100 Greatest British Novels

by BBC

What does the rest of the world see as the greatest British novels? In search of a collective critical assessment, 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 short story collections – novels only, by British authors. (BBC)


Author: George Eliot
Genre: Didactic fiction, Domestic fiction, Bildungsromans, Historical novel
Set in Middlemarch, a fictional English Midland town, in 1829 to 1832, it follows distinct, intersecting stories with many characters. Issues include the status of women, the nature of marriage, idealism, self-interest, religion, hypocrisy, political reform, and education. Despite comic elements, Middlemarch uses realism to encompass historical events: the 1832 Reform Act, early railways, and the accession of King William IV. 
In 2015 it was ranked No1 in the BBC’s 100 Greatest British Novels.


Genre: Modernist Novel
The plot of To the Lighthouse is secondary to its philosophical introspection. To the Lighthouse is made up of three powerfully charged visions into the life of the Ramsay family, living in a summer house off the rocky coast of Scotland. There's maternal Mrs. Ramsay, the highbrow Mr. Ramsay, their eight children, and assorted holiday guests. From Mr. Ramsay's seemingly trivial postponement of a visit to a nearby lighthouse, Virginia Woolf examines tensions and allegiances and shows that the small joys and quiet tragedies of everyday life could go on forever. Among the book's many tropes and themes are those of loss, subjectivity, the nature of art and the problem of perception. 


Genre: Domestic fiction, Modernist Novel
The book describes Clarissa's preparations for a party she will host in the evening, and the ensuing party. With an interior perspective, the story travels forwards and backwards in time, to construct an image of Clarissa's life and of the inter-war social structure. The novel addresses the nature of time in personal experience through multiple interwoven stories. 


Genre: Adventure, Bildungsromans, Literary Fiction, Sensation novel
The novel is set in Kent and London in the early to mid-19th century and contains some of Dickens's most celebrated scenes, starting in a graveyard, where the young Pip is accosted by the escaped convict Abel Magwitch. Great Expectations is full of extreme imagery – poverty, prison ships and chains, and fights to the death – and has a colourful cast of characters who have entered popular culture. These include the eccentric Miss Havisham, the beautiful but cold Estella, and Joe, the unsophisticated and kind blacksmith. Dickens's themes include wealth and poverty, love and rejection, and the eventual triumph of good over evil.


Genre: Bildungsromans, Romances, Gothic Fiction
Jane Eyre is a Bildungsroman which follows the experiences of its eponymous heroine, including her growth to adulthood and her love for Mr. Rochester, the brooding master of Thornfield Hall. The book contains elements of social criticism with a strong sense of Christian morality at its core, and it is considered by many to be ahead of its time because of Jane's individualistic character and how the novel approaches the topics of class, sexuality, religion, and feminism. It, along with Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, is one of the most famous romance novels. 


Genre: Bildungsromans, Psychological fiction, Domestic fiction
The novel has many characters and several sub-plots, and is told partly by the novel's heroine, Esther Summerson, and partly by an omniscient narrator. At the centre of Bleak House is a long-running legal case in the Court of Chancery, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which comes about because a testator has written several conflicting wills.


Author: Emily Bronte
Genre: Romance, Gothic Fiction, Domestic fiction, Literary Fiction
Wuthering Heights concerns two families of the landed gentry living on the West Yorkshire moors, the Earnshaws and the Lintons, and their turbulent relationships with Earnshaw's foster son, Heathcliff. The novel was influenced by Romanticism and Gothic fiction. It is now widely considered to be one of the greatest novels ever written in English, but contemporaneous reviews were polarised. It was controversial for its depictions of mental and physical cruelty, including domestic abuse, and for its challenges to Victorian morality and religious and societal values. 


Genre: Bildungsromans, Autobiographical fiction, Literary fiction
David Copperfield is a novel in the bildungsroman genre by Charles Dickens, narrated by the eponymous David Copperfield, detailing his adventures in his journey from infancy to maturity. It begins, like other novels by Dickens, with a bleak picture of childhood in Victorian England, followed by young Copperfield's slow social ascent, as he painfully provides for his aunt, while continuing his studies.


Author: Mary Shelley
Genre: Gothic novel, Horror fiction, Science fiction, Epistolary novel
Frankenstein tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. Though Frankenstein is infused with elements of the Gothic novel and the Romantic movement, Brian Aldiss has argued for regarding it as the first true science-fiction story. On 5 November 2019, BBC News listed Frankenstein on its list of the 100 most influential novels. 


Genre: Picaresque Novel
Vanity Fair follows the lives of Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley amid their friends and families during and after the Napoleonic Wars. The novel is now considered a classic and has inspired several audio, film, and television adaptations. 


Author: Jane Austen
Genre: Romance, Domestic fiction
The novel follows the character development of Elizabeth Bennet, the dynamic protagonist of the book who learns about the repercussions of hasty judgments and comes to appreciate the difference between superficial goodness and actual goodness. Pride and Prejudice has consistently appeared near the top of lists of "most-loved books" among literary scholars and the reading public. It has become one of the most popular novels in English literature, with over 20 million copies sold, and has inspired many derivatives in modern literature. 


12. Nineteen Eighty Four (1984)
Author: George Orwell
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Genre: Domestic fiction
Set just before World War I, and chronicles the tragedy of Edward Ashburnham and his seemingly perfect marriage, along with that of his two American friends. The novel is told using a series of flashbacks in non-chronological order, a literary technique that formed part of Ford's pioneering view of literary impressionism. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked The Good Soldier 30th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.


Genre: Epistolary novel, Romances
Clarissa tells the tragic story of a young woman, Clarissa Harlowe, whose quest for virtue is continually thwarted by her family. The Harlowes are a recently wealthy family whose preoccupation with increasing their standing in society leads to obsessive control of their daughter, Clarissa. It is considered one of the longest novels in the English language. In 2013 The Guardian included Clarissa among the 100 best novels written in English.


15. Atonement (2001)
Author: Ian McEwan
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16. The Waves (1931)
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Genre: Domestic fiction, Romances
The story revolves around three families in England at the beginning of the 20th century: the Wilcoxes, rich capitalists with a fortune made in the colonies; the half-German Schlegel siblings, whose cultural pursuits have much in common with the Bloomsbury Group; and the Basts, an impoverished young couple from a lower-class background. The idealistic, intelligent Schlegel sisters seek to help the struggling Basts and to rid the Wilcoxes of some of their deep-seated social and economic prejudices.
In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Howards End 38th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.


18. The Remains of the Day (1989)
Author: Kazuo Ishiguro
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19. Emma
Author: Jane Austen
Genre: Bildungsromans, Romances
Emma is set in the fictional country village of Highbury and the surrounding estates of Hartfield, Randalls and Donwell Abbey, and involves the relationships among people from a small number of families. Emma is spoiled, headstrong, and self-satisfied; she greatly overestimates her own matchmaking abilities; she is blind to the dangers of meddling in other people's lives; and her imagination and perceptions often lead her astray.


Author: Jane Austen
Genre: Romances
The story concerns Anne Elliot, a young Englishwoman of twenty-seven years, whose family moves to lower their expenses and reduce their debt by renting their home to an Admiral and his wife. The wife's brother, Navy Captain Frederick Wentworth, was engaged to Anne in 1806, but the engagement was broken when Anne was "persuaded" by her friends and family to end their relationship. Anne and Captain Wentworth, both single and unattached, meet again after a seven-year separation, setting the scene for many humorous encounters as well as a second, well-considered chance at love and marriage for Anne in her second "bloom". 


Genre: Adventure, Modernist Novel, Philosophical fiction, Existentialist novels
Heart of Darkness tells the story of Charles Marlow, a sailor who takes on an assignment from a Belgian trading company as a ferry-boat captain in the African interior. The novel is widely regarded as a critique of European colonial rule in Africa, whilst also examining the themes of power dynamics and morality. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Heart of Darkness 67th on their list of the 100 best novels in English of the twentieth century. 


Genre: Bildungsromans, Historical fiction, Picaresque Novel
The novel takes place against the backdrop of the Jacobite rising of 1745. Characters take different sides over the rebellion, which was an attempt to restore Roman Catholicism as the established religion of England and to undo the Glorious Revolution. 


Author: Thomas Hardy
Genre: Didactic fiction
The protagonist, Jude Fawley, is a working-class young man; he is a stonemason who dreams of becoming a scholar. The other main character is his cousin, Sue Bridehead, who is also his central love interest. The novel explores several social problems in Victorian England, especially those relating to the institutions of marriage, the Church, and education. 


24. The Golden Notebook (1962)
Author: Doris Lessing
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25. White Teeth (2000)
Author: Zadie Smith
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26. The Lord of the Rings (1954)
Author: J. R. R. Tolkien
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Author: Daniel Defoe
Genre: Adventure Novels, Historical fiction, Literary fiction
Epistolary, confessional, and didactic in form, the book is presented as an autobiography of the title character – a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical desert island near the coasts of Venezuela and Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and mutineers, before ultimately being rescued.


Genre: Romance, Gothic Fiction, Bildungsromans
After an unspecified family disaster, the protagonist Lucy Snowe travels from her native England to the fictional Continental city of Villette to teach at a girls' school, where she is drawn into adventure and romance. 


29. Brick Lane (2003)
Author: Monica Ali
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Author: Daniel Defoe
Genre: Picaresque Novels, Autobiography, Adventure Novels
Moll Flanders is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published in 1722. It purports to be the true account of the life of the eponymous Moll Flanders, detailing her exploits from birth until old age. Historically, the book was occasionally the subject of police censorship.


31. The End of the Affair (1951)
Author: Graham Greene
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Genre: Romances
A Room with a View is a 1908 novel by English writer Edward Morgan Forster, about a young woman in the restrained culture of Edwardian era England. Set in Italy and England, the story is both a romance and a humorous critique of English society at the beginning of the 20th century. The Modern Library ranked A Room with a View 79th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.


Genre: Children's Literature, Fantasy, Adventure.
The Wind in the Willows details the story of Mole, Ratty, and Badger as they try to help Mr. Toad, after he becomes obsessed with motorcars and gets into trouble. It also details short stories about them that are disconnected from the main narrative. The novel was based on bedtime stories Kenneth Grahame told his son Alastair. It has been adapted numerous times for both stage and screen. 


34. Never Let Me Go (2005)
Author: Kazuo Ishiguro
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35. Remainder (2005)
Author: Tom McCarthy
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36. A Dance to the Music of Time (1951)
Author: Anthony Powell
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37. Decline and Fall (1928)
Author: Evelyn Waugh
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38. The Passion (1987)
Author: Jeanette Winterson
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39. The Sense of an Ending (2011)
Author: Julian Barnes
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Genre: Fantasy, Adventure, Children's Literature
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland tells the story of a young girl named Alice who falls through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of anthropomorphic creatures. It is seen as an example of the literary nonsense genre. The book has never been out of print and has been translated into 174 languages.


Genre: Psychological fiction, Domestic fiction
Dombey and Son follows the fortunes of a shipping firm owner, who is frustrated at the lack of a son to follow him in his footsteps; he initially rejects his daughter's love before eventually becoming reconciled with her before his death. The story features many Dickensian themes, such as arranged marriages, child cruelty, betrayal, deceit, and relations between people from different British social classes.


42. Brighton Rock (1938)
Author: Graham Greene
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43. The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)
Author: Alan Hollinghurst
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44. Wolf Hall (2009)
Author: Hilary Mantel
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45. The Little Stranger (2009)
Author: Sarah Waters
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46. Midnight's Children (1981)
Author: Salman Rushdie
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Genre: General fiction
As its title suggests, the book is ostensibly Tristram's narration of his life story. But it is one of the central jokes of the novel that he cannot explain anything simply, that he must make explanatory diversions to add context and colour to his tale, to the extent that Tristram's own birth is not even reached until Volume III. 


48. Lucky Jim (1954)
Author: Kingsley Amis
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49. Possession (1990)
Author: A. S. Byatt
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Genre: Literary fiction, Political fiction
A Passage to India emerged at a time where portrayals of India as a savage, disorganized land in need of domination were more popular in mainstream European literature than romanticized depictions. The story revolves around four characters: Dr. Aziz, his British friend Mr. Cyril Fielding, Mrs. Moore, and Miss Adela Quested. During a trip to the fictitious Marabar Caves, Adela thinks she finds herself alone with Dr. Aziz in one of the caves, and subsequently panics and flees; it is assumed that Dr. Aziz has attempted to assault her.


Author: Thomas Hardy
Genre: Didactic fiction, Romance
One of the greatest English tragic novels, Tess of the d'Urbervilles is the story of a “pure woman” who is victimized both by conventional morality and its antithesis. Though now considered a major 19th-century English novel, Tess of the d'Urbervilles received mixed reviews when it first appeared, in part because it challenged the sexual morals of late Victorian England. Tess was portrayed as a fighter not only for her rights, but also for the rights of others. 


Genre: Psychological fiction
The story deals with the literary world that Gissing himself had experienced. Its two central characters are a sharply contrasted pair of writers: Edwin Reardon, a novelist of some talent but limited commercial prospects, and a shy, cerebral man; and Jasper Milvain, a young journalist, hard-working and capable of generosity, but cynical and only semi-scrupulous about writing and its purpose in the modern world.


53. Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)
Author: Jean Rhys
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54. NW: A Novel (2012)
Author: Zadie Smith
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Genre: Fantasy, Philosophical fiction
Satirising both human nature and the "travellers' tales" literary subgenre, Gulliver's Travels is Swift's best known full-length work, and a classic of English literature. Swift claimed that he wrote Gulliver's Travels "to vex the world rather than divert it".


56. Oranges are not the only Fruit (1985)
Author: Jeanette Winterson
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Genre: Historical fiction, Modernist Novel, War Novel
The novels chronicle the life of Christopher Tietjens, "the last Tory". His wife Sylvia is a flippant socialite who seems intent on ruining him through her sexual promiscuity. Tietjens may or may not be the father of his wife's child. Meanwhile, his incipient affair with Valentine Wannop, a high-spirited pacifist and women's suffragist, has not been consummated, despite what all their friends believe. The two central novels follow Tietjens in the army in France and Belgium, as well as Sylvia and Valentine in their separate paths over the course of the war.


58. Loving (1945)
Author: Henry Green
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59. The Line of Beauty (2004)
Author: Alan Hollinghurst
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Genre: Bildungsromans, Domestic fiction
Sons and Lovers is a 1913 novel by the English writer D. H. Lawrence. It traces emotional conflicts through the protagonist, Paul Morel, and his suffocating relationships with a demanding mother and two very different lovers, which exert complex influences on the development of his manhood.


61. The Sea, The Sea (1978)
Author: Iris Murdoch
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62. Animal Farm (1945)
Author: George Orwell
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63. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961)
Author: Muriel Spark
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Genre: Literary Fiction
The Way We Live Now is Anthony Trollope's longest, comprising 100 chapters, and is particularly rich in sub-plot. It was inspired by the financial scandals of the early 1870s; Trollope had just returned to England from abroad, and was appalled by the greed and dishonesty those scandals exposed. The Way We Live Now was his rebuke. It dramatised how such greed and dishonesty pervaded the commercial, political, moral, and intellectual life of that era.


65. Orlando: A Biography (1928)
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Author: Jane Austen
Genre: Romances, Domestic fiction
The novel follows the three Dashwood sisters as they must move with their widowed mother from the estate on which they grew up, Norland Park. Because Norland is passed down to John, the product of Mr. Dashwood's first marriage, and his young son, the four Dashwood women need to look for a new home. They have the opportunity to rent a modest home, Barton Cottage, on the property of a distant relative, Sir John Middleton. There Elinor and Marianne experience love, romance, and heartbreak. 


67. Crash: A Novel (1973)
Author: J. G. Ballard
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68. A Clockwork Orange (1962)
Author: Anthony Burgess
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Genre: Political fiction, Adventure novel, Literary fiction
In Nostromo, Joseph Conrad has transformed an apocryphal anecdote about a sailor who got away with stealing a boat loaded with silver into a grandly panoramic, yet deeply unsettling, narrative that sees every conceivable type of political person — from the laughably oafish and brutal to various shades of the well-meaning — caught up in an episode of revolutionary upheaval in the fictional South American country of Costaguana.


70. Daniel Deronda
Author: George Eliot
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71. Old Filth (2004)
Author: Jane Gardam
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72. The Heart of the Matter (1948)
Author: Graham Greene
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73. The Blue Flower (1995)
Author: Penelope Fitzgerald
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Author: Thomas Hardy
Genre: Psychological fiction, Literary fiction
The Mayor of Casterbridge opens with a scene of such heartlessness and cruelty that it still shocks readers today. A poor workman named Michael Henchard, in a fit of drunken rage, sells his wife and baby daughter to a stranger at a country fair. Stricken with remorse, Henchard forswears alcohol and works hard to become a prosperous businessman and the respected mayor of Casterbridge. But he cannot erase his past.


75. Women in Love (Soon)


76. Small Island (2004)
Author: Andrea Levy
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Genre: Bildungsromans, Psychological fiction
The story follows Phillip Carey from early childhood through his 30’s. The characters in Of Human Bondage are real-life with faults, qualities, and feelings that Maugham describes so vividly. At times the emotions in this novel will leave you either sad or happy and even perhaps, teary-eyed as the enthusiasm of youth is met with reality as Phillip tries to discover the meaning of his life through the dreams of others.


78. A House for Mr. Biswas (1961)
Author: V. S. Naipaul
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79. His Dark Materials (1995)
Author: Philip Pullman
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80. Excellent Women (1952)
Author: Barbara Pym
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81. The Jewel In The Crown (1966)
Author: Paul Scott
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82. Never Mind (1992)
Author: Edward St Aubyn
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82. Bad News (1992)
Author: Edward St Aubyn
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82. Some Hope (1994)
Author: Edward St Aubyn
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82. Mother's Milk (2005)
Author: Edward St Aubyn
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82. At Last (2012)
Author: Edward St Aubyn
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Genre: Domestic fiction, Romances.
Barchester Towers is a novel by English author Anthony Trollope published by Longmans in 1857. It is the second book in the Chronicles of Barsetshire series


84. Scoop (1938)
Author: Evelyn Waugh
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85. Regeneration (1991)
Author: Pat Barker
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86. A Legacy (1956)
Author: Sybille Bedford
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Genre: Domestic fiction
The Old Wives' Tale deals with the lives of two very different sisters, Constance and Sophia Baines, following their stories from their youth, working in their mother's draper's shop, into old age. It covers a period of about 70 years from roughly 1840 to 1905, and is set in Burslem and Paris. It is generally regarded as one of Bennett's finest works.


88. The Death of the Heart (1938)
Author: Elizabeth Bowen
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89. The Horse's Mouth (1944)
Author: Joyce Cary
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Genre: Sensation novel, Mystery story, Gothic Fiction.
The Woman in White is a mystery novel and falls under the genre of "sensation novels". The story can be seen as an early example of detective fiction with protagonist Walter Hartright employing many of the sleuthing techniques of later private detectives. 


Genre: Romances, Domestic fiction.
The Forsyte Saga is a series of three novels and two interludes published between 1906 and 1921 by the English author John Galsworthy, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature. They chronicle the vicissitudes of the leading members of a large upper-middle-class English family that is similar to John Galsworthy's. The main character, the solicitor and connoisseur Soames Forsyte, sees himself as a "man of property" by virtue of his ability to accumulate material possessions, but that does not succeed in bringing him pleasure. 


92. Cold Comfort Farm (1932)
Author: Stella Gibbons
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93. Lord of the Flies (1954)
Author: William Golding
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Author: James Hogg
Genre: Philosophical fiction, Crime, Gothic Fiction
The plot concerns Robert Wringhim, a staunch Calvinist who believes he is guaranteed Salvation and justified in killing those he believes are already damned by God. The novel has been classified among many genres, including gothic novel, psychological mystery, metafiction, satire and the study of totalitarian thought; it can also be thought of as an early example of modern crime fiction in which the story is told, for the most part, from the point of view of its criminal anti-hero. 


95. The Buddha of Suburbia (1990)
Author: Hanif Kureishi
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96. The Memoirs of a Survivor (1974)
Author: Doris May Lessing
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97. The Chronicles of Narnia (1950)
Author: C. S. Lewis
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98. Under the Volcano (1947)
Author: Malcolm Lowry
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99. There But For The (2011)
Author: Ali Smith
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100. The Code of the Woosters (1938)
Author: P. G. Wodehouse
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