Flamingo, pot plant, Middlemarch
May. 22nd, 2026 06:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustSaturday's Guardian released its list of the 100 best novels of all time. From the way they released it in installments online, not to mention the invitations to engage: how many have you read? what would you put top of the list?, I'd be tempted to dismiss it as clickbait. I also react badly to the application of "of all time" to an art form as recent as the novel. How far back can you trace the novel? The earliest on the list is Don Quixote (1605, #26) which is fair enough, but "of all time"? Seriously? But I can't resist a list, especially not a list of books, so without taking it too seriously, some thoughts.
The Guardian, though, seems to be taking it very seriously indeed. As well as the list itself, it ran a news story announcing the winner - no big surprise that it was Middlemarch - and also published an editorial congratulating itself of coming up with the right choice:
I haven't read Middlemarch, so I am absolutely not qualified to comment on the choice: I read Silas Marner at school, and hated it, The Mill on the Floss about the same time, and remember only that I resented the tragic ending, which seemed to my teenage self to be arbitrarily unfair to the heroine. Neither of these books appears on the list: I am mildly surprised that George Eliot should have written the greatest novel of all time, but that none of her six other novels qualifies for the 100 best.
Because yes, multiple entries are permitted. Jane Austen completed only six novels, of which Mansfield Park (#56), Persuasion (#18}, Emma (#13) and Pride and Prejudice (#9) make the list: I'd have ranked Persuasion higher. The list places it immediately above Tristram Shandy, but comfortably below 1984 (#16). I would be much happier talking about my favourite novel (probably Howards' End, #60) than about the 'best', let alone the 'greatest'. And there is much to admire in 1984: but as a novel, there's a lot wrong with it, too. If you can earn a place on the list for contributing to the language and - how can I put this? - the mental landscape (and that, surely, is what 1984 does so brilliantly) then I agree withpoliphilo, surely Alice in Wonderland should score highly?
I come back to that idea of seriousness. This is a very serious list of serious books. It's what you get if you ask (serious, literary) people not which books they love, but which they think are great. What's more, although the end result is a list of 100 books, it was compiled by asking contributors to nominate only ten titles> This makes the mathematics easier, certainly, but it does weed out some of the more idiosyncratic choices: the result is a list that is heavy (with the emphasis on heavy) on consensus (and makes 1984 an even more unexpected presence in the top 20).
That's not a game I want to play; when I try to think which novel is greater than another, my mind freezes. So instead, some random notes about absences:
We could go on playing "what about?" more or less indefinitely. But this has gone on long enough, so let's stop there.
The Guardian, though, seems to be taking it very seriously indeed. As well as the list itself, it ran a news story announcing the winner - no big surprise that it was Middlemarch - and also published an editorial congratulating itself of coming up with the right choice:
In placing an intelligent, high-minded young woman at the centre of her novel, Eliot reshaped English-language fiction. Elizabeth Bennet and Jane Eyre may have paved the way, but without Dorothea we wouldn’t have James’s Isabel Archer or Woolf’s older Mrs Dalloway and Mrs Ramsay. There is a clear path from Middlemarch to the female interiority of Sally Rooney's novels today.Can you judge the greatest novel of all time by how well it meets the demands of us here, today? Sally Rooney doesn't make it on to the list in her own right, but she serves to assure us of the continuing relevance of Middlemarch.
I haven't read Middlemarch, so I am absolutely not qualified to comment on the choice: I read Silas Marner at school, and hated it, The Mill on the Floss about the same time, and remember only that I resented the tragic ending, which seemed to my teenage self to be arbitrarily unfair to the heroine. Neither of these books appears on the list: I am mildly surprised that George Eliot should have written the greatest novel of all time, but that none of her six other novels qualifies for the 100 best.
Because yes, multiple entries are permitted. Jane Austen completed only six novels, of which Mansfield Park (#56), Persuasion (#18}, Emma (#13) and Pride and Prejudice (#9) make the list: I'd have ranked Persuasion higher. The list places it immediately above Tristram Shandy, but comfortably below 1984 (#16). I would be much happier talking about my favourite novel (probably Howards' End, #60) than about the 'best', let alone the 'greatest'. And there is much to admire in 1984: but as a novel, there's a lot wrong with it, too. If you can earn a place on the list for contributing to the language and - how can I put this? - the mental landscape (and that, surely, is what 1984 does so brilliantly) then I agree with
poliphilo, surely Alice in Wonderland should score highly?I come back to that idea of seriousness. This is a very serious list of serious books. It's what you get if you ask (serious, literary) people not which books they love, but which they think are great. What's more, although the end result is a list of 100 books, it was compiled by asking contributors to nominate only ten titles> This makes the mathematics easier, certainly, but it does weed out some of the more idiosyncratic choices: the result is a list that is heavy (with the emphasis on heavy) on consensus (and makes 1984 an even more unexpected presence in the top 20).
That's not a game I want to play; when I try to think which novel is greater than another, my mind freezes. So instead, some random notes about absences:
- There's not a whole lot of humour: which explains some of the absences: Jane Austen is about as close as it comes. There's no P.G. Wodehouse, no Evelyn Waugh, no Three Men in a Boat, no Terry Pratchett.
- No children's books, either: which I suppose was too much to hope for. But if there is no DianaWynne Jones on my desert island, (preferably Fire and Hemlock) I don't want to go. Tolkien has also vanished completely, which is odd, since he has rated highly on previous lists.
- On the face of it, it's a pretty international selection. But 15 of the greatest novels ever written were written in the English language: can this be right? I'd include Les Liaisons dangereuses among my favourites, but there's no Balzac, no Zola, in a list which has rooms for four novels by Dickens...
- Iris Murdoch seems to have gone out of fashion. And ...
We could go on playing "what about?" more or less indefinitely. But this has gone on long enough, so let's stop there.
