Observer 100 Greatest Novels

Observer 100 Greatest Novels is an unranked selection published in 2003 — one of the 14 sources behind the book canon, weighted as editorial list. 58 of its 93 entries appear in the aggregated canon.

1. ·A Bend in the River — VS NaipaulCanon #189
2. ·A Passage to India — EM ForsterCanon #71
3. ·Alice's Adventures In Wonderland — Lewis CarrollCanon #48
4. ·American Pastoral — Philip Roth
5. ·An Artist of the Floating World — Kazuo Ishiguro
6. ·Anna Karenina — Leo TolstoyCanon #15
7. ·As I Lay Dying — William FaulknerCanon #221
8. ·Atonement — Ian McEwanCanon #136
9. ·Austerlitz — W. G. SebaldCanon #91
10. ·Brave New World — Aldous HuxleyCanon #38
11. ·Catch-22 — Joseph HellerCanon #56
12. ·Charlotte's Web — EB White
13. ·Clarissa — Samuel RichardsonCanon #127
14. ·Dangerous Liaisons — Pierre Choderlos De Laclos
15. ·Daniel Deronda — George EliotCanon #182
16. ·David Copperfield — Charles DickensCanon #49
17. ·Emma — Jane AustenCanon #155
18. ·Frankenstein — Mary ShelleyCanon #14
19. ·Gulliver's Travels — Jonathan SwiftCanon #111
20. ·Haroun and the Sea of Stories — Salman Rushdie
21. ·Herzog — Saul BellowCanon #203
22. ·Huckleberry Finn — Mark TwainCanon #31
23. ·If on a Winter's Night a Traveller — Italo Calvino
24. ·In Search of Lost Time — Marcel ProustCanon #50
25. ·Jane Eyre — Charlotte BrontëCanon #10
26. ·Journey to the End of the Night — Louis-Ferdinand CelineCanon #40
27. ·Jude the Obscure — Thomas HardyCanon #78
28. ·LA Confidential — James Ellroy
29. ·Lanark — Alasdair Gray
30. ·Little Women — Louisa M. AlcottCanon #33
31. ·Lolita — Vladimir NabokovCanon #24
32. ·Lord of the Flies — William GoldingCanon #100
33. ·Lucky Jim — Kingsley AmisCanon #233
34. ·Madame Bovary — Gustave FlaubertCanon #6
35. ·Malone Dies — Samuel Beckett
36. ·Men Without Women — Ernest Hemingway
37. ·Moby-Dick — Herman MelvilleCanon #8
38. ·Money — Martin Amis
39. ·Mrs Dalloway — Virginia WoolfCanon #18
40. ·Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont — Elizabeth Taylor
41. ·Nightmare Abbey — Thomas Love Peacock
42. ·Nineteen Eighty-Four — George OrwellCanon #13
43. ·Northern Lights — Philip Pullman
44. ·Nostromo — Joseph ConradCanon #43
45. ·One Hundred Years of Solitude — Gabriel García MárquezCanon #4
46. ·Oscar And Lucinda — Peter CareyCanon #188
47. ·Pilgrim's Progress — John BunyanCanon #152
48. ·Robinson Crusoe — Daniel DefoeCanon #55
49. ·Scoop — Evelyn Waugh
50. ·Song of Solomon — Toni MorrisonCanon #192
51. ·Sybil — Benjamin Disraeli
52. ·The BFG — Roald Dahl
53. ·The Big Sleep — Raymond ChandlerCanon #165
54. ·The Black Sheep — Honoré De Balzac
55. ·The Book of Laughter and Forgetting — Milan Kundera
56. ·The Bottle Factory Outing — Beryl Bainbridge
57. ·The Call of the Wild — Jack LondonCanon #92
58. ·The Charterhouse of Parma — StendhalCanon #195
59. ·The Count of Monte Cristo — Alexandre DumasCanon #54
60. ·The Diary of a Nobody — George Grossmith
61. ·The Executioner's Song — Norman Mailer
62. ·The Good Soldier — Ford Madox FordCanon #177
63. ·The Great Gatsby — F. Scott FitzgeraldCanon #19
64. ·The Lord Of The Rings — J. R. R. TolkienCanon #66
65. ·The New York Trilogy — Paul Auster
66. ·The Periodic Table — Primo Levi
67. ·The Picture of Dorian Gray — Oscar WildeCanon #73
68. ·The Plague — Albert CamusCanon #118
69. ·The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie — Muriel SparkCanon #96
70. ·The Pursuit Of Love — Nancy Mitford
71. ·The Quiet American — Graham Greene
72. ·The Rainbow — D. H. LawrenceCanon #95
73. ·The Riddle of the Sands — Erskine Childers
74. ·The Scarlet Letter — Nathaniel HawthorneCanon #58
75. ·The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde — Robert Louis Stevenson
76. ·The Thirty-Nine Steps — John Buchan
77. ·The Tin Drum — Günter GrassCanon #45
78. ·The Trial — Franz KafkaCanon #9
79. ·The Way We Live Now — Anthony Trollope
80. ·The Wind in the Willows — Kenneth GrahameCanon #147
81. ·The Woman in White — Wilkie CollinsCanon #79
82. ·Three Men in a Boat — Jerome K. Jerome
83. ·Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy — John Le CarréCanon #234
84. ·To Kill A Mockingbird — Harper LeeCanon #27
85. ·Tom Jones — Henry FieldingCanon #74
86. ·Tristram Shandy — Laurence SterneCanon #64
87. ·Ulysses — James JoyceCanon #1
88. ·USA — John Dos Passos
89. ·Vanity Fair — William Makepeace ThackerayCanon #39
90. ·Waiting for the Barbarians — JM Coetzee
91. ·Wise Blood — Flannery O'Connor
92. ·Wise Children — Angela Carter
93. ·Wuthering Heights — Emily BrontëCanon #7

List compiled and published by its original authors; positions shown as published. Canon ranks link to each entry's full evidence page.