Leo Tolstoy Anna Karenina (1877) Charles Dickens Great Expectations (1861) Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities (1859) William Faulkner The Sound and the Fury (1929) George Orwell Animal Farm (1945) Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) Ernest Hemingway The Sun Also Rises (1926) Ralph Ellison Invisible Man (1952) Marcel Proust In Search of Lost Time, aka Remembrance of Things Past (A La Recherche du Temps Perdu) (series: 1913-1927) Louisa May Alcott Little Women (1869) Mary Shelley Frankenstein (1818) Antoine de Saint-Exupéry The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince) (1943) Fyodor M. Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov (1880) Margaret Atwood The Handmaid’s Tale (1986) Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary (1857) Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979) Alice Walker The Color Purple (1982) Homer The Iliad (800 B.C.) Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 (1953) Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter (1850) Dante Alighieri The Divine Comedy (Divina Commedia) (1320) Virginia Woolf To the Lighthouse (1927) George Eliot Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life (1872) Daphne Du Maurier Rebecca (1938) Charles Dickens David Copperfield (1850) Frank Herbert Dune (1965) Jonathan Swift Gulliver’s Travels (1726) Ernest Hemingway For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) Richard Adams Watership Down (1972) Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged (1957) Chinua Achebe Things Fall Apart (1958) James Joyce A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) Anthony Burgess A Clockwork Orange (1962) Salman Rushdie Midnight’s Children (1981) Kenneth Grahame The Wind in the Willows (1908) Albert Camus L’Etranger (The Stranger, aka The Outsider) (1942) Ken Kesey One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962) John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men (1937) Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea (1952) Victor Hugo Les Misérables (1862) Philip Pullman The Golden Compass (aka Northern Lights) (1995) A.A. Milne Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence (1920) Jack London The Call of the Wild (1903) Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games (2008) L.M. Montgomery Anne of Green Gables (1908) Zora Neale Hurston Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) Paulo Coelho O Alquimista (The Alchemist) (1987) Alexandre Dumas The Count of Monte Cristo (1844) Oscar Wilde The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) Daniel Defoe Robinson Crusoe (1719) Lois Lowry The Giver (1993) Robert Louis Stevenson Treasure Island (1883) Madeleine L’Engle A Wrinkle in Time (1962) Richard Wright Native Son (1940) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1887) Virginia Woolf Mrs. Dalloway (1925) E.M. Forster A Passage to India (1924) Geoffrey Chaucer The Canterbury Tales (1387) Markus Zusak The Book Thief (2005) William Faulkner As I Lay Dying (1930) John Irving A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989) Ernest Hemingway A Farewell to Arms (1929) Erich Maria Remarque All Quiet on the Western Front (1929) S.E. Hinton The Outsiders (1967) Franz Kafka The Trial (1925) Dan Brown The Da Vinci Code (2004) William Shakespeare Hamlet (1603) Stephen King The Stand (1978) Bram Stoker Dracula (1897) Resources and Related Links: Writ by Whit “Best Book Lists: Fiction” Writ by Whit “Best Book Lists: General”

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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