Lord(s) of the Books

Best 20th-Century English Novels

The epic fantasy novel by J. R. R. Tolkien, 'The Lord of the Rings', has been voted the Book of the Century by the buying public. Many critically acclaimed names such as T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Mann and Samuel Beckett failed to make it into the top 100 selected by the 25,000 voters.

George Orwell's dystopian 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' and his political satire 'Animal Farm' reached second and third places respectively, followed by James Joyce's Ulysses, though many of those who voted for this dense novel may not have read it.

More than 5,000 titles were nominated in a national survey conducted in the autumn by Waterstone's, the booksellers, and Channel 4's Book Choice programme. The public was invited to suggest up to five books.

Auberon Waugh, Editor of The Literary Review, expressed disbelief at Tolkien's win. "It's a little bit suspicious. It's like Mr Major coming out as the most popular man," he said. He suggested that the author's fans might have orchestrated a campaign, a charge rejected by Martin Grossel, a university lecturer in chemistry and leading light of Oxford's Tolkien Society. Tolkien fans "are not that sort of people", he said.

Mr Waugh felt that although Orwell's support was genuine, votes for Ulysses, whatever its merits, were "totally bogus". He suggested that the votes either came from English literature students or from people who were showing off.

Germaine Greer noted: "As a 57-year-old lifelong teacher of English, I might be expected to regard this particular list of books of the century with dismay. I do." Good writers such as Somerset Maugham and J.B. Priestley were among many who had been overlooked, she added.

While Kingsley Amis made the list with Lucky Jim, his son Martin was omitted. Some bestselling authors such as Jeffrey Archer did not make it.

Ross Shimmon, chief executive of the Library Association, said: "It seems to me a very sound selection. It's quite interesting that it's very different from the public lending rights figures."

Jung Chang's Wild Swans, an account of three generations of Chinese women surviving the nationalist and communist regimes, was the highest non-fiction entry at No 11. It was one of only 13 books on the list by women.

Alan Giles, managing director of Waterstone's, said: "Memories fade and therefore there's an over-representation of more recent writing. If we were to conduct the survey again in ten years, I wonder how many of those would still be on the list."

The Lord of the Rings is a tale of good and evil, the story of Frodo the Hobbit's search to return the Ring of Power to its source. First published in 1954, it achieved cult status in the Sixties and has remained in print ever since. On Booktrack's list of the top 5,000 bestsellers in Britain, The Lord of the Rings currently stands at No 537, selling 155 copies a week. Its author, born in 1892, was Merton Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford, and an authority on Anglo-Saxon literature. It is perhaps the escapism which its mythology offers that has provided its enduring appeal, the same escapism that has kept Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek going for decades.

Malcolm Bradbury, Professor Emeritus of American Literature at the University of East Anglia, said that, while he would not consider it a great work of literature, he was not surprised at its triumph. "It has a very special cultural value," he said. "It's a book that crosses the magic line between childhood and adulthood."

Note: Orwell's 'Down and out in Paris and London' also placed in the top 100.

1997

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‘Times of London’ as on January 20th, 1997.
by Dalya Alberge, arts correspondent and Erica Wagner, literary editor

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Best 20th-Century English Novels

1. ULYSSES by James Joyce
2. THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce
4. LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
5. BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
6. THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner
7. CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller
8. DARKNESS AT NOON by Arthur Koestler
9. SONS AND LOVERS by D.H. Lawrence
10. THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck
11. UNDER THE VOLCANO by Malcolm Lowry
12. THE WAY OF ALL FLESH by Samuel Butler
13. 1984 by George Orwell
14. I, CLAUDIUS by Robert Graves
15. TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf
16. AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY by Theodore Dreiser
17. THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER by Carson McCullers
18. SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
19. INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison
20. NATIVE SON by Richard Wright
21. HENDERSON THE RAIN KING by Saul Bellow
22. APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA by John O'Hara
23. U.S.A. (trilogy) by John Dos Passos
24. WINESBURG, OHIO by Sherwood Anderson
25. A PASSAGE TO INDIA by E.M. Forster
26. THE WINGS OF THE DOVE by Henry James
27. THE AMBASSADORS by Henry James
28. TENDER IS THE NIGHT by F. Scott Fitzgerald
29. THE STUDS LONIGAN TRILOGY by James T. Farrell
30. THE GOOD SOLDIER by Ford Madox Ford
31. ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
32. THE GOLDEN BOWL by Henry James
33. SISTER CARRIE by Theodore Dreiser
34. A HANDFUL OF DUST by Evelyn Waugh
35. AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner
36. ALL THE KING'S MEN by Robert Penn Warren
37. THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY by Thornton Wilder
38. HOWARDS END by E.M. Forster
39. GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN by James Baldwin
40. THE HEART OF THE MATTER by Graham Greene
41. LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
42. DELIVERANCE by James Dickey
43. A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME (series) by Anthony Powell
44. POINT COUNTER POINT by Aldous Huxley
45. THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway
46. THE SECRET AGENT by Joseph Conrad
47. NOSTROMO by Joseph Conrad
48. THE RAINBOW by D.H. Lawrence
49. WOMEN IN LOVE by D.H. Lawrence
50. TROPIC OF CANCER by Henry Miller
51. THE NAKED AND THE DEAD by Norman Mailer
52. PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT by Philip Roth
53. PALE FIRE by Vladimir Nabokov
54. LIGHT IN AUGUST by William Faulkner
55. ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac
56. THE MALTESE FALCON by Dashiell Hammett
57. PARADE'S END by Ford Madox Ford
58. THE AGE OF INNOCENCE by Edith Wharton
59. ZULEIKA DOBSON by Max Beerbohm
60. THE MOVIEGOER by Walker Percy
61. DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP by Willa Cather
62. FROM HERE TO ETERNITY by James Jones
63. THE WAPSHOT CHRONICLES by John Cheever
64. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger
65. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess
66. OF HUMAN BONDAGE by W. Somerset Maugham
67. HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad
68. MAIN STREET by Sinclair Lewis
69. THE HOUSE OF MIRTH by Edith Wharton
70. THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET by Lawrence Durrell
71. A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA by Richard Hughes
72. A HOUSE FOR MR BISWAS by V.S. Naipaul
73. THE DAY OF THE LOCUST by Nathanael West
74. A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway
75. SCOOP by Evelyn Waugh
76. THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE by Muriel Spark
77. FINNEGANS WAKE by James Joyce
78. KIM by Rudyard Kipling
79. A ROOM WITH A VIEW by E.M. Forster
80. BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by Evelyn Waugh
81. THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCH by Saul Bellow
82. ANGLE OF REPOSE by Wallace Stegner
83. A BEND IN THE RIVER by V.S. Naipaul
84. THE DEATH OF THE HEART by Elizabeth Bowen
85. LORD JIM by Joseph Conrad
86. RAGTIME by E.L. Doctorow
87. THE OLD WIVES' TALE by Arnold Bennett
88. THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London
89. LOVING by Henry Green
90. MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN by Salman Rushdie
91. TOBACCO ROAD by Erskine Caldwell
92. IRONWEED by William Kennedy
93. THE MAGUS by John Fowles
94. WIDE SARGASSO SEA by Jean Rhys
95. UNDER THE NET by Iris Murdoch
96. SOPHIE'S CHOICE by William Styron
97. THE SHELTERING SKY by Paul Bowles
98. THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE by James M. Cain
99. THE GINGER MAN by J.P. Donleavy
100. THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS by Booth Tarkington

2002

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‘The Modern Library's list of the top 100 English novels’
Courtesy of Charles — ‘Charles' George Orwell Links’ [www.netcharles.com/orwell/]
E-mail: <[email protected]>
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Original of this work is on the
URL: http://pages.citenet.net/users/charles/col-12.html

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Last modified on: 2019-12-29