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List added by coroner on 21 September 2008 01:23
The Observer's The 100 Greatest Novels of All Time |
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 51  8 The story of the gentle knight and his servant Sancho Panza has entranced readers for centuries.
The one with the Slough of Despond and Vanity Fair.
A wonderful satire that still works for all ages, despite the savagery of Swift's vision.
The adventures of a high-spirited orphan boy: an unbeatable plot and a lot of sex ending in a blissful marriage.
One of the longest novels in the English language, but unputdownable.
One of the first bestsellers, dismissed by Dr Johnson as too fashionable for its own good.
An epistolary novel and a handbook for seducers: foppish, French, and ferocious.
69 7.1 Near impossible choice between this and Pride and Prejudice. But Emma never fails to fascinate and annoy.
Inspired by spending too much time with Shelley and Byron.
A classic miniature: a brilliant satire on the Romantic novel.
Two rivals fight for the love of a femme fatale. Wrongly overlooked.
Penetrating and compelling chronicle of life in an Italian court in post-Napoleonic France.
A revenge thriller also set in France after Bonaparte: a masterpiece of adventure writing.
3 7 Apart from Churchill, no other British political figure shows literary genius.
This highly autobiographical novel is the one its author liked best.
185 7.7 Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff have passed into the language. Impossible to ignore.
19 8.3 'Call me Ishmael' is one of the most famous opening sentences of any novel.
40 7.4 You could summarise this as a story of adultery in provincial France, and miss the point entirely.
Gripping mystery novel of concealed identity, abduction, fraud and mental cruelty.
A story written for the nine-year-old daughter of an Oxford don that still baffles most kids.
Victorian bestseller about a New England family of girls.
A majestic assault on the corruption of late Victorian England.
31 7.2 The supreme novel of the married woman's passion for a younger man.
A passion and an exotic grandeur that is strange and unsettling.
The story of Isabel Archer shows James at his witty and polished best.
173 7.5 Twain was a humorist, but this picture of Mississippi life is profoundly moral and still incredibly influential.
39 7.8 A brilliantly suggestive, resonant study of human duality by a natural storyteller.
One of the funniest English books ever written.
200 8.3 A coded and epigrammatic melodrama inspired by his own tortured homosexuality.
This classic of Victorian suburbia will always be renowned for the character of Mr Pooter.
Its savage bleakness makes it one of the first twentieth-century novels.
A prewar invasion-scare spy thriller by a writer later shot for his part in the Irish republican rising.
26 7.9 The story of a dog who joins a pack of wolves after his master's death.
Conrad's masterpiece: a tale of money, love and revolutionary politics.
18 8.2 This children's classic was inspired by bedtime stories for Grahame's son.
An unforgettable portrait of Paris in the belle epoque. Probably the longest novel on this list.
Novels seized by the police, like this one, have a special afterlife.
This account of the adulterous lives of two Edwardian couples is a classic of unreliable narration.
A classic adventure story for boys, jammed with action, violence and suspense.
89 7.8 Secures Woolf's position as one of the great twentieth-century English novelists.
11 7 The great novel of the British Raj, it remains a brilliant study of empire.
He is remembered for his novels, but it was the short stories that first attracted notice.
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Description
The British love to read and, as the BBC prepares to reveal the nation's best loved books, The Observer has compiled its own list of essential fiction from the past 300 years. By Robert McCrum The Observer, Sunday October 12 2003 Chronological order. 
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