BBC Culture - The 100 Greatest British Novels

Given by BBC Culture

98 Works 1,210,707 Books 21,335 Reviews ½ 4.0
BBC Culture contributor Jane Ciabattari polled 82 book critics, from Australia to Zimbabwe – but none from the UK. This list includes no nonfiction, no plays, no narrative or epic poems (no show more Paradise Lost or Beowulf), no short story collections (no Morte D’Arthur) – novels only, by British authors (which means no James Joyce). show less
WorkOrder Label
Middlemarch (1871) by George Eliot
1
To the Lighthouse (1927) by Virginia Woolf
2
Mrs. Dalloway (1925) by Virginia Woolf
3
Great Expectations (1861) by Charles Dickens
4
Jane Eyre (1847) by Charlotte Brontë
5
Bleak House (1852) by Charles Dickens
6
Wuthering Heights (1847) by Emily Brontë
7
David Copperfield (1850) by Charles Dickens
8
Vanity Fair (1848) by William Makepeace Thackeray
10
Pride and Prejudice (1813) by Jane Austen
11
The Good Soldier (1915) by Ford Madox Ford
13
Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady (1747) by Samuel Richardson
14
Atonement (2001) by Ian McEwan
15
The Waves (1931) by Virginia Woolf
16
Howards End (1910) by E. M. Forster
17
The Remains of the Day (1989) by Kazuo Ishiguro
18
Emma (1815) by Jane Austen
19
Persuasion (1817) by Jane Austen
20
Heart of Darkness (1899) by Joseph Conrad
21
Tom Jones (1749) by Henry Fielding
22
Jude the Obscure (1895) by Thomas Hardy
23
The Golden Notebook (1962) by Doris Lessing
24
White Teeth (2000) by Zadie Smith
25
The Lord of the Rings (1954) by J. R. R. Tolkien
26
Robinson Crusoe (1719) by Daniel Defoe
27
Villette (1853) by Charlotte Brontë
28
Brick Lane (2003) by Monica Ali
29
Moll Flanders (1722) by Daniel Defoe
30
The End of the Affair (1951) by Graham Greene
31
A Room with a View (1908) by E. M. Forster
32
The Wind in the Willows (1908) by Kenneth Grahame
33
Never Let Me Go (2005) by Kazuo Ishiguro
34
Remainder (2005) by Tom McCarthy
35
A Dance to the Music of Time (1955) by Anthony Powell
36
Decline and Fall (1928) by Evelyn Waugh
37
The Passion (1987) by Jeanette Winterson
38
The Sense of an Ending (2011) by Julian Barnes
39
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) by Lewis Carroll
40
Dombey and Son (1846) by Charles Dickens
41
Brighton Rock (1938) by Graham Greene
42
The Swimming-Pool Library (1988) by Alan Hollinghurst
43
Wolf Hall (2009) by Hilary Mantel
44
The Little Stranger (2009) by Sarah Waters
45
Midnight's Children (1981) by Salman Rushdie
46
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759) by Laurence Sterne
47
Lucky Jim (1954) by Kingsley Amis
48
Possession (1990) by A. S. Byatt
49
A Passage to India (1924) by E. M. Forster
50
Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891) by Thomas Hardy
51
New Grub Street (1891) by George Gissing
52
Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) by Jean Rhys
53
NW (2012) by Zadie Smith
54
Gulliver's Travels (1727) by Jonathan Swift
55
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985) by Jeanette Winterson
56
Parade's End (1925) by Ford Madox Ford
57
Loving (1945) by Henry Green
58
The Line of Beauty (2004) by Alan Hollinghurst
59
Sons And Lovers (1913) by D. H. Lawrence
60
The Sea, the Sea (1978) by Iris Murdoch
61
Animal Farm (1945) by George Orwell
62
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961) by Muriel Spark
63
The Way We Live Now (1874) by Anthony Trollope
64
Orlando: A Biography (1928) by Virginia Woolf
65
Sense and Sensibility (1811) by Jane Austen
66
Crash (1973) by J. G. Ballard
67
A Clockwork Orange (1962) by Anthony Burgess
68
Nostromo (1904) by Joseph Conrad
69
Daniel Deronda (1876) by George Eliot
70
Old Filth (2004) by Jane Gardam
71
The Heart of the Matter (1948) by Graham Greene
72
The Blue Flower (1995) by Penelope Fitzgerald
73
The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) by Thomas Hardy
74
Women in Love (1920) by D. H. Lawrence
75
Small Island (2004) by Andrea Levy
76
Of Human Bondage (1915) by W. Somerset Maugham
77
A House for Mr Biswas (1961) by V. S. Naipaul
78
His Dark Materials (1995) by Philip Pullman
79
Excellent Women (1952) by Barbara Pym
80
The Jewel in the Crown (1966) by Paul Scott
81
The Patrick Melrose Novels: Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, and Mother's Milk (2012) by Edward St. Aubyn
82
Barchester Towers (1857) by Anthony Trollope
83
Scoop (1938) by Evelyn Waugh
84
The Regeneration Trilogy (1991) by Pat Barker
85
A Legacy (1956) by Sybille Bedford
86
The Old Wives' Tale (1908) by Arnold Bennett
87
The Death of the Heart (1938) by Elizabeth Bowen
88
The Horse's Mouth (1957) by Joyce Cary
89
The Woman in White (1859) by Wilkie Collins
90
The Forsyte Saga (1922) by John Galsworthy
91
Cold Comfort Farm (1932) by Stella Gibbons
92
Lord of the Flies (1954) by William Golding
93
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824) by James Hogg
94
The Buddha of Suburbia (1990) by Hanif Kureishi
95
The Memoirs of a Survivor (1974) by Doris Lessing
96
The Chronicles of Narnia (1950) by C. S. Lewis
97
Under the Volcano (1947) by Malcolm Lowry
98
There But For The (2011) by Ali Smith
99
The Code of the Woosters (1938) by P. G. Wodehouse
100

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