# The Guardian's Top 100 Works of Literature **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [May 16, 2026, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-guardians-top-100-works-of-literature/1030116 "2026-05-16T16:40:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2026, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-guardians-top-100-works-of-literature/1030116/1 "2026-05-16T16:40:29Z")
Yet another book list has emerged, and while reading it I thought, instead of bitching and moaning about what’s excluded, or talking about how many we’ve read, how about calling out a few delightful surprises? There were two on this list that were obscure enough that I didn’t really expect to see them: _The Go-Between_, by LP Hartley. “When a repressed middle-aged man discovers a journal from his childhood, he has little idea that within those pages lies a heart-wrenching story of love and its destruction – as well as the key to his arrested development. In his most famous work, author and critic Hartley brilliantly renders a child’s-eye view of adult affairs.” I only read this maybe five years ago, I’m not even sure how I came across it, but it’s pretty remarkable…Hartley definitely had that knack of writing a narrator who, because he’s a kid, is unwittingly unreliable. _Transit of Venus_, Shirley Hazzard. This one is about two Australian orphan girls who end up in England, and well, the paths their lives take. Hazzard is terrific at planting seeds early in the narrative and having them grow with the characters. I’d recommend this slightly ahead of The Go-Between. [The 100 best novels of all time | Fiction | The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2026/may/12/the-100-best-novels-of-all-time) Full list: > **Summary** > > 1. Middlemarch - George Eliot > 2. Beloved - Toni Morrison > 3. Ulysses - James Joyce > 4. To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf > 5. In Search of Lost Time - Marcel Proust > 6. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy > 7. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy > 8. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë > 9. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen > 10. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert > 11. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald > 12. Bleak House - Charles Dickens > 13. Emma - Jane Austen > 14. Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Woolf > 15. Moby-Dick - Herman Melville > 16. Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell > 17. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez > 18. Persuasion - Jane Austen > 19. Tristram Shandy - Laurence Sterne > 20. Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë > 21. The Portrait of a Lady - Henry James > 22. Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe > 23. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie > 24. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro > 25. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov > 26. Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes > 27. The Trial - Franz Kafka > 28. The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky > 29. Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov > 30. Frankenstein - Mary Shelley > 31. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark > 32. The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy > 33. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens > 34. Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel > 35. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens > 36. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood > 37. Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison > 38. The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton > 39. Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston > 40. Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison > 41. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad > 42. The Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann > 43. Housekeeping - Marilynne Robinson > 44. Giovanni’s Room - James Baldwin > 45. The Golden Notebook - Doris Lessing > 46. The Leopard - Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa > 47. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray > 48. The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka > 49. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry > 50. Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys > 51. My Brilliant Friend - Elena Ferrante > 52. The Golden Bowl - Henry James > 53. The Transit of Venus - Shirley Hazzard > 54. Orlando - Virginia Woolf > 55. The Waves - Virginia Woolf > 56. Mansfield Park - Jane Austen > 57. The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner > 58. Disgrace - J. M. Coetzee > 59. Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro > 60. Howards End - E.M. Forster > 61. The Rings of Saturn - W.G. Sebald > 62. Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie > 63. White Teeth - Zadie Smith > 64. The Good Soldier - Ford Madox Ford > 65. The Color Purple - Alice Walker > 66. The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov > 67. The Man Without Qualities - Rubert Musil > 68. Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy > 69. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky > 70. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy > 71. Kindred - Octavia E. Butler > 72. Our Mutual Friend - Charles Dickens > 73. Austerlitz - W.G. Sebald > 74. Nervous Conditions - Tsitsi Dangarembga > 75. The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison > 76. Dracula - Bram Stoker > 77. The Rainbow - DH Lawrence > 78. A House for Mr Biswas - V.S. Naipaul > 79. Go Tell It on the Mountain - James Baldwin > 80. Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier > 81. Buddenbrooks - Thomas Mann > 82. The End of the Affair - Graham Greene > 83. A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway > 84. The Talented Mr Ripley - Patricia Highsmith > 85. The Vegetarian - Han Kang > 86. The Turn of the Screw - Henry James > 87. The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst > 88. Ragtime - E.L. Doctorow > 89. The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin > 90. Jacob’s Room - Virginia Woolf > 91. Life and Fate - Vasily Grossman > 92. Sentimental Education - Gustave Flaubert > 93. Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino > 94. The Known World - Edward P. Jones > 95. The Return of the Native - Thomas Hardy > 96. Pedro Páramo - Juan Rulfo > 97. Catch-22 - Joseph Heller > 98. The Road - Cormac McCarthy > 99. The Go-Between - L.P. Hartley > 100. My Ántonia - Willa Cather ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2026, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-guardians-top-100-works-of-literature/1030116/2 "2026-05-16T17:02:48Z")
I’ve read ten books on the list, and of those, four of them I remember absolutely nothing about them. That doesn’t bode well for their greatness. ---
**Author:** ![zimaane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a3d4f5/32.png) [@zimaane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zimaane)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2026, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-guardians-top-100-works-of-literature/1030116/3 "2026-05-16T17:46:01Z")
These lists don’t usually include science fiction, so it’s a nice surprise to see “The Left Hand of Darkness”, It really is a wonderful book. ---
**Author:** ![hogarth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hogarth/32/1773_2.png) [@hogarth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hogarth)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2026, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-guardians-top-100-works-of-literature/1030116/4 "2026-05-16T18:14:44Z")
Looks like a remix of a lot of similar “best novel” lists, with a bit more diversity and a few newer titles. I like Charles Dickens, but I thought **Our Mutual Friend** kind of sucked. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2026, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-guardians-top-100-works-of-literature/1030116/5 "2026-05-16T18:18:16Z")
> [@zimaane](#): > > These lists don’t usually include science fiction, so it’s a nice surprise to see “The Left Hand of Darkness”, > > It really is a wonderful book. Thank you for reading the prompt. 🙂 > [@Maserschmidt](#): > > I thought, instead of bitching and moaning about what’s excluded, or talking about how many we’ve read, how about calling out a few delightful surprises? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2026, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-guardians-top-100-works-of-literature/1030116/6 "2026-05-16T18:28:09Z")
> [@zimaane](#): > > These lists don’t usually include science fiction, so it’s a nice surprise to see “The Left Hand of Darkness”, > > It really is a wonderful book. Never Let me Go is also science fiction, and it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t one I’d pick for a list like this. But it’s also the sort of science fiction where non-science-fiction fans will go “What? But of course that’s not science fiction; I wouldn’t include it if it were!”. ---
**Author:** ![Coriolanus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/coriolanus/32/18769_2.png) [@Coriolanus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Coriolanus)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2026, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-guardians-top-100-works-of-literature/1030116/7 "2026-05-17T02:17:57Z")
Two by Leo Tolstoy, with Anna Karenina one ahead of War and Peace. Two by Dostoevsky. (eta) FOUR Dickens FOUR Jane Austen FIVE Virginia Woolf THREE Henry James And to complete the list of repeat offenders: Two for Thomas Hardy No Huckleberry Finn? I dismiss this list. ---
**Author:** ![SCAdian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scadian/32/3292_2.png) [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2026, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-guardians-top-100-works-of-literature/1030116/8 "2026-05-17T02:35:49Z")
> [@Maserschmidt](#): > > I thought, instead of bitching and moaning about what’s excluded, or talking about how many we’ve read, how about calling out a few delightful surprises? Don’t think you’re going to have much luck with that idea. I’ve only read about four and a half of these, and I don’t know enough about the others to express surprise at their inclusion. ---
**Author:** ![Coriolanus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/coriolanus/32/18769_2.png) [@Coriolanus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Coriolanus)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2026, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-guardians-top-100-works-of-literature/1030116/9 "2026-05-17T02:42:24Z")
> [@Maserschmidt](#): > > calling out a few delightful surprises J.R.R Tolkien wrote what he often considered one work. Dunno about “delightful surprise” Even so, if War came out first, and Peace was volume two, does that knock one from Tolstoy? Maybe if I could make claim to having read more than half of them, esp. the first two, something might be delightful. ---
**Author:** ![ekedolphin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ekedolphin/32/10003_2.png) [@ekedolphin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ekedolphin)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2026, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-guardians-top-100-works-of-literature/1030116/10 "2026-05-17T02:43:19Z")
Also three for Toni Morrison. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2026, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-guardians-top-100-works-of-literature/1030116/11 "2026-05-17T02:49:32Z")
> [@SCAdian](#): > > > [@Maserschmidt](#): > > > > I thought, instead of bitching and moaning about what’s excluded, or talking about how many we’ve read, how about calling out a few delightful surprises? > > Don’t think you’re going to have much luck with that idea. So it seems… ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2026, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-guardians-top-100-works-of-literature/1030116/12 "2026-05-17T02:52:22Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I’ve read ten books on the list, and of those, four of them I remember absolutely nothing about them. That doesn’t bode well for their greatness. I’ve read _parts_ of 11, and half of those I had to read for school, and all of those could barely finish due to boredom, or didn’t even finish. The ones that I read on my own I universally liked and finished, with two exceptions to both. I do remember _parts_ of The Invisible Man which I had to read in school, but I skipped ahead at the end. And I tried to read Midnight’s Children which my brother recommended but could not finish it. But as for school books, I remember a lot more about Moby-Dick and The Great Gatsby from what I heard about them second hand than what I remember from actually reading them. My brother also recommended In Search of Lost Time, which I also couldn’t finish, but I don’t really count that since it is so long and I made it through the first volume. I don’t remember any of it though, which probably has something to do with why I didn’t finish. On the other hand, I’ve read all of War and Peace three times, so it’s not like I can never complete a long book. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2026, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-guardians-top-100-works-of-literature/1030116/13 "2026-05-17T04:21:06Z")
> [@Coriolanus](#): > > (eta) > FOUR Dickens And A Tale of Two Cities, his best work, wasn’t even one of them. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2026, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-guardians-top-100-works-of-literature/1030116/14 "2026-05-17T05:16:21Z")
_To the Lighthouse_ by Virginia Wolff clocks in at number 4? Good news for me: I rather enjoyed it in college. _Brothers Karamazov_: Well deserved. _Frankenstein_ :snort. _Ragtime_ was fun. Not sure why Bram Stoker’s _Dracula_ made the list. I like the list: lots of promising entries for this board member who doesn’t read many novels. Do the colors mean anything? ---
**Author:** ![Coriolanus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/coriolanus/32/18769_2.png) [@Coriolanus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Coriolanus)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2026, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-guardians-top-100-works-of-literature/1030116/15 "2026-05-17T05:57:36Z")
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#): > > Do the colors mean anything? I can find none. Every theory I try to apply… - country - era - genre - language …quickly fall apart. If you look a the HTML, it’s all inline so it could be chosen seemingly at random on the server side, perhaps by some mysterious function. But from the HTML alone: **no obvious meaningful pattern; probably just Guardian pastel confetti.** 🤷 James Joyce famously said he planted “literary landmines” in Ulysses so his spectre may have returned for just gettng 3rd place. So even the Guardian doesn’t know how the colors got that way. ETA: They do change on refresh. I haven’t checked to see if every pastel blue or any set of books change together. I think it’s James Joyce doing it. 👻 ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2026, 9:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-guardians-top-100-works-of-literature/1030116/16 "2026-05-17T09:17:10Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > The Invisible Man which I had to read in school Nitpick: the one on the list is _Invisible Man_, no “The.” (Ellison, not Wells.) ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2026, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-guardians-top-100-works-of-literature/1030116/17 "2026-05-17T18:58:03Z")
It’s a good list IMHO, which is not especially informed. It represents the consensus of mainstream literati. So what does that say? Speculative fiction in underrated, notwithstanding its single entry. Probably underrated categories are science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, thrillers, comedy, mystery, and horror. Possibly underrated fiction is philosophical, Westerns, spy, and romance. I don’t begrudge the selections; I merely observe and opine. Massively underrated are certain works from foreign lands that I have never heard of and neither has their panel. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2026, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-guardians-top-100-works-of-literature/1030116/18 "2026-05-17T19:19:54Z")
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#): > > Speculative fiction in underrated, notwithstanding its single entry. There’s at least five science fiction and two fantasy on the list. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2026, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-guardians-top-100-works-of-literature/1030116/19 "2026-05-17T19:58:37Z")
Even speculative fiction that can’t be counted as sci-fi or fantasy, I still count 4 at least entries, unless you don’t count dystopian fiction as speculative. If you _do_ count alternative history as speculative then I’d say you’d have to count dystopias as well since they’re alternative history in reverse. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2026, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-guardians-top-100-works-of-literature/1030116/20 "2026-05-17T20:01:42Z")
Also at least 2 in the horror genre. I should have been more careful. Or more widely read. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-guardians-top-100-works-of-literature/1030116.md?page=2)