Modern Library 100 Best Novels
Modern Library's 100 Best Novels is a 1998 list of the best English-language novels published during the 20th century, as selected by Modern Library from among 400 novels published by Random House, which owns Modern Library. The purpose of the list was to "bring the Modern Library to public attention" and stimulate sales of its books. A separate Modern Library 100 Best Nonfiction list was created the same year.
- 1
Ulysses
James Joyce · 1920 · 39 lists
- 2
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1925 · 0 lists
- 3
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
James Joyce · 1916 · 15 lists
- 4
Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov · 1955 · 38 lists
- 5
Brave New World
Aldous Huxley · 1932 · 17 lists
- 6
The Sound and the Fury
William Faulkner · 1929 · 26 lists
- 7
Catch-22
Joseph Heller · 1961 · 29 lists
- 8
Darkness at Noon
Arthur Koestler · 1948 · 7 lists
- 9
Sons and Lovers
D.H. Lawrence · 1913 · 11 lists
- 10
The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck · 1939 · 32 lists
- 11
Under the Volcano
Malcolm Lowry · 1947 · 15 lists
- 12
The Way of All Flesh
Samuel Butler · 1903 · 3 lists
- 13
Nineteen Eighty-Four
George Orwell · 1948 · 0 lists
- 14
I, Claudius
Robert Graves · 1934 · 8 lists
- 15
To The Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf · 1927 · 25 lists
- 16
An American Tragedy
Theodore Dreiser · 1900 · 9 lists
- 17
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Carson McCullers · 1940 · 11 lists
- 18
Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut · 1969 · 19 lists
- 19
Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison · 1952 · 29 lists
- 20
Native Son
Richard Wright · 1940 · 18 lists
- 21
Henderson the Rain King
Saul Bellow · 1958 · 4 lists
- 22
Appointment in Samarra
John O'Hara · 1934 · 3 lists
- 23
The Big Money
John Dos Passos · 1936 · 1 list
- 24
Winesburg, Ohio
Sherwood Anderson · 1919 · 0 lists
- 25
A Passage to India
E. M. Forster · 1924 · 18 lists
- 26
The Wings of the Dove
Henry James · 1902 · 4 lists
- 27
The Ambassadors
Henry James · 1903 · 8 lists
- 28
Tender is the Night
F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1933 · 7 lists
- 29
Studs Lonigan
James T. Farrell · 1932 · 2 lists
- 30
The Good Soldier
Ford Madox Ford · 1915 · 12 lists
- 31
Animal Farm
George Orwell · 1945 · 15 lists
- 32
The Golden Bowl
Henry James · 1904 · 6 lists
- 33
Sister Carrie
Theodore Dreiser · 1900 · 4 lists
- 34
A Handful of Dust
Evelyn Waugh · 1934 · 5 lists
- 35
As I Lay Dying
William Faulkner · 1915 · 18 lists
- 36
All the King's Men
Robert Penn Warren · 1946 · 10 lists
- 37
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Thornton Wilder · 1927 · 5 lists
- 38
Howards End
E. M. Forster · 1910 · 11 lists
- 39
Go Tell It on the Mountain
James Baldwin · 1952 · 9 lists
- 40
The Heart of the Matter
Graham Greene · 1948 · 6 lists
- 41
Lord of the Flies
William Golding · 1954 · 14 lists
- 42
Deliverance
James Dickey · 1970 · 4 lists
- 43
A Dance to the Music of Time
Anthony Powell · 1951 · 5 lists
- 44
Point Counter Point
Aldous Huxley · 1928 · 1 list
- 45
The Sun Also Rises
Ernest Hemingway · 1926 · 22 lists
- 46
The Secret Agent
Joseph Conrad · 1907 · 4 lists
- 47
Nostromo
Joseph Conrad · 1904 · 9 lists
- 48
The Rainbow
D.H. Lawrence · 1915 · 5 lists
- 49
Women in Love
D.H. Lawrence · 1920 · 9 lists
- 50
Tropic of Cancer
Henry Miller · 1934 · 12 lists
- 51
The Naked and the Dead
Norman Mailer · 1948 · 8 lists
- 52
Portnoy’s Complaint
Philip Roth · 1967 · 7 lists
- 53
Pale Fire
Vladimir Nabokov · 1962 · 13 lists
- 54
Light in August
William Faulkner · 1931 · 9 lists
- 55
On the Road
Jack Kerouac · 1957 · 24 lists
- 56
The Maltese Falcon
Dashiell Hammett · 1929 · 15 lists
- 57
Parade's End
Ford Madox Ford · 1950 · 4 lists
- 58
The Age of Innocence
Edith Wharton · 1920 · 17 lists
- 59
Zuleika Dobson
Max Beerbohm · 1911 · 3 lists
- 60
The Moviegoer
Walker Percy · 1961 · 8 lists
- 61
Death Comes for the Archbishop
Willa Cather · 1927 · 6 lists
- 62
From Here to Eternity
James Jones · 2017 · 2 lists
- 63
The Wapshot Chronicle
John Cheever · 1957 · 3 lists
- 64
The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger · 1951 · 32 lists
- 65
A Clockwork Orange
Anthony Burgess · 1962 · 17 lists
- 66
Of Human Bondage
W. Somerset Maugham · 1915 · 7 lists
- 67
Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad · 1899 · 29 lists
- 68
Main Street
Sinclair Lewis · 1920 · 7 lists
- 69
The House of Mirth
Edith Wharton · 1905 · 8 lists
- 70
The Alexandria Quartet
Lawrence Durrell · 1961 · 3 lists
- 71
A High Wind in Jamaica
Richard Hughes · 1964 · 1 list
- 72
A House for Mr Biswas
V.S. Naipaul · 1961 · 10 lists
- 73
The Day of the Locust
Nathanael West · 1939 · 6 lists
- 74
A Farewell to Arms
Ernest Hemingway · 1929 · 9 lists
- 75
Scoop
Evelyn Waugh · 1938 · 0 lists
- 76
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Muriel Spark · 1961 · 13 lists
- 77
Finnegans Wake
James Joyce · 1928 · 7 lists
- 78
Kim
Rudyard Kipling · 1901 · 8 lists
- 79
A Room With a View
E. M. Forster · 1908 · 7 lists
- 80
Brideshead Revisited
Evelyn Waugh · 1945 · 10 lists
- 81
The Adventures of Augie March
Saul Bellow · 1953 · 11 lists
- 82
Angle of Repose
Wallace Stegner · 1971 · 5 lists
- 83
A Bend in the River
V.S. Naipaul · 1979 · 5 lists
- 84
The Death of the Heart
Elizabeth Bowen · 1938 · 0 lists
- 85
Lord Jim
Joseph Conrad · 1900 · 9 lists
- 86
Ragtime
E.L. Doctorow · 1974 · 10 lists
- 87
The Old Wives' Tale
Arnold Bennett · 1908 · 0 lists
- 88
The Call of the Wild
Jack London · 1903 · 13 lists
- 89
Loving
Henry Green · 1945 · 4 lists
- 90
Midnight’s Children
Salman Rushdie · 1981 · 25 lists
- 91
Tobacco Road
Erskine Caldwell · 1932 · 2 lists
- 92
Ironweed
William Kennedy · 1983 · 4 lists
- 93
The Magus
John Fowles · 1965 · 4 lists
- 94
Wide Sargasso Sea
Jean Rhys · 1966 · 11 lists
- 95
Under the Net
Iris Murdoch · 1954 · 3 lists
- 96
Sophie’s Choice
William Styron · 1979 · 0 lists
- 97
The Sheltering Sky
Paul Bowles · 1948 · 6 lists
- 98
The Postman Always Rings Twice
James M. Cain · 1934 · 6 lists
- 99
The Ginger Man
J.P. Donleavy · 1956 · 2 lists
- 100
The Magnificent Ambersons
Booth Tarkington · 1918 · 3 lists