1. Don Quixote Miguel De
Cervantes
The story of the gentle knight and his servant Sancho Panza has
entranced readers for centuries.
• Harold Bloom on Don Quixote – the first modern
novel
2. Pilgrim's
Progress John Bunyan
The one with the Slough of Despond and Vanity
Fair.
• Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: The Pilgrims
Progress
3. Robinson
Crusoe Daniel Defoe
The first English novel.
• Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Robinson
Crusoe
4. Gulliver's
Travels Jonathan Swift
A wonderful satire that still works for all
ages, despite the savagery of Swift's vision.
• Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Gulliver's
Travels
5. Tom
Jones Henry Fielding
The adventures of a high-spirited orphan boy:
an unbeatable plot and a lot of sex ending in a blissful marriage.
• Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Tom
Jones
6. Clarissa
Samuel Richardson
One of the longest novels in the English language,
but unputdownable.
• Robert McCrum's 10 best novels:
Clarissa
7. Tristram
Shandy Laurence Sterne
One of the first bestsellers, dismissed by
Dr Johnson as too fashionable for its own good.
• Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: The Life and Opinions
of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
8. Dangerous
Liaisons Pierre Choderlos De Laclos
An epistolary novel and a
handbook for seducers: foppish, French, and ferocious.
• Jason Cowley on the many incarnations of Dangerous
Liaisons
9. Emma
Jane Austen
Near impossible choice between this and Pride and Prejudice. But
Emma never fails to fascinate and annoy.
• Robert McCrum's 100 best novels:
Emma
10.
Frankenstein Mary Shelley
Inspired by spending too much
time with Shelley and Byron.
• Robert McCrum's 100 best novels:
Frankenstein
11. Nightmare
Abbey Thomas Love Peacock
A classic miniature: a brilliant satire on
the Romantic novel.
• Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Nightmare
Abbey
12. The Black
Sheep Honore De Balzac
Two rivals fight for the love of a femme
fatale. Wrongly overlooked.
• Buy The Black Sheep at the Guardian
Bookshop
13. The
Charterhouse of Parma Stendhal
Penetrating and compelling chronicle
of life in an Italian court in post-Napoleonic France.
• The Charterhouse of Parma - review
14. The Count of
Monte Christo Alexandre Dumas
A revenge thriller also set in France
after Bonaparte: a masterpiece of adventure writing.
• Dumas's five best novels
15. Sybil
Benjamin Disraeli
Apart from Churchill, no other British political
figure shows literary genius.
• Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Sybil
16. David
Copperfield Charles Dickens
This highly autobiographical novel is
the one its author liked best.
• Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: David
Copperfield
17. Wuthering
Heights Emily Bronte
Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff have passed
into the language. Impossible to ignore.
• Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Wuthering
Heights
18. Jane Eyre
Charlotte Bronte
Obsessive emotional grip and haunting
narrative.
• Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Jane
Eyre
19. Vanity Fair
William Makepeace Thackeray
The improving tale of Becky Sharp.
• Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Vanity
Fair
20. The Scarlet
Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne
A classic investigation of the American
mind.
• Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: The Scarlet
Letter
21. Moby-Dick
Herman Melville
'Call me Ishmael' is one of the most famous opening
sentences of any novel.
• Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Moby-Dick
22. Madame
Bovary Gustave Flaubert
You could summarise this as a story of
adultery in provincial France, and miss the point entirely.
• Julian Barnes rerwrites the ending to Madame
Bovary
• The Everest of translation, by Adam
Thorpe
23. The Woman in White Wilkie
Collins
Gripping mystery novel of concealed identity, abduction, fraud and
mental cruelty.
• The Woman in White's 150 years of
sensation
24. Alice's
Adventures In Wonderland Lewis Carroll
A story written for the
nine-year-old daughter of an Oxford don that still baffles most kids.
•Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland
25. Little
Women Louisa M. Alcott
Victorian bestseller about a New England
family of girls.
•Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: Little
Women
26. The Way We
Live Now Anthony Trollope
A majestic assault on the corruption of
late Victorian England.
• Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: The Way We Live
Now
27. Anna
Karenina Leo Tolstoy
The supreme novel of the married woman's
passion for a younger man.
• Rereading Anna Karenina, by James Meek
28. Daniel
Deronda George Eliot
A passion and an exotic grandeur that is
strange and unsettling.
• A new novel from George Eliot - the Guardian's first
review of Daniel Deronda, from 1876
29. The Brothers Karamazov
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Mystical tragedy by the author of Crime and
Punishment.
Buy The Brothers Karamazov at the Guardian
Bookshop
30. The Portrait of a Lady
Henry James
The story of Isabel Archer shows James at his witty and
polished best.
• Profound and flawed: Claire Messud on rereading The
Portrait of a Lady
• Hermione Lee on the biography of a novel that changed
literature
31. Huckleberry
Finn Mark Twain
Twain was a humorist, but this picture of
Mississippi life is profoundly moral and still incredibly influential.
• Robert McCrum's 100 best novels - Huckleberry
Finn
32. Dr Jekyll
and Mr Hyde Robert Louis Stevenson
A brilliantly suggestive,
resonant study of human duality by a natural storyteller.
• Ian Rankin on The Strange Story of Dr Jekyll and Mr
Hyde
33. Three Men in
a Boat Jerome K. Jerome
One of the funniest English books ever
written.
• Robert McCrum's 100 best novels - Three Men in a
Boat
34. The Picture
of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde
A coded and epigrammatic melodrama
inspired by his own tortured homosexuality.
• Fiona MacCarthy on the inspiration behind The Picture
of Dorian Gray
• Robert McCrum's 100 best novels: The Picture of Dorian
Gray
35.
The Diary of a Nobody George Grossmith
This classic of
Victorian suburbia will always be renowned for the character of Mr Pooter.
Buy The Diary of a Nobody at the Guardian
Bookshop
36. Jude the
Obscure Thomas Hardy
Its savage bleakness makes it one of the first
twentieth-century novels.
• Robert McCrum's 100 best novels - Jude the
Obscure
37. The Riddle
of the Sands Erskine Childers
A prewar invasion-scare spy thriller
by a writer later shot for his part in the Irish republican rising.
• Classics Corner - The Riddle of the
Sands
38. The Call of
the Wild Jack London
The story of a dog who joins a pack of wolves
after his master's death.
Buy The Call of the Wild at the Guardian
Bookshop
39.
Nostromo Joseph Conrad
Conrad's masterpiece: a tale of
money, love and revolutionary politics.
• Chinua Achebe and Caryl Phillips discuss the case
against Conrad
40. The Wind in
the Willows Kenneth Grahame
This children's classic was inspired by
bedtime stories for Grahame's son.
Buy The Wind in the Willows at the Guardian
Bookshop
41. In Search of
Lost Time Marcel Proust
An unforgettable portrait of Paris in the
belle epoque. Probably the longest novel on this list.
Buy In Search of Lost Time at the Guardian
Bookshop
42. The
Rainbow D. H. Lawrence
Novels seized by the police, like this one,
have a special afterlife.
Buy The Rainbow at the Guardian Bookshop
43. The Good
Soldier Ford Madox Ford
This account of the adulterous lives of two
Edwardian couples is a classic of unreliable narration.
Buy The Good Soldier at the Guardian
Bookshop
44. The
Thirty-Nine Steps John Buchan
A classic adventure story for boys,
jammed with action, violence and suspense.
Buy The Thirty-Nine Steps at the Guardian
Bookshop
45.
Ulysses James Joyce
Also pursued by the British police,
this is a novel more discussed than read.
Buy Ulysses at the Guardian Bookshop
46. Mrs
Dalloway Virginia Woolf
Secures Woolf's position as one of the
great twentieth-century English novelists.
Buy Mrs Dalloway at the Guardian Bookshop
47. A Passage to
India E. M. Forster
The great novel of the British Raj, it remains a
brilliant study of empire.
Buy A Passage to India at the Guardian
Bookshop
48. The Great
Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
The quintessential Jazz Age
novel.
Buy The Great Gatsby at the Guardian
Bookshop
49. The
Trial Franz Kafka
The enigmatic story of Joseph K.
Buy The Trial at the Guardian Bookshop
50. Men Without
Women Ernest Hemingway
He is remembered for his novels, but it was
the short stories that first attracted notice.
Buy Men Without Women at the Guardian
Bookshop
51. Journey to
the End of the Night Louis-Ferdinand Celine
The experiences of an
unattractive slum doctor during the Great War: a masterpiece of linguistic
innovation.
Buy Journey to the End of the Night at the Guardian
Bookshop
52. As I Lay
Dying William Faulkner
A strange black comedy by an American
master.
Buy As I Lay Dying at the Guardian
Bookshop
53. Brave New
World Aldous Huxley
Dystopian fantasy about the world of the
seventh century AF (after Ford).
Buy Brave New World at the Guardian
Bookshop
54.
Scoop Evelyn Waugh
The supreme Fleet Street novel.
Buy Scoop at the Guardian Bookshop
55. USA
John Dos Passos
An extraordinary trilogy that uses a variety of narrative
devices to express the story of America.
Buy USA at the Guardian Bookshop
56. The Big
Sleep Raymond Chandler
Introducing Philip Marlowe: cool, sharp,
handsome - and bitterly alone.
Buy The Big Sleep at the Guardian
Bookshop
57. The Pursuit
Of Love Nancy Mitford
An exquisite comedy of manners with countless
fans.
Buy The Pursuit of Love at the Guardian
Bookshop
58. The
Plague Albert Camus
A mysterious plague sweeps through the Algerian
town of Oran.
Buy The Plague at the Guardian Bookshop
59. Nineteen
Eighty-Four George Orwell
This tale of one man's struggle against
totalitarianism has been appropriated the world over.
Buy Nineteen Eighty-Four at the Guardian
Bookshop
60. Malone Dies
Samuel Beckett
Part of a trilogy of astonishing monologues in the
black comic voice of the author of Waiting for Godot.
Buy Malone Dies at the Guardian Bookshop
61. Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger
A week in the life of Holden Caulfield. A cult novel
that still mesmerises.
Buy Catcher in the Rye at the Guardian
Bookshop
62. Wise
Blood Flannery O'Connor
A disturbing novel of religious extremism
set in the Deep South.
Buy Wise Blood at the Guardian Bookshop
63. Charlotte's
Web E. B. White
How Wilbur the pig was saved by the literary genius
of a friendly spider.
Buy Charlotte's Web at the Guardian
Bookshop
64. The Lord Of
The Rings J. R. R. Tolkien
Enough said!
Buy The Lord of the Rings at the Guardian
Bookshop
65. Lucky
Jim Kingsley Amis
An astonishing debut: the painfully funny English
novel of the Fifties.
Buy Lucky Jim at the Guardian Bookshop
66. Lord of the
Flies William Golding
Schoolboys become savages: a bleak vision of
human nature.
Buy Lord of the Flies at the Guardian
Bookshop
67. The Quiet
American Graham Greene
Prophetic novel set in 1950s
Vietnam.
Buy The Quiet American at the Guardian
Bookshop
68 On the
Road Jack Kerouac
The Beat Generation bible.
Buy on the Road at the Guardian Bookshop
69.
Lolita Vladimir Nabokov
Humbert Humbert's obsession with
Lolita is a tour de force of style and narrative.
Buy Lolita at the Guardian Bookshop
70. The Tin
Drum Gunter Grass
Hugely influential, Rabelaisian novel of Hitler's
Germany.
Buy The Tin Drum at the Guardian Bookshop
71. Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe
Nigeria at the beginning of colonialism. A classic of
African literature.
Buy Things Fall Apart at the Guardian
Bookshop
72. The Prime of
Miss Jean Brodie Muriel Spark
A writer who made her debut in The
Observer - and her prose is like cut glass.
Buy The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie at the Guardian
Bookshop
73. To Kill A
Mockingbird Harper Lee
Scout, a six-year-old girl, narrates an
enthralling story of racial prejudice in the Deep South.
Buy To Kill A Mockingbird at the Guardian
Bookshop
74.
Catch-22 Joseph Heller
'[He] would be crazy to fly more
missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he
flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; if he didn't want to he was sane and
had to.'
Buy Catch-22 at the Guardian Bookshop
75.
Herzog Saul Bellow
Adultery and nervous breakdown in
Chicago.
Buy Herzog at the Guardian Bookshop
76. One Hundred
Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A postmodern masterpiece.
Buy one Hundred Years of Solitude at the Guardian
Bookshop
77. Mrs Palfrey
at the Claremont Elizabeth Taylor
A haunting, understated study of
old age.
Buy Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont at the Guardian
Bookshop
78. Tinker
Tailor Soldier Spy John Le Carre
A thrilling elegy for
post-imperial Britain.
Buy Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy at the Guardian
Bookshop
79. Song of
Solomon Toni Morrison
The definitive novelist of the
African-American experience.
Buy Song of Solomon at the Guardian
Bookshop
80. The Bottle
Factory Outing Beryl Bainbridge
Macabre comedy of provincial life.
Buy The Bottle Factory Outing at the Guardian
Bookshop
81. The
Executioner's Song Norman Mailer
This quasi-documentary account of
the life and death of Gary Gilmore is possibly his masterpiece.
Buy The Executioner's Song at the Guardian
Bookshop
82. If on a
Winter's Night a Traveller Italo Calvino
A strange, compelling story
about the pleasures of reading.
Buy If on a Winter's Night a Traveller at the Guardian
Bookshop
83. A Bend in
the River V. S. Naipaul
The finest living writer of English prose.
This is his masterpiece: edgily reminiscent of Heart of Darkness.
Buy A Bend in the River at the Guardian
Bookshop
84. Waiting for
the Barbarians J.M. Coetzee
Bleak but haunting allegory of
apartheid by the Nobel prizewinner.
Buy Waiting for the Barbarians at the Guardian
Bookshop
85. Housekeeping
Marilynne Robinson
Haunting, poetic story, drowned in water and
light, about three generations of women.
Buy Housekeeping at the Guardian Bookshop
86. Lanark
Alasdair Gray
Seething vision of Glasgow. A Scottish classic.
Buy Lanark at the Guardian Bookshop
87. The New York
Trilogy Paul Auster
Dazzling metaphysical thriller set in the
Manhattan of the 1970s.
Buy The New York Trilogy at the Guardian
Bookshop
88. The BFG
Roald Dahl
A bestseller by the most popular postwar writer for
children of all ages.
Buy The BFG at the Guardian Bookshop
89. The Periodic
Table Primo Levi
A prose poem about the delights of chemistry.
Buy The Periodic Table at the Guardian
Bookshop
90. Money
Martin Amis
The novel that bags Amis's place on any list.
Buy Money at the Guardian Bookshop
91. An Artist of
the Floating World Kazuo Ishiguro
A collaborator from prewar Japan
reluctantly discloses his betrayal of friends and family.
Buy An Artist of the Floating World at the Guardian
Bookshop
92. Oscar And
Lucinda Peter Carey
A great contemporary love story set in
nineteenth-century Australia by double Booker prizewinner.
Buy Oscar and Lucinda at the Guardian
Bookshop
93. The Book of
Laughter and Forgetting Milan Kundera
Inspired by the Soviet
invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, this is a magical fusion of history,
autobiography and ideas.
Buy The Book of Laughter and Forgetting at the Guardian
Bookshop
94. Haroun and
the Sea of Stories Salman Rushdie
In this entrancing story Rushdie
plays with the idea of narrative itself.
Buy Haroun and the Sea of Stories at the Guardian
Bookshop
95. La
Confidential James Ellroy
Three LAPD detectives are brought face to
face with the secrets of their corrupt and violent careers.
Buy LA Confidential at the Guardian
Bookshop
96. Wise
Children Angela Carter
A theatrical extravaganza by a brilliant
exponent of magic realism.
Buy Wise Children at the Guardian
Bookshop
97. Atonement
Ian McEwan
Acclaimed short-story writer achieves a contemporary
classic of mesmerising narrative conviction.
Buy Atonement at the Guardian Bookshop
98. Northern
Lights Philip Pullman
Lyra's quest weaves fantasy, horror and the
play of ideas into a truly great contemporary children's book.
Buy Northern Lights at the Guardian
Bookshop
99. American
Pastoral Philip Roth
For years, Roth was famous for Portnoy's
Complaint . Recently, he has enjoyed an extraordinary revival.
Buy American Pastoral at the Guardian
Bookshop
100. Austerlitz
W. G. Sebald
Posthumously published volume in a sequence of
dream-like fictions spun from memory, photographs and the German past.
Buy Austerlitz at the Guardian Bookshop
Who did we miss?
So, are you congratulating yourself on having read everything on our list or screwing the newspaper up into a ball and aiming it at the nearest bin?
Are you wondering what happened to all those American writers from Bret Easton Ellis to Jeffrey Eugenides, from Jonathan Franzen to Cormac McCarthy?
Have women been short-changed? Should we have included Pat Barker, Elizabeth Bowen, A.S. Byatt, Penelope Fitzgerald, Doris Lessing and Iris Murdoch?
What's happened to novels in translation such as Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, Hesse's Siddhartha, Mishima's The Sea of Fertility, Süskind's Perfume and Zola's Germinal?
Writers such as J.G. Ballard, Julian Barnes, Anthony Burgess, Bruce Chatwin, Robertson Davies, John Fowles, Nick Hornby, Russell Hoban, Somerset Maugham and V.S. Pritchett narrowly missed the final hundred. Were we wrong to lose them?
Let us know what you think. Post your own suggestions for the 100 best books on the Observer blog.