The Best English-Language Novels, 1900-2010

The adjective "best" in the post title is a bit misleading. The description "most significant" is probably more apt. Listed below are what are arguably the 300 most significant English-language novels and novellas published since 1900. The list was assembled from several "Best of" lists. Most of the titles included under the Group A through G headings can be found on one or more of the following lists:

• The Modern Library Board list of the 100 Best English-Language Novels of the 20th Century
• The Radcliffe Publishing Course's rival list of the 20th Century's 100 Best English-Language Novels
• Time magazine's list of the 100 Best English-Language Novels published between 1923 and 2005
• The New York Times poll that asked "What Is the Best Work of American Fiction of the Last 25 Years?", which covered work published between 1980 and 2005

Additionally, the following published lists were consulted, although a book had to be mentioned in more than one of them to rate inclusion in the A through G groups:

• Entertainment Weekly's list of the 100 Best Reads from 1983 to 2008
• The reading-list appendices in The Western Canon, by Harold Bloom
• The Modern Library Readers' list of the 100 Best English-Language Novels of the 20th Century
• The Le Monde list of the 100 best books of the 20th century
• The Telegraph's "Perfect Library" of 110 best books

The groupings in Groups A through G were determined by descending number of mentions. Group A titles received the most mentions, Group B received the second-most, and so on. There were two exceptions among the titles: Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers. The Conrad novella was elevated to Group B from Group C due to its status as perhaps the single most assigned English-language novel or novella in North American high-school and college English courses. (I also wanted a de facto top ten.) The Lawrence novel was elevated from Group E to Group D because the consulted lists skew somewhat against efforts prior to 1923, and he seemed by far the author most impacted.
Trilogies and other multi-volume works are not divided among the various groups. If more than one book in a multi-volume effort is deemed worthy of inclusion, then they are all listed under the same group heading.
The books under the Group H heading are my own personal choices. They were intended to name authors and works I felt were most conspicuously missing from the other groupings. Particular attention was given to prominent children's, young-adult, crime, horror, fantasy, and science-fiction novels. The only rule was that no author could have more than one book or multi-volume effort listed under the heading.
If one chooses to look at these listings as a lifetime reading list, the best approach is probably to work one's way down.
Happy Reading!
Group A

• F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
• Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
• George Orwell, 1984
• J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

Group B

• Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
• William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
• Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
• James Joyce, Ulysses
• Jack Kerouac, On the Road
• John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

Group C

• Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
• William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
• William Faulkner, Light in August
• E. M. Forster, A Passage to India
• William Golding, Lord of the Flies
• Joseph Heller, Catch-22
• Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
• James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
• Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano
• Toni Morrison, Beloved
• Philip Roth, American Pastoral
• Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children
• J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Book One: The Fellowship of the Ring
• J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Book Two: The Two Towers
• J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Book Three: The Return of the King
• Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

Group D

• Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
• Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky
• Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
• Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim
• Don DeLillo, White Noise
• Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy
• Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
• D. H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers
• Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
• Jack London, The Call of the Wild
• Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
• Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
• Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
• Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
• George Orwell, Animal Farm
• Walker Percy, The Moviegoer
• John Updike, Rabbit, Run (The Rabbit Tetralogy, Book One)
• John Updike, Rabbit Redux (The Rabbit Tetralogy, Book Two)
• John Updike, Rabbit Is Rich (The Rabbit Tetralogy, Book Three)
• John Updike, Rabbit at Rest (The Rabbit Tetralogy, Book Four)
• Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
• Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men
• Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited
• Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
• Richard Wright, Native Son

Group E

• Martin Amis, Money
• James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain
• Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March
• Saul Bellow, Herzog
• William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch
• Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop
• Willa Cather, My Ántonia
• Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep
• Joseph Conrad, Nostromo
• Don DeLillo, Underworld
• John Dos Passos, The 42nd Parallel (The U. S. A. Trilogy, Book One)
• John Dos Passos, 1919 (The U. S. A. Trilogy, Book Two)
• John Dos Passos, The Big Money (The U. S. A. Trilogy, Book Three)
• William Faulkner, Absalom! Absalom!
• F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night
• Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier
• E. M. Forster, Howards End
• John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman
• William Gaddis, The Recognitions
• Robert Graves, I, Claudius
• Henry Green, Loving
• Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter
• Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
• Henry James, The Wings of the Dove
• James Joyce, Finnegans Wake
• Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
• Rudyard Kipling, Kim
• D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow (The Brangwen Sisters Duology, Book One)
• D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love (The Brangwen Sisters Duology, Book Two)
• Ian McEwan, Atonement
• Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
• Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire
• V. S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River
• V. S. Naipaul, A House for Mr. Biswas
• Flannery O’Connor, Wise Blood
• Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
• Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea
• Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping
• Philip Roth, Portnoy’s Complaint
• Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
• William Styron, Sophie’s Choice
• Evelyn Waugh, A Handful of Dust
• Evelyn Waugh, Scoop
• Nathanael West, The Day of the Locust
• Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

Group F

• Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
• Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim
• Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio
• Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
• John Barth, The Sot-Weed Factor
• Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson
• Arnold Bennett, The Old Wives’ Tale
• Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart
• Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh
• A. S. Byatt, Possession
• Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda
• Willa Cather, O Pioneers!
• Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent
• Don DeLillo, Libra
• James Dickey, Deliverance
• E. L. Doctorow, Ragtime
• E. L. Doctorow, World’s Fair
• Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie
• Lawrence Durrell, The Alexandria Quartet, Book One: Justine
• Lawrence Durrell, The Alexandria Quartet, Book Two: Balthazar
• Lawrence Durrell, The Alexandria Quartet, Book Three: Mountolive
• Lawrence Durrell, The Alexandria Quartet, Book Four: Clea
• Ford Madox Ford, Parade’s End, Book One: Some Do Not…
• Ford Madox Ford, Parade’s End, Book Two: No More Parades
• Ford Madox Ford, Parade’s End, Book Three: A Man Could Stand Up—
• Ford Madox Ford, Parade’s End, Book Four: Last Post
• Richard Ford, The Sportswriter (The Frank Bascombe Trilogy, Book One)
• Richard Ford, Independence Day (The Frank Bascombe Trilogy, Book Two)
• Richard Ford, The Lay of the Land (The Frank Bascombe Trilogy, Book Three)
• E. M. Forster, A Room with a View
• John Fowles, The Magus
• Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections
• William Gibson, Neuromancer
• Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
• Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory
• Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon
• Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls
• Aldous Huxley, Point Counter Point
• John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany
• John Irving, The World According to Garp
• Christopher Isherwood, The Berlin Stories
• Henry James, The Ambassadors
• Henry James, The Golden Bowl
• Thomas Keneally, Schindler’s List
• William Kennedy, Ironweed
• D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover
• Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
• Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt
• Sinclair Lewis, Main Street
• Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead
• W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage
• Cormac McCarthy, Suttree
• Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons, Watchmen
• Iris Murdoch, Under the Net
• Flann O’Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds
• John O’Hara, Appointment in Samarra
• Anthony Powell, A Dance to the Music of Time, Book One: A Question of Upbringing
• Anthony Powell, A Dance to the Music of Time, Book Two: A Buyer’s Market
• Anthony Powell, A Dance to the Music of Time, Book Three: The Acceptance World
• Anthony Powell, A Dance to the Music of Time, Book Four: At Lady Molly’s
• Anthony Powell, A Dance to the Music of Time, Book Five: Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant
• Anthony Powell, A Dance to the Music of Time, Book Six: The Kindly Ones
• Anthony Powell, A Dance to the Music of Time, Book Seven: The Valley of Bones
• Anthony Powell, A Dance to the Music of Time, Book Eight: The Soldier’s Art
• Anthony Powell, A Dance to the Music of Time, Book Nine: The Military Philosophers
• Anthony Powell, A Dance to the Music of Time, Book Ten: Books Do Furnish a Room
• Anthony Powell, A Dance to the Music of Time, Book Eleven: Temporary Kings
• Anthony Powell, A Dance to the Music of Time, Book Twelve: Hearing Secret Harmonies
• Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
• Thomas Pynchon, V.
• Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
• Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
• Philip Roth, The Counterlife
• Philip Roth, Operation Shylock
• Philip Roth, Sabbath’s Theater
• Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses
• Christina Stead, The Man Who Loved Children
• Robert Stone, Dog Soldiers
• Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle
• Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome
• Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth
• E. B. White, Charlotte’s Web
• Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey
• Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities
• Virginia Woolf, Orlando

Group G

• James Agee, A Death in the Family
• Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
• L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
• Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King
• Judy Blume, Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret
• James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice
• Erskine Caldwell, Tobacco Road
• John Cheever, Falconer
• John Cheever, The Wapshot Chronicle
• Philip K. Dick, Ubik
• Joan Didion, Play It as It Lays
• J. P. Donleavy, The Ginger Man
• Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca
• James T. Farrell, Studs Lonigan, Book One: Young Lonigan
• James T. Farrell, Studs Lonigan, Book Two: The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan
• James T. Farrell, Studs Lonigan, Book Three: Judgment Day
• F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and the Damned
• F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise
• E. M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread
• Dashiell Hammett, Red Harvest
• Mark Helprin, Winter’s Tale
• Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
• Richard Hughes, A High Wind in Jamaica
• Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
• Edward P. Jones, The Known World
• James Jones, From Here to Eternity
• John Knowles, A Separate Peace
• Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon
• Jerzy Kosinski, The Painted Bird
• John le Carré, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
• C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
• Bernard Malamud, The Assistant
• Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses (The Border Trilogy, Book One)
• Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing (The Border Trilogy, Book Two)
• Cormac McCarthy, Fires on the Plain (The Border Trilogy, Book Three)
• A. A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh
• Toni Morrison, Jazz
• Henry Roth, Call It Sleep
• Philip Roth, The Human Stain
• Philip Roth, The Plot Against America
• Norman Rush, Mating
• J. D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey
• Upton Sinclair, The Jungle
• Zadie Smith, White Teeth
• Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose
• John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men
• Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
• William Styron, The Confessions of Nat Turner
• Booth Tarkington, The Magnificent Ambersons
• John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces
• Alice Walker, The Color Purple
• David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
• Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel
• Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road

Group H

• Richard Adams, Watership Down
• Djuna Barnes, Nightwood
• Saul Bellow, Seize the Day
• Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
• Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth
• Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s
• Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game
• Joyce Cary, The Horse’s Mouth
• Willa Cather, A Lost Lady
• Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
• Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood’s End
• Michael Crichton, The Andromeda Strain
• Robertson Davies, Fifth Business
• Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
• Thomas M. Disch, On Wings of Song
• Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles
• Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad
• John Fowles, The Collector
• William Gaddis, J R
• Nadine Gordimer, The Conservationist
• Judith Guest, Ordinary People
• Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
• Frank Herbert, Dune
• Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr. Ripley
• S. E. Hinton, The Outsiders
• Laura Z. Hobson, Gentlemen’s Agreement
• Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day
• Stephen King, The Stand
• John le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
• Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
• Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here
• H. P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness
• Bernard Malamud, The Fixer
• Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall
• Richard Matheson, I Am Legend
• W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor’s Edge
• Cormac McCarthy, The Road
• Mary McCarthy, The Group
• Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove
• Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn
• Walter M. Miller, Jr., A Canticle for Liebowitz
• Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
• Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye
• Ngugi wa-Thion’go, A Grain of Wheat
• Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country
• Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
• Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling
• Philip Roth, Goodbye, Columbus
• J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Book One)
• J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Book Two)
• J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Book Three)
• J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Book Four)
• J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Book Five)
• J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Book Six)
• J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book Seven)
• Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones
• Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
• John Steinbeck, East of Eden
• Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club
• Jim Thompson, The Killer Inside Me
• Jean Toomer, Cane
• Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
• Chris Ware, Jimmy Corrigan
• Rebecca West, The Return of the Soldier
• Edith Wharton, The Custom of the Country