Oxford American Best Southern Books of All Time

55 Works 441,183 Books 7,625 Reviews 4.1
Based on a poll of 134 scholars, writers, and others; results published in the August 2009 edition of the Oxford American.

See also their list of the Most Underrated Southern Books
Categories:
All, Nonfiction (23), Novels (32)
WorkCategoryOrder Label
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1939) by James Agee
Nonfiction1
Absalom, Absalom! (1936) by William Faulkner
Novels1
Black Boy (1945) by Richard Wright
Nonfiction2
All the King's Men (1946) by Robert Penn Warren
Novels2
The Mind of the South (1941) by W. J. Cash
Nonfiction3
The Sound and the Fury (1929) by William Faulkner
Novels3
One Writer's Beginnings (1983) by Eudora Welty
Nonfiction4
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) by Mark Twain
Novels4
The Civil War: A Narrative (1958) by Shelby Foote
Nonfiction5
To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) by Harper Lee
Novels5
In Cold Blood (1965) by Truman Capote
Nonfiction6
The Moviegoer (1961) by Walker Percy
Novels6
Killers of the Dream (1949) by Lillian Smith
Nonfiction7
As I Lay Dying (1930) by William Faulkner
Novels7
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845) by Frederick Douglass
Nonfiction8
Invisible Man (1952) by Ralph Ellison
Novels8
A Childhood: The Biography of a Place (1978) by Harry Crews
Nonfiction9
North Toward Home (1967) by Willie Morris
Nonfiction9
Wise Blood (1952) by Flannery O'Connor
Novels9
Flannery O'Connor: Mystery and Manners (1969) by Sally Fitzgerald
Nonfiction10
Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) by Zora Neale Hurston
Novels10
All Over but the Shoutin' (1997) by Rick Bragg
Nonfiction11
Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake-Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia (1995) by Dennis Covington
Nonfiction11
The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor (1979) by Sally Fitzgerald
Nonfiction11
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) by Harriet A. Jacobs
Nonfiction11
Lanterns on the Levee: Recollections of a Planter's Son (1941) by William Alexander Percy
Nonfiction11
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940) by Carson McCullers
Novels11
Mary Chesnut's Civil War (1981) by Mary Chesnut
Nonfiction12
A Confederacy of Dunces (1980) by John Kennedy Toole
Novels12
Life on the Mississippi (1883) by Mark Twain
Nonfiction13
Light in August (1932) by William Faulkner
Novels13
The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other (1975) by Walker Percy
Nonfiction14
The Burden of Southern History (1960) by C. Vann Woodward
Nonfiction14
A Death in the Family (1957) by James Agee
Novels14
Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America (1997) by John M. Barry
Nonfiction15
The Earl of Louisiana (1961) by A. J. Liebling
Nonfiction15
Origins of the New South, 1877-1913 (1951) by C. Vann Woodward
Nonfiction15
Look Homeward, Angel (1929) by Thomas Wolfe
Novels15
Beloved (1987) by Toni Morrison
Novels16
The Awakening (1899) by Kate Chopin
Novels17
The Color Purple (1982) by Alice Walker
Novels18
Native Son (1940) by Richard Wright
Novels19
Suttree (1979) by Cormac McCarthy
Novels20
The Optimist's Daughter (1972) by Eudora Welty
Novels20
Go Down, Moses (1942) by William Faulkner
Novels21
Gone with the Wind (1936) by Margaret Mitchell
Novels21
The Golden Apples (1947) by Eudora Welty
Novels22
The Known World (2003) by Edward P. Jones
Novels23
Cane (1923) by Jean Toomer
Novels23
Deliverance (1970) by James Dickey
Novels24
A Lesson Before Dying (1993) by Ernest J. Gaines
Novels24
Blood Meridian (1985) by Cormac McCarthy
Novels24
The Last Gentleman: A Novel (1966) by Walker Percy
Novels24
Bastard Out of Carolina (1992) by Dorothy Allison
Novels25
The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967) by William Styron
Novels25

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