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Tuesday, June 17

Pride and Prejudice Chosen One of the Greatest Novels of All Time!

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:

Anonymous said...

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.

Stephanie Perkins said...

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!)

Jeanette said...

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.

Sea Star said...

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

Anonymous said...

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.

Anonymous said...

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

bookwormans said...

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

Anonymous said...

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)

Anonymous said...

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

B R E N D A said...

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

laura said...

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~

Vic said...

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.)

Vic said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

This is difficult.
1. Pride and Prejudice
2. Walden
3. Little Women
4. To Kill a Mockingbird
5. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Unknown said...

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

Anonymous said...

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"

Anonymous said...

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

Unknown said...

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".

KT said...

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!