BBC 100 Greatest British Novels
BBC Culture polled book critics outside the UK, to give an outsider’s perspective on the best in British literature. 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 Paradise Lost or Beowulf), no short story collections (no Morte D’Arthur) – novels only, by British authors (which means no James Joyce). https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20151204-the-100-greatest-british-novels
- 1
Middlemarch
George Eliot · 1871 · 26 lists
- 2
To The Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf · 1927 · 25 lists
- 3
Mrs. Dalloway
Virginia Woolf · 1925 · 20 lists
- 4
Great Expectations
Charles Dickens · 1861 · 19 lists
- 5
Jane Eyre
Charlotte Brontë · 1847 · 26 lists
- 6
Bleak House
Charles Dickens · 1850 · 11 lists
- 7
Wuthering Heights
Emily Brontë · 1847 · 29 lists
- 8
David Copperfield
Charles Dickens · 1850 · 19 lists
- 9
Frankenstein
Mary Shelley · 1818 · 20 lists
- 10
Vanity Fair
William Makepeace Thackeray · 1847 · 15 lists
- 11
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen · 1813 · 28 lists
- 12
Nineteen Eighty-Four
George Orwell · 1948 · 36 lists
- 13
The Good Soldier
Ford Madox Ford · 1915 · 12 lists
- 14
Clarissa
Samuel Richardson · 1748 · 6 lists
- 15
Atonement
Ian McEwan · 2001 · 18 lists
- 16
The Waves
Virginia Woolf · 1931 · 9 lists
- 17
Howards End
E. M. Forster · 1910 · 11 lists
- 18
The Remains of the Day
Kazuo Ishiguro · 1989 · 14 lists
- 19
Emma
Jane Austen · 1815 · 12 lists
- 20
Persuasion
Jane Austen · 1817 · 7 lists
- 21
Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad · 1899 · 29 lists
- 22
Tom Jones
Henry Fielding · 1749 · 11 lists
- 23
Jude the Obscure
Thomas Hardy · 1895 · 8 lists
- 24
The Golden Notebook
Doris Lessing · 1962 · 7 lists
- 25
White Teeth
Zadie Smith · 2000 · 17 lists
- 26
The Lord of the Rings
J.R.R. Tolkien · 1954 · 23 lists
- 27
Robinson Crusoe
Daniel Defoe · 1719 · 11 lists
- 28
Villette
Charlotte Brontë · 1853 · 4 lists
- 29
Brick Lane
Monica Ali · 2003 · 2 lists
- 30
Moll Flanders
Daniel Defoe · 1722 · 3 lists
- 31
The End of the Affair
Graham Greene · 1951 · 6 lists
- 32
A Room With a View
E. M. Forster · 1908 · 7 lists
- 33
The Wind in the Willows
Kenneth Grahame · 1908 · 12 lists
- 34
Never Let Me Go
Kazuo Ishiguro · 2005 · 11 lists
- 35
Remainder
Tom McCarthy · 2007 · 1 list
- 36
A Dance to the Music of Time
Anthony Powell · 1951 · 5 lists
- 37
Decline and Fall
Evelyn Waugh · 1776 · 2 lists
- 38
The Passion
Jeanette Winterson · 1964 · 3 lists
- 39
The Sense of an Ending
Julian Barnes · 2011 · 4 lists
- 40
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll · 1865 · 26 lists
- 41
Dombey and Son
Charles Dickens · 1848 · 2 lists
- 42
Brighton Rock
Graham Greene · 1938 · 5 lists
- 43
The Swimming-Pool Library
Alan Hollinghurst · 1988 · 2 lists
- 44
Wolf Hall
Hilary Mantel · 2009 · 12 lists
- 45
The Little Stranger
Sarah Waters · 2009 · 1 list
- 46
Midnight’s Children
Salman Rushdie · 1981 · 25 lists
- 47
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
Laurence Sterne · 1759 · 18 lists
- 48
Lucky Jim
Kingsley Amis · 1953 · 6 lists
- 49
Possession
A. S. Byatt · 1990 · 6 lists
- 50
A Passage to India
E. M. Forster · 1924 · 18 lists
- 51
Tess Of The D'Urbervilles
Thomas Hardy · 1891 · 10 lists
- 52
New Grub Street
George Gissing · 1891 · 3 lists
- 53
Wide Sargasso Sea
Jean Rhys · 1966 · 11 lists
- 54
NW
Zadie Smith · 2012 · 3 lists
- 55
Gulliver’s Travels
Jonathan Swift · 1726 · 17 lists
- 56
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
Jeanette Winterson · 1985 · 3 lists
- 57
Parade's End
Ford Madox Ford · 1950 · 4 lists
- 58
Loving
Henry Green · 1945 · 4 lists
- 59
The Line of Beauty
Alan Hollinghurst · 2004 · 6 lists
- 60
Sons and Lovers
D.H. Lawrence · 1913 · 11 lists
- 61
The Sea, the Sea
Iris Murdoch · 1952 · 5 lists
- 62
Animal Farm
George Orwell · 1945 · 15 lists
- 63
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Muriel Spark · 1961 · 13 lists
- 64
The Way We Live Now
Anthony Trollope · 1875 · 4 lists
- 65
Orlando
Virginia Woolf · 1928 · 11 lists
- 66
Sense and Sensibility
Jane Austen · 1811 · 6 lists
- 67
Crash
J.G. Ballard · 1973 · 4 lists
- 68
A Clockwork Orange
Anthony Burgess · 1962 · 17 lists
- 69
Nostromo
Joseph Conrad · 1904 · 9 lists
- 70
Daniel Deronda
George Eliot · 1800 · 5 lists
- 71
Old Filth
Jane Gardam · 2004 · 1 list
- 72
The Heart of the Matter
Graham Greene · 1948 · 6 lists
- 73
The Blue Flower
Penelope Fitzgerald · 1902 · 4 lists
- 74
The Mayor of Casterbridge
Thomas Hardy · 1919 · 5 lists
- 75
Women in Love
D.H. Lawrence · 1920 · 9 lists
- 76
Small Island
Andrea Levy · 2004 · 6 lists
- 77
Of Human Bondage
W. Somerset Maugham · 1915 · 7 lists
- 78
A House for Mr Biswas
V.S. Naipaul · 1961 · 10 lists
- 79
His Dark Materials
Philip Pullman · 2000 · 8 lists
- 80
Excellent Women
Barbara Pym · 1952 · 2 lists
- 81
The Jewel In The Crown
Paul Scott · 1966 · 1 list
- 82
Never Mind
Edward St Aubyn · 1992 · 3 lists
- 83
Bad News
Edward St Aubyn · 1999 · 1 list
- 84
Some Hope
Edward St Aubyn · 1994 · 1 list
- 85
Mother's Milk
Edward St Aubyn · 2005 · 2 lists
- 86
At Last
Edward St Aubyn · 2021 · 1 list
- 87
Barchester Towers
Anthony Trollope · 1857 · 3 lists
- 88
Scoop
Evelyn Waugh · 1938 · 4 lists
- 89
Regeneration
Pat Barker · 1991 · 5 lists
- 90
A Legacy
Sybille Bedford · 1956 · 1 list
- 91
The Old Wives' Tale
Arnold Bennett · 1908 · 4 lists
- 92
The Death of the Heart
Elizabeth Bowen · 1938 · 5 lists
- 93
The Horse's Mouth
Joyce Cary · 1944 · 1 list
- 94
The Woman in White
Wilkie Collins · 1860 · 11 lists
- 95
The Forsyte Saga
John Galsworthy · 1898 · 5 lists
- 96
Cold Comfort Farm
Stella Gibbons · 1932 · 5 lists
- 97
Lord of the Flies
William Golding · 1954 · 14 lists
- 98
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
James Hogg · 1824 · 3 lists
- 99
The Buddha of Suburbia
Hanif Kureishi · 1990 · 2 lists
- 100
The Memoirs of a Survivor
Doris Lessing · 1974 · 1 list
- 101
The Chronicles of Narnia
C.S. Lewis · 1970 · 3 lists
- 102
Under the Volcano
Malcolm Lowry · 1947 · 15 lists
- 103
There But For The
Ali Smith · 2011 · 3 lists
- 104
The Code of the Woosters
P. G. Wodehouse · 1938 · 3 lists