The British newspaper the Telegram has announced today the top 50 greatest novels ever written from a poll conducted at Play.com, a UK based online retailer of books, DVDs and music. Toping the list is Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mocking Bird, followed by JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Jane Austen’s Emma is also included on the list at number 25.
Pride and Prejudice has topped many of the recent polls, solidifying its value with readers and critics. It is also interesting to note as you peruse the list of 50 top choices, that many of the novels have been made into hit movies, proving that Hollywood recognizes the value of books as a meter of the public’s interest.
TOP 50 GREATEST NOVELS OF ALL TIME 2008 POLL WINNERS
1. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
2. Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S Lewis
4. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
5. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
6. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
7. Animal Farm - George Orwell
8. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
9. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - JK Rowling
10. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
11. The Time Travellers Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
12. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
13. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kasey
14. Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
15. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
16. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
17. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
18. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime - Mark Haddon
19. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
20. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
21. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
22. Sons and Lovers - DH Lawrence
23. Anna Kareninia - Leo Tolstoy
24. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
25. Emma - Jane Austen
26. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
27. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
28. My Sister's Keeper - Jodi Picoult
29. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
30. A Passage to India - E.M Forster
31. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
32. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
33. Atonement - Ian McEwan
34. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
35. In Search of Lost Time - Marcel Proust
36. Middlemarch - George Eliot
37. White Teeth - Zadie Smith
38. To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
39. It - Stephen King
40. Little Women - Louisa M. Alcott
41. Vanity Fair - William Thackeray
42. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
43. The Horse Whisperer - Nicholas Evans
44. Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe
45. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
46. Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift
47. Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
48. Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twin
49. Three Men in a Boat - Jerome K. Jerome
50. The Island - Victoria Hislop
What would be on your top 50 list of the greatest novels ever written? My top 5 entries would include
1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
3. Gone with the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
4. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
5. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
Enter your choice of the top five greatest novels ever written as a comment between June 17th - 22nd to be eligible to win a copy of the newly redesigned edition of Pride and Prejudice, by Oxford World Classics. A winner will be announced on Monday, June 23rd. Be creative, and happy reading to all.
Posted by Laurel Ann, Austenprose
19 comments:
There is no doubt at all in my mind about the top four and the order is arbitrary: the novels that JA published herself from S&S through to Emma. After that probably Northanger Abbey. Pretty uncompromising I know. There are lots of other worthy novels, but if its an issue of the 5 for my desert island then that is it. For me, everything else is a shadow compared to these.
Oh, this is tricky! I'm battling between my FAVORITE books and what I think are actually the BEST. Here's sort of a combined list:
1. Pride & Prejudice (naturally)
2. Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban (I was thrilled to see this on their list! I could talk for hours about how this book -- this specific one in the series -- revolutionized literature, creating an entirely new generation of readers. Gush gush gush.)
3. To Kill a Mockingbird
4. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Number five is a toss up between The Great Gatsby & Lolita, but I think I'll give the edge to Fitzgerald. (Even though I WANT to give it to Northanger Abbey or Emma!)
Hmmm...This has got me thinking.
1. Pride and Prejudice
2. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
3. One of Ours by Willa Cather
4. Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain
5. Anything by Charles Dickens but if I have to pick one I would say Our Mutual Friend
If it was a list of top ten then more of Austen would be listed and probably I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith.
It is always hard to pick a specific book. Usually I love one book and then read all them by that author and grow to love the author. I feel that way about Austen, Dickens, Gaskell, Potok, etc. I know I can pick up just about anything by them and know that it will be good. But here is a list off the top of my head.
1. Pride and Prejudice (of course).
2. The Chosen by Chaim Potok
3. To Kill a MockingBird
4. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
5. Les Miserables
It's hard to do such a list! Anyway, here is my top 5 books:
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (I think that everyone will choose this for the first place)
2. Atonement - Ian McEwan
3. Blindness - José Saramago
4. The Brooklyn Follies - Paul Auster
5. The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka
OMG! It's so hard! But it's here.
How difficult! I know I'll probably think of something after I write this!
1. Pride and Prejudice
2. Any Harry Potter (can I do that!)
3. Persuasion
4. Memoirs of a Geisha
5. Decameron
Here are my top 5 favorites:
1. "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Bronte
2. "Little Women" by Louisa May Alcott
3. "Bleak House" by Charles Dickens
4. "Les Miserables" by Victor Hugo
5. "Pride & Prejudice" by Jane Austen
For me, it quite a difficult choice to name the top 5 books that I like because I tend to read almost all the books that are written by my favourite authors such as Austen, Hardy, Rowling, Tolkien, etc. So here's my top 5 list:
1) Pride & Prejudice
2) Persuasion
3) Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy)
4) Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
5) War & Peace (Leo Tolstoy)
This is difficult because, as many others have said, when I like a book I read all others written by that author. However, my list, in a (probably daily) fluctuating order:
1. Persuasion
2. Pride and Prejudice
3. To Kill a Mockingbird
4. Anne of Green Gables
5. The Traitor's Tale (Margaret Frazer)
Am going to post this now before I get a chance to change it again... :)
Amy
Oh, that's a pretty good list. My favorites would be like this:
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
hmm...in no particular order, i would say:
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Ghost of Hannah Mendes by Naomi Ragen
Anna Karenina
Memoirs of a Geisha
and Little Women. and all of Jane Austen's books. oops that's more than 5. oh and His Banner Over Me by Jean Little
wow that was hard to pick...lol...i could probably go on for ours and ours about my fave books!
~laura~
I know I am not eligible for the contest, but I thought I would put my five cents in. Here are the books I would read over and over, and have read over and over:
*The Iliad and the Odyssey, Homer (I couldn't put it down in college; this classic took my breath away)
*Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen (26 reads and still counting.)
*Fathers and Sons, Ivan Turgenev (Five reads)
*Shakespeare's Plays, starting with King Lear (A no brainer)
*The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton (Two reads. It's time I read her again.)
This is difficult.
1. Pride and Prejudice
2. Walden
3. Little Women
4. To Kill a Mockingbird
5. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
This is fun! Though, like Stephanie said, it is hard to pick between favorite and best. And to narrow the list to five.
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith
5. The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
I've read everything I could get my hands on since I was three so it's really hard to pick! For my personal favorites though,I have to go with "Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass"
"The Lord of the Rings"
"Little Women"
"Stranger in a Strange Land"
and of course "Pride and Prejudice"
It's so hard to pick just 5, but here goes:
1. Wuthering Heights
2. Pride and Prejudice
3. Jane Eyre
4. Bleak House
5. The Awakening
Any list that includes The da Vinci Code at number 5 or at any rank on the list invalidates itself as an arbiter of "great novels of all time".
so hard....
1. Pride and Prejudice
2. ANYTHING by Jodi Picoult, though i will pick my sister's keeper.
3. Wuthering Heights
4. Northanger abbey or atonement, can't decide
5. The memory Keeper's Daughter
though...i think that my list is more favorite than greatest, in my mind me favorites ARE the greatest!
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