Radcliffe's Top 100
On July 21, 1998, the Radcliffe Publishing Course compiled and released its own list of the century's top 100 novels, at the request of the Modern Library editorial board. The Radcliffe Publishing Course was a prestigious summer training program established in 1947 at Radcliffe College (Harvard University) that moved in 2000 to Columbia University, where it continues today as the Columbia Publishing Course. Harvard's Crimson article: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1998/7/24/class-ranks-top-100-novels-of/
- 1
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1925 · 0 lists
- 2
The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger · 1951 · 32 lists
- 3
The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck · 1939 · 32 lists
- 4
To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee · 1960 · 33 lists
- 5
The Color Purple
Alice Walker · 1982 · 20 lists
- 6
Ulysses
James Joyce · 1920 · 39 lists
- 7
Beloved
Toni Morrison · 1987 · 21 lists
- 8
Lord of the Flies
William Golding · 1954 · 14 lists
- 9
Nineteen Eighty-Four
George Orwell · 1948 · 0 lists
- 10
The Sound and the Fury
William Faulkner · 1929 · 26 lists
- 11
Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov · 1955 · 38 lists
- 12
Of Mice and Men
John Steinbeck · 1937 · 5 lists
- 13
Charlotte’s Web
E. B. White · 1952 · 0 lists
- 14
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
James Joyce · 1916 · 15 lists
- 15
Catch-22
Joseph Heller · 1961 · 0 lists
- 16
Brave New World
Aldous Huxley · 1932 · 17 lists
- 17
Animal Farm
George Orwell · 1945 · 15 lists
- 18
The Sun Also Rises
Ernest Hemingway · 1926 · 22 lists
- 19
As I Lay Dying
William Faulkner · 1915 · 0 lists
- 20
A Farewell to Arms
Ernest Hemingway · 1929 · 9 lists
- 21
Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad · 1899 · 29 lists
- 22
Winnie-the-Pooh
Christina Milner · 1926 · 0 lists
- 23
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston · 1937 · 22 lists
- 24
Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison · 1952 · 29 lists
- 25
Song of Solomon
Toni Morrison · 1977 · 14 lists
- 26
Gone With the Wind
Margaret Mitchell · 1936 · 22 lists
- 27
Native Son
Richard Wright · 1940 · 18 lists
- 28
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Ken Kesey · 1962 · 13 lists
- 29
Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut · 1969 · 0 lists
- 30
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Ernest Hemingway · 1940 · 13 lists
- 31
On the Road
Jack Kerouac · 1957 · 24 lists
- 32
The Old Man and the Sea
Ernest Hemingway · 1952 · 15 lists
- 33
The Call of the Wild
Jack London · 1903 · 13 lists
- 34
To The Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf · 1927 · 25 lists
- 35
The Portrait of a Lady
Henry James · 1881 · 13 lists
- 36
Go Tell It on the Mountain
James Baldwin · 1952 · 9 lists
- 37
The World According to Garp
John Irving · 1979 · 12 lists
- 38
All the King's Men
Robert Penn Warren · 1946 · 0 lists
- 39
A Room With a View
E. M. Forster · 1908 · 7 lists
- 40
The Lord of the Rings
J.R.R. Tolkien · 1954 · 23 lists
- 41
Schindler's List
Thomas Keneally · 1982 · 0 lists
- 42
The Age of Innocence
Edith Wharton · 1920 · 17 lists
- 43
The Fountainhead
Ayn Rand · 1943 · 0 lists
- 44
Finnegans Wake
James Joyce · 1928 · 7 lists
- 45
The Jungle
Upton Sinclair · 1906 · 8 lists
- 46
Mrs. Dalloway
Virginia Woolf · 1925 · 20 lists
- 47
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
L. Frank Baum · 1900 · 0 lists
- 48
Lady Chatterley's Lover
D.H. Lawrence · 1900 · 0 lists
- 49
A Clockwork Orange
Anthony Burgess · 1962 · 17 lists
- 50
The Awakening
Kate Chopin · 1899 · 6 lists
- 51
My Ántonia
Willa Cather · 1918 · 0 lists
- 52
Howards End
E. M. Forster · 1910 · 11 lists
- 53
In Cold Blood
Truman Capote · 1965 · 16 lists
- 54
Franny and Zooey
J.D. Salinger · 1961 · 3 lists
- 55
The Satanic Verses
Salman Rushdie · 1988 · 0 lists
- 56
Jazz
Toni Morrison · 1992 · 0 lists
- 57
Sophie’s Choice
William Styron · 1979 · 0 lists
- 58
Absalom, Absalom!
William Faulkner · 1936 · 16 lists
- 59
A Passage to India
E. M. Forster · 1924 · 18 lists
- 60
Ethan Frome
Edith Wharton · 1910 · 5 lists
- 61
A Good Man Is Hard to Find
Flannery O'Connor · 1955 · 0 lists
- 62
Tender is the Night
F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1933 · 7 lists
- 63
Orlando
Virginia Woolf · 1928 · 11 lists
- 64
Sons and Lovers
D.H. Lawrence · 1913 · 11 lists
- 65
The Bonfire of the Vanities
Tom Wolfe · 1987 · 0 lists
- 66
Cat’s Cradle
Kurt Vonnegut · 1963 · 0 lists
- 67
A Separate Peace
John Knowles · 1966 · 0 lists
- 68
Light in August
William Faulkner · 1931 · 0 lists
- 69
The Wings of the Dove
Henry James · 1902 · 4 lists
- 70
Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe · 1958 · 19 lists
- 71
Rebecca
Daphne Du Maurier · 1938 · 15 lists
- 72
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Douglas Adams · 1979 · 0 lists
- 73
Naked Lunch
William S. Burroughs · 1959 · 0 lists
- 74
Brideshead Revisited
Evelyn Waugh · 1945 · 10 lists
- 75
Women in Love
D.H. Lawrence · 1920 · 9 lists
- 76
Look Homeward, Angel
Thomas Wolfe · 1929 · 8 lists
- 77
In Our Time
Ernest Hemingway · 1925 · 0 lists
- 78
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
Gertrude Stein · 1933 · 3 lists
- 79
The Maltese Falcon
Dashiell Hammett · 1929 · 15 lists
- 80
The Naked and the Dead
Norman Mailer · 1948 · 0 lists
- 81
Wide Sargasso Sea
Jean Rhys · 1966 · 11 lists
- 82
White Noise
Don DeLillo · 1984 · 13 lists
- 83
O Pioneers!
Willa Cather · 1913 · 0 lists
- 84
Tropic of Cancer
Henry Miller · 1934 · 12 lists
- 85
The War of the Worlds
H. G. Wells · 1898 · 7 lists
- 86
Lord Jim
Joseph Conrad · 1900 · 9 lists
- 87
The Bostonians
Henry James · 1886 · 0 lists
- 88
An American Tragedy
Theodore Dreiser · 1900 · 0 lists
- 89
Death Comes for the Archbishop
Willa Cather · 1927 · 0 lists
- 90
The Wind in the Willows
Kenneth Grahame · 1908 · 0 lists
- 91
This Side of Paradise
F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1920 · 0 lists
- 92
Atlas Shrugged
Ayn Rand · 1936 · 0 lists
- 93
The French Lieutenant’s Woman
John Fowles · 1969 · 5 lists
- 94
Babbitt
Sinclair Lewis · 1922 · 6 lists
- 95
Kim
Rudyard Kipling · 1901 · 8 lists
- 96
The Beautiful and Damned
F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1922 · 0 lists
- 97
Rabbit, Run
John Updike · 1960 · 0 lists
- 98
Where Angels Fear to Tread
E. M. Forster · 2020 · 2 lists
- 99
Main Street
Sinclair Lewis · 1920 · 7 lists
- 100
Midnight’s Children
Salman Rushdie · 1981 · 25 lists