Sunday, January 25, 2009

The Guardian's 1000 Novels Everyone Should Read

The Guardian ran an interesting series last week entitled 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read. Unfortunately, they not only split it up into some rather strange sections (Love, Crime etc.), and then further broke each of those into several parts on the web, but also hid well over a hundred of them in less obvious minor sections. So as a public service, I have integrated and sorted the list, and indeed counted the frequency for each author on it (see here). I can confirm that there are exactly 1,000 in the list.

For what it's worth, it misses off a number of my favourite novels, including:

  • Anne Michaels: Fugitive Pieces (1996)
  • Barbara Kingsolver: The Poisonwood Bible (1998)
  • Angela Carter: While they did include three (The Passion of New Eve, Nights at the Circus and Wise Children), I would have included all of her novels—Shadow Dance (1966), The Magic Toyshop (1967), Several Perceptions (1968), Heroes and Villains (1969), Love (1971) and The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman (1972)
  • The Book Thief, Markus Zusak (2006)

[UPDATE:As Mark points out in the comments, The Guardian has now published its own "definitive list" here, which differs slightly from this one. I explain in my reply comment how I assembled this list. I guess you pays your money and takes your choice . . .]

The Guardian's 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read

Author Title Year
Kobo Abe The Face of Another 1964
Chinua Achebe Things Fall Apart 1958
Chinua Achebe Anthills of the Savannah 1987
Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 1979
Junghyo Ahn Silver Stallion 1990
Latifa al-Zayyat al-Bab al-Maftouh 1960
Louisa May Alcott Little Women 1868
Richard Aldington Death of a Hero 1929
Brian W Aldiss Non-Stop 1958
Nelson Algren The Man with the Golden Arm 1949
Eric Ambler Epitaph for a Spy 1938
Eric Ambler The Mask of Dimitrios 1939
Eric Ambler Journey into Fear 1940
Kingsley Amis Lucky Jim 1954
Martin Amis Money 1984
Martin Amis London Fields 1989
Martin Amis The Information 1995
Mulk Raj Anand Untouchable 1935
Isaac Asimov Foundation 1951
Kate Atkinson Behind the Scenes at the Museum 1995
Margaret Atwood The Handmaid's Tale 1985
Margaret Atwood Cat's Eye 1988
Margaret Atwood The Blind Assassin 2000
Paul Auster The New York Trilogy 1985-86
Paul Auster In the Country of Last Things 1987
Jane Austin Sense and Sensibility 1811
Jane Austin Pride and Prejudice 1813
Jane Austin Mansfield Park 1814
Jane Austin Emma 1815
Jane Austin Northanger Abbey 1817
Jane Austin Persuasion 1817
Beryl Bainbridge The Bottle Factory Outing 1974
Beryl Bainbridge Master Georgie 1998
Beryl Bainbridge According to Queeney 2001
Nicholson Baker Room Temperature 1990
Nigel Balchin Darkness Falls from the Air 1942
James Baldwin Go Tell It On the Mountain 1953
James Baldwin Giovanni's Room 1957
JG Ballard The Drowned World 1962
JG Ballard Crash 1973
JG Ballard Empire of the Sun 1984
JG Ballard Millennium People 2003
Honoré de Balzac La Comédie Humaine 1830-1848
Honoré de Balzac Eugénie Grandet 1833
Honoré de Balzac Le Père Goriot 1835
Miklos Banffy They Were Counted 1934
Iain M Banks Consider Phlebas 1987
Iain Banks The Wasp Factory 1984
Iain Banks The Crow Road 1992
Lynne Reid Banks The L-Shaped Room 1960
Clive Barker Weaveworld 1987
Nicola Barker Darkmans 2007
Pat Barker Regeneration 1991
Djuna Barnes Nightwood 1936
Julian Barnes Flaubert's Parrot 1984
Julian Barnes A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters 1989
Sebastian Barry A Long Long Way 2005
Stan Barstow A Kind of Loving 1960
Henry Howarth Bashford Augustus Carp, Esq By Himself — Being the Autobiography of a Really Good Man 1924
Giorgio Bassani The Garden of the Finzi-Continis 1962
HE Bates Fair Stood the Wind for France 1944
HE Bates Love for Lydia 1952
Nina Bawden Carrie's War 1973
Stephen Baxter The Time Ships 1995
Greg Bear Darwin's Radio 1999
Alison Bechdel Fun Home 2006
Samuel Beckett Malone Dies 1951
Samuel Beckett Molloy 1951
William Beckford Vathek 1786
Sybille Bedford A Legacy 1956
Max Beerbohm Zuleika Dobson 1911
Aphra Behn Oroonoko or The Royal Slave 1688
Saul Bellow The Adventures of Augie March 1953
Saul Bellow Herzog 1964
Saul Bellow Humboldt's Gift 1975
Saul Bellow More Die of Heartbreak 1987
Alan Bennett The Uncommon Reader 2007
Arnold Bennett The Old Wives' Tale 1908
Arnold Bennett Clayhanger 1910
EF Benson Queen Lucia 1920
EC Bentley Trent's Last Case 1913
John Berger G. 1972
Anthony Berkeley The Poisoned Chocolates Case 1929
Thomas Bernhard Extinction 1986
Alfred Bester The Stars My Destination 1956
RD Blackmore Lorna Doone 1869
Nicholas Blake The Beast Must Die 1938
Roberto Bolaño The Savage Detectives 1998
Elizabeth Bowen The Last September 1929
Elizabeth Bowen The Death of the Heart 1938
Elizabeth Bowen The Heat of the Day 1948
Jane Bowles Two Serious Ladies 1943
Paul Bowles The Sheltering Sky 1949
WE Bowman The Ascent of Rum Doodle 1956
William Boyd A Good Man in Africa 1981
William Boyd An Ice-Cream War 1982
William Boyd Any Human Heart 2002
Malcolm Bradbury The History Man 1975
Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 1953
Mary E Braddon Lady Audley's Secret 1862
Caryl Brahms and SJ Simon No Bed for Bacon 1941
John Braine Room at the Top 1957
Patrick O'Brian Master and Commander 1969
Flann O'Brien At Swim-Two-Birds 1939
Flann O'Brien The Third Policeman 1967
Tim O'Brien The Things they Carried 1990
Raymond Briggs When the Wind Blows 1982
André Brink A Dry White Season 1979
Poppy Z Brite Lost Souls 1992
Hermann Broch The Death of Virgil 1945
Charlotte Brontë Jane Eyre 1847
Charlotte Brontë Shirley 1849
Charlotte Brontë Villette 1853
Emily Brontë Wuthering Heights 1847
Anita Brookner Look at Me 1983
Charles Brockden Brown Wieland 1798
Rita Mae Brown Rubyfruit Jungle 1973
John Buchan The Thirty-Nine Steps 1915
John Buchan Greenmantle 1916
Algis Budrys Rogue Moon 1960
Mikhail Bulgakov The Master and Margarita 1966
Edward Bulwer-Lytton The Coming Race 1871
Anthony Burgess A Clockwork Orange 1960
Anthony Burgess Earthly Powers 1980
Anthony Burgess The End of the World News 1982
James Lee Burke The Neon Rain 1987
James Lee Burke The Tin Roof Blowdown 2007
Ivy Compton-Burnett Manservant and Maidservant 1947
WR Burnett The Asphalt Jungle 1949
Fanny Burney Evelina 1778
Edgar Rice Burroughs A Princess of Mars 1912
William Burroughs Naked Lunch 1959
Octavia Butler Kindred 1979
Samuel Butler Erewhon 1872
Samuel Butler The Way of All Flesh 1903
Ron Butlin The Sound of My Voice 1987
AS Byatt The Virgin in the Garden 1978
AS Byatt Possession 1990
David B Epileptic 1996-2003
Louis-Ferdinand Céline Journey to the End of the Night 1932
James M Cain The Postman Always Rings Twice 1934
James M Cain Double Indemnity 1943
Erskine Caldwell Tobacco Road 1932
Italo Calvino The Baron in the Trees 1957
Italo Calvino Invisible Cities 1974
Ramsey Campbell The Influence 1988
Albert Camus The Outsider 1942
Albert Camus The Plague 1947
Elias Canetti Auto-da-Fé 1935
Truman Capote Breakfast at Tiffany's 1958
Peter Carey Illywhacker 1985
Peter Carey Oscar and Lucinda 1988
Peter Carey True History of the Kelly Gang 2000
Alejo Carpentier The Kingdom of This World 1949
John le Carré The Spy Who Came in From the Cold 1963
John le Carré Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy 1974
John le Carré The Constant Gardener 2001
Leonora Carrington The Hearing Trumpet 1976
Lewis Carroll Alice's Adventures in Wonderland 1865
Lewis Carroll Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There 1871
JL Carr A Season in Sinji 1967
JL Carr The Harpole Report 1972
JL Carr A Month in the Country 1980
John Dickson Carr The Hollow Man 1935
Angela Carter The Passion of New Eve 1977
Angela Carter Nights at the Circus 1984
Angela Carter Wise Children 1991
Joyce Cary Mister Johnson 1939
Joyce Cary The Horse's Mouth 1944
Willa Cather My Antonia 1918
Willa Cather One Of Ours 1922
Willa Cather A Lost Lady 1923
Willa Cather The Professor's House 1925
Miguel de Cervantes Don Quixote 1605
Michael Chabon The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay 2000
Raymond Chandler The Big Sleep 1939
Raymond Chandler The Long Goodbye 1953
James Hadley Chase No Orchids for Miss Blandish 1939
John Cheever The Wapshot Chronicle 1957
GK Chesterton The Man Who Was Thursday 1908
Erskine Childers The Riddle of the Sands 1903
Kate Chopin The Awakening 1899
Agatha Christie The Mysterious Affair at Styles 1920
Agatha Christie The Secret Adversary 1922
Agatha Christie The Murder of Roger Ackroyd 1926
Agatha Christie The Murder at the Vicarage 1930
Agatha Christie And Then There Were None 1939
Arthur C Clarke Childhood's End 1953
Susanna Clarke Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell 2004
Jean Cocteau Les Enfants Terribles 1929
JM Coetzee Waiting for the Barbarians 1980
JM Coetzee Disgrace 1999
Jonathan Coe What a Carve Up! 1994
Sidone-Gabrille Colette Chéri 1920
Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette Claudine à l'école 1900
Colette The Vagabond 1910
Wilkie Collins The Woman in White 1860
Wilkie Collins The Moonstone 1868
Richard Condon The Manchurian Candidate 1959
Michael G Coney Hello Summer, Goodbye 1975
Joseph Conrad Lord Jim 1900
Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness 1902
Joseph Conrad Nostromo 1904
Joseph Conrad The Secret Agent 1907
Joseph Conrad Under Western Eyes 1911
Joseph Conrad Victory: An Island Tale 1915
Bernard Cornwell Sharpe's Eagle 1981
Patricia Cornwell Postmortem 1990
Douglas Coupland Microserfs 1995
Douglas Coupland Girlfriend in a Coma 1998
Francis Coventry The History of Pompey the Little 1751
Jim Crace Quarantine 1997
Jim Crace Being Dead 1999
Stephen Crane The Red Badge of Courage 1895
Michael Crichton The Andromeda Strain 1969
Michael Crichton Jurassic Park 1990
Edmund Crispin The Case of the Gilded Fly 1944
Richmal Crompton Just William 1922
Amanda Cross Poetic Justice 1970
Alfred Döblin Berlin Alexanderplatz 1929
Friedrich Dürrenmatt The Pledge 1958
Mark Danielewski House of Leaves 2000
Marie Darrieussecq Pig Tales 1996
Simone de Beauvoir The Mandarins 1954
José Maria de Eça de Queiroz The Crime of Father Amaro 1875
Pierre-Ambroise-François Choderlos de Laclos Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1782
Madame de Lafayette The Princess of Clèves 1678
Guy de Maupassant Bel-Ami 1885
Antoine de Sainte-Exupéry The Little Prince 1943
Peter De Vries Slouching towards Kalamazoo 1983
Daniel Defoe Robinson Crusoe 1719
Daniel Defoe Moll Flanders 1722
Daniel Defoe Roxana 1724
Len Deighton The Ipcress File 1962
Len Deighton Bomber 1970
EM Delafield The Provincial Lady 1930
Samuel R Delaney The Einstein Intersection 1967
Don DeLillo White Noise 1985
Don DeLillo Underwold 1997
Colin Dexter Last Seen Wearing 1976
Colin Dexter The Remorseful Day 1999
Giuseppe di Lampedusa The Leopard 1958
Michael Dibdin A Rich Full Death 1986
Michael Dibdin Ratking 1988
Michael Dibdin Dirty Tricks 1991
Michael Dibdin Dead Lagoon 1994
Charles Dickens The Pickwick Papers 1837
Charles Dickens Oliver Twist 1838
Charles Dickens Martin Chuzzlewit 1844
Charles Dickens Dombey and Son 1848
Charles Dickens Bleak House 1852-53
Charles Dickens Hard Times 1854
Charles Dickens Little Dorrit 1855-57
Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities 1859
Charles Dickens Great Expectations 1861
James Dickey Deliverance 1970
Philip K Dick The Man in the High Castle 1962
Philip K Dick Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? 1968
Denis Diderot Jacques the Fatalist and His Master 1796
Joan Didion Play It As It Lays 1970
Thomas M Disch Camp Concentration 1968
Benjamin Disraeli Sybil or The Two Nations 1845
EL Doctorow The Book of Daniel 1971
JP Donleavy A Fairy Tale of New York 1973
Fyodor Dostoevsky Notes from Underground 1864
Fyodor Dostoevsky The Idiot 1868
Fyodor Dostoevsky Crime and Punishment 1866
Fyodor Dostoevsky The Brothers Karamazov 1880
Julie Doucet My New York Diary 1999
Norman Douglas South Wind 1917
Arthur Conan Doyle A Study in Scarlet 1887
Arthur Conan Doyle The Sign of Four 1890
Arthur Conan Doyle The Hound of the Baskervilles 1902
Roddy Doyle The Commitments 1987
Margaret Drabble The Millstone 1965
Theodore Dreiser Sister Carrie 1900
Theodore Dreiser An American Tragedy 1925
Daphne du Maurier Rebecca 1938
Daphne du Maurier The Parasites 1949
Daphne du Maurier My Cousin Rachel 1951
Alexandre Dumas The Count of Monte Cristo 1844-45
Alexandre Dumas The Three Musketeers 1844
Marguerite Duras The Lover 1984
Gerald Durrell My Family and Other Animals 1956
Lawrence Durrell Justine 1957
William Eastlake The Bamboo Bed 1969
Umberto Eco The Name of the Rose 1980
Umberto Eco Foucault's Pendulum 1988
Maria Edgeworth Castle Rackrent 1800
Maria Edgeworth Ennui 1809
Enayat el-Zayyat Al-Hubb w'al-Samt 1967
George Eliot Adam Bede 1859
George Eliot The Mill on the Floss 1860
George Eliot Silas Marner 1861
George Eliot Middlemarch 1872
George Eliot Daniel Deronda 1876
Ralph Ellison Invisible Man 1953
Bret Easton Ellis American Psycho 1991
RJ Ellory A Quiet Belief in Angels 2007
James Ellroy The Big Nowhere 1988
James Ellroy LA Confidential 1990
Willem Elsschot Cheese 1933
Shusaku Endo Silence 1966
Anne Enright The Gathering 2007
Jeffrey Eugenides The Virgin Suicides 1993
Jeffrey Eugenides Middlesex 2002
Michel Faber Under the Skin 2000
JG Farrell The Siege of Krishnapur 1973
William Faulkner The Sound and the Fury 1929
William Faulkner As I Lay Dying 1930
William Faulkner Sanctuary 1931
Sebastian Faulks Birdsong 1993
Helen Fielding Bridget Jones's Diary 1996
Henry Fielding Joseph Andrews 1742
Henry Fielding Tom Jones 1749
Ronald Firbank Caprice 1917
F Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby 1925
F Scott Fitzgerald Tender is the Night 1934
Penelope Fitzgerald The Blue Flower 1995
Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary 1856
Gustave Flaubert Sentimental Education 1869
Gustave Flaubert Bouvard and Pécuchet 1881
Ian Fleming Casino Royale 1953
Ian Fleming Goldfinger 1959
Ian Fleming You Only Live Twice 1964
Jonathan Safran Foer Everything Is Illuminated 2002
Theodor Fontane Effi Briest 1896
Ford Madox Ford The Good Soldier 1915
Ford Madox Ford Parade's End 1924-28
Richard Ford The Sportswriter 1986
Richard Ford Independence Day 1996
CS Forester The African Queen 1935
CS Forester The Ship 1943
EM Forster A Room With a View 1908
EM Forster Howards End 1910
EM Forster A Passage to India 1924
Frederick Forsyth The Day of the Jackal 1971
Henri Alain-Fournier Le Grand Meaulnes 1913
John Fowles The Magus 1966
John Fowles The French Lieutenant's Woman 1969
Jonathan Franzen The Corrections 2001
George MacDonald Fraser Flashman 1969
Michael Frayn Towards the End of Morning 1967
Michael Frayn Spies 2002
Charles Frazier Cold Mountain 1997
Esther Freud Hideous Kinky 1992
William Gaddis The Recognitions 1955
Neil Gaiman American Gods 2001
Paul Gallico The Snow Goose 1941
John Galsworthy The Man of Property 1906
Alex Garland The Beach 1996
Alan Garner Red Shift 1973
Elizabeth Gaskell Mary Barton 1848
Elizabeth Gaskell Cranford 1853
Elizabeth Gaskell Ruth 1853
Elizabeth Gaskell North and South 1855
William Gerhardie The Polyglots 1925
Stella Gibbons Cold Comfort Farm 1932
Lewis Grassic Gibbon Sunset Song 1932
William Gibson Neuromancer 1984
André Gide The Immoralist 1902
André Gide Strait Is the Gate 1909
André Gide The Vatican Cellars 1914
André Gide The Counterfeiters 1925
Charlotte Perkins Gilman Herland 1915
George Gissing New Grub Street 1891
George Gissing The Odd Women 1893
Johann Wolfgang Goethe The Sorrows of Young Werther 1774
Nikolai Gogol Dead Souls 1842
William Golding Lord of the Flies 1954
William Golding To the Ends of the Earth trilogy 1980-89
Oliver Goldsmith The Vicar of Wakefield 1766
Ivan Goncharov Oblomov 1859
Nadine Gordimer July's People 1981
Maxim Gorky Mother 1906
René Goscinny Asterix the Gaul 1959
Kenneth Grahame The Wind in the Willows 1908
Günter Grass The Tin Drum 1959
Robert Graves Count Belisarius 1938
Alasdair Gray Lanark 1981
Richard Greaves (George Barr McCutcheon) Brewster's Millions 1902
Graham Greene A Gun For Sale 1936
Graham Greene Brighton Rock 1938
Graham Greene The Power and the Glory 1940
Graham Greene The Ministry of Fear 1943
Graham Greene The Third Man 1950
Graham Greene The End of the Affair 1951
Graham Greene Our Man in Havana 1958
Graham Greene Travels With My Aunt 1969
Walter Greenwood Love on the Dole 1933
Henry Green Living 1929
Michael Green Squire Haggard's Journal 1975
John Grisham A Time to Kill 1989
John Grisham The King of Torts 2003
Vasily Grossman Life and Fate 1960
George Grossmith Diary of a Nobody 1892
Giovanni Guareschi The Little World of Don Camillo 1948
Ursula K Le Guin The Earthsea series 1968-1990
Ursula K Le Guin The Left Hand of Darkness 1969
Peter Høeg Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow 1992
Mark Haddon The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time 2003
Andrew O'Hagan Personality 2003
CT Rawi Hage De Niro's Game 2006
H Rider Haggard King Solomon's Mines 1885
H Rider Haggard She 1887
Joe Haldeman The Forever War 1974
Radclyffe Hall The Well of Loneliness 1928
Patrick Hamilton Hangover Square 1941
Patrick Hamilton The Slaves of Solitude 1947
Dashiell Hammett Red Harvest 1929
Dashiell Hammett The Maltese Falcon 1930
Dashiell Hammett The Glass Key 1931
Dashiell Hammett The Thin Man 1934
Knut Hamsun Hunger 1890
Thomas Hardy Far from the Madding Crowd 1874
Thomas Hardy The Mayor of Casterbridge 1886
Thomas Hardy The Woodlanders 1887
Thomas Hardy Tess of the D'Urbervilles 1891
Thomas Hardy Jude the Obscure 1895
M John Harrison Light 2002
John Harris Covenant with Death 1961
Robert Harris Fatherland 1992
Robert Harris Enigma 1995
Thomas Harris Black Sunday 1975
Thomas Harris Red Dragon 1981
LP Hartley The Shrimp and the Anemone 1944
LP Hartley The Go-Between 1953
Jaroslav Hasek The Good Soldier Svejk 1923
Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter 1850
Nathaniel Hawthorne The House of the Seven Gables 1851
Shirley Hazzard The Transit of Venus 1980
Robert A Heinlein Stranger in a Strange Land 1961
Joseph Heller Catch-22 1961
Ernest Hemingway A Farewell to Arms 1929
Ernest Hemingway For Whom the Bell Tolls 1940
Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea 1952
Frank Herbert Dune 1965
Hergé The Crab with the Golden Claws 1941
Hergé Tintin in Tibet 1960
Hergé The Castafiore Emerald 1963
Hermann Hesse Steppenwolf 1927
Hermann Hesse Narziss and Goldmund 1930
Hermann Hesse The Glass Bead Game 1943
Georgette Heyer Regency Buck 1935
Georgette Heyer The Infamous Army 1937
Carl Hiaasen Tourist Season 1986
George V Higgins The Friends of Eddie Coyle 1972
Patricia Highsmith Strangers on a Train 1950
Patricia Highsmith The Talented Mr Ripley 1955
Reginald Hill Bones and Silence 1990
Chester Himes A Rage in Harlem 1957
Barry Hines A Kestrel for a Knave 1968
Russell Hoban Riddley Walker 1980
Eric Hodgins Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House 1946
James Hogg The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner 1824
Alan Hollinghurst The Swimming-Pool Library 1988
Alan Hollinghurst The Line of Beauty 2004
Winifred Holtby South Riding 1936
Anthony Hope The Prisoner of Zenda 1894
Nick Hornby High Fidelity 1995
Paul Hornschemeier The Three Paradoxes 2006
Khaled Hosseini The Kite Runner 2003
Michel Houellebecq Atomised 1998
Geoffrey Household Rogue Male 1939
Bohumil Hrabal I Served the King of England 1983
WH Hudson Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest 1904
Richard Hughes A High Wind in Jamaica 1929
Thomas Hughes Tom Brown's School Days 1857
Victor Hugo Les Misérables 1862
Zora Neale Hurston Their Eyes Were Watching God 1937
Aldous Huxley Crome Yellow 1921
Aldous Huxley Brave New World 1932
James Hynes The Lecturer's Tale — A Novel 2001
Frances Iles Malice Aforethought 1931
Arnaldur Indridason Silence of the Grave 2001
Michael Innes Death at the President's Lodging 1936
John Irving A Prayer for Owen Meany 1989
Christopher Isherwood Mr Norris Changes Trains 1935
Christopher Isherwood Goodbye to Berlin 1939
Kazuo Ishiguro The Remains of the Day 1989
Kazuo Ishiguro The Unconsoled 1995
Shirley Jackson The Haunting of Hill House 1959
Howard Jacobson The Mighty Walzer 1999
Henry James Washington Square 1880
Henry James Portrait of a Lady 1881
Henry James The Turn of the Screw 1898
Henry James The Wings of the Dove 1902
Henry James The Ambassadors 1903
PD James Cover Her Face 1962
PD James A Taste for Death 1986
PD James The Children of Men 1992
Randall Jarrell Pictures from an Institution 1954
Richard Jefferies After London; Or, Wild England 1885
Elfriede Jelinek The Piano Teacher 1983
Elizabeth Jenkins The Tortoise and the Hare 1954
Jerome K Jerome Three Men in a Boat 1899
BS Johnson The Unfortunates 1969
Samuel Johnson Rasselas 1759
Gwyneth Jones Bold as Love 2001
James Jones From Here to Eternity 1951
James Joyce A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 1916
James Joyce Ulysses 1922
James Joyce Finnegans Wake 1939
Layla al-Juhani Jahiliyya 2006
Ismail Kadare Chronicle in Stone 1971
Franz Kafka The Trial 1925
Franz Kafka The Castle 1926
MacKinlay Kantor Andersonville 1955
Yasunari Kawabata Beauty and Sadness 1964
MM Kaye The Far Pavilions 1978
Nikos Kazantzakis Zorba the Greek 1946
Molly Keane Good Behaviour 1981
Garrison Keillor Lake Wobegon Days 1985
James Kelman How Late It Was, How Late 1994
Yashar Kemal Memed, My Hawk 1955
Harry Kemelman Friday the Rabbi Slept Late 1964
Thomas Keneally Confederates 1979
Thomas Keneally Schindler's Ark 1982
AL Kennedy Day 2007
Pamela Kent Moon over Africa 1955
Jack Kerouac On the Road 1957
Ken Kesey One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest 1962
Daniel Keyes Flowers for Algernon 1966
Colette Khoury Ayyam Ma'ah 1959
Stephen King The Shining 1977
Stephen King Misery 1987
Stephen King Dolores Claiborne 1992
Rudyard Kipling Kim 1901
Arthur Koestler Darkness at Noon 1940
Jerzy Kosinski The Painted Bird 1965
Milan Kundera The Book of Laughter and Forgetting 1978
Milan Kundera The Unbearable Lightness of Being 1982
Hanif Kureishi The Buddha of Suburbia 1990
Andrey Kurkov Death and the Penguin 1996
John Lanchester The Debt to Pleasure 1996
Philip Larkin A Girl in Winter 1947
Nella Larsen Passing 1929
Marghanita Laski The Victorian Chaise-longue 1953
DH Lawrence Sons and Lovers 1913
DH Lawrence The Rainbow 1915
DH Lawrence Women in Love 1920
DH Lawrence Lady Chatterley's Lover 1960
Harper Lee To Kill A Mockingbird 1960
Laurie Lee Cider with Rosie 1959
Rosamond Lehmann Invitation to the Waltz 1932
Rosamond Lehmann The Weather in the Streets 1936
Rosamond Lehmann The Echoing Grove 1953
Stanislaw Lem Solaris 1961
Elmore Leonard 52 Pick-Up 1974
Elmore Leonard Get Shorty 1990
Alain-René Lesage L'Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane 1715-1735
Doris Lessing The Grass is Singing 1950
Doris Lessing The Golden Notebook 1962
Doris Lessing Memoirs of a Survivor 1974
Jonathan Lethem Motherless Brooklyn 1999
Primo Levi If Not Now, When? 1982
CS Lewis The Chronicles of Narnia 1950-56
MG Lewis The Monk 1796
Sinclair Lewis Main Street 1920
Sinclair Lewis Elmer Gantry 1927
David Lindsay A Voyage to Arcturus 1920
Richard Llewellyn How Green Was My Valley 1939
David Lodge Changing Places 1975
David Lodge Nice Work 1988
Jack London The Call of the Wild 1903
Jack London Martin Eden 1909
Anita Loos Gentlemen Prefer Blondes 1925
Audre Lorde Zami 1982
Malcolm Lowry Under the Volcano 1947
Robert Ludlum The Bourne Identity 1980
Alison Lurie Foreign Aff airs 1984
Gabriel García Márquez One Hundred Years of Solitude 1967
Gabriel García Márquez Love in the Time of Cholera 1985
Amin Maalouf Samarkand 1989
Rose Macaulay The Towers of Trebizond 1956
AG Macdonnell England, Their England 1933
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas 1871
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis Dom Casmurro 1899
Colin MacInnes Absolute Beginners 1959
Compton Mackenzie Whisky Galore 1947
Julian Maclaren-Ross Of Love and Hunger 1947
Alastair Maclean The Guns of Navarone 1957
Ken MacLeod The Night Sessions 2008
David Madsen Memoirs of a Gnostic Dwarf 1995
Naguib Mahfouz Cairo trilogy 1956-57
Naguib Mahfouz Palace Walk 1956
Norman Mailer The Naked and the Dead 1948
Bernard Malamud The Assistant 1957
David Malouf Remembering Babylon 1993
André Malraux La Condition Humaine 1933
Henning Mankell Sidetracked 1995
Olivia Manning The Fortunes of War novels 1960-80
Thomas Mann Buddenbrooks 1901
Thomas Mann Death in Venice 1912
Thomas Mann The Magic Mountain 1924
Hilary Mantel Beyond Black 2005
Alessandro Manzoni The Betrothed 1827
Javier Marías A Heart So White 1992
Dacia Maraini The Silent Duchess 1990
Frederick Marryat The Children of the New Forest 1847
Michael Marshall Smith Only Forward 1994
Richard Matheson I Am Legend 1954
Charles Maturin Melmoth the Wanderer 1820
Somerset Maugham Of Human Bondage 1915
W Somerset Maugham Cakes and Ale — Or, the Skeleton in the Cupboard 1930
Armistead Maupin Tales of the City 1978
William Maxwell Chateau 1961
William Maxwell So Long, See You Tomorrow 1980
FM Mayor The Rector's Daughter 1924
Ed McBain Cop Hater 1956
Patrick McCabe The Butcher Boy 1992
Cormac McCarthy Blood Meridian 1985
Cormac McCarthy All the Pretty Horses 1992
Cormac McCarthy No Country for Old Men 2005
Cormac McCarthy The Road 2006
Mary McCarthy The Group 1963
Carson McCullers The Heart is a Lonely Hunter 1940
Carson McCullers The Member of the Wedding 1946
Johnston McCulley The Mark of Zorro 1919
Ian McEwan The Child in Time 1987
Ian McEwan Enduring Love 1997
Ian McEwan Atonement 2001
John McGahern Amongst Women 1990
Jay McInerney Bright Lights, Big City 1984
Larry McMurtry Lonesome Dove 1985
Herman Melville Moby-Dick or, The Whale 1851
Jed Mercurio Ascent 2007
George Meredith The Ordeal of Richard Feverel 1859
George Meredith The Egoist 1879
China Miéville The Scar 2002
James Michener Tales of the South Pacific 1847
Walter M Miller Jr A Canticle for Leibowitz 1960
Andrew Miller Ingenious Pain 1997
Henry Miller Tropic of Cancer 1934
Isabel Miller Patience and Sarah 1969
Spike Milligan Puckoon 1963
Magnus Mills The Restraint of Beasts 1998
Rohinton Mistry A Fine Balance 1995
Rohinton Mistry Family Matters 2002
David Mitchell Cloud Atlas 2004
Margaret Mitchell Gone with the Wind 1936
Nancy Mitford The Pursuit of Love 1945
Nancy Mitford Love in a Cold Climate 1949
Nicholas Monsarrat The Cruel Sea 1951
Michael Moorcock Mother London 1988
Brian Moore The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne 1955
Elsa Morante Arturo's Island: A Novel 1957
Elsa Morante History 1974
Alberto Moravia The Time of Indifference 1929
Toni Morrison The Bluest Eye 1970
Toni Morrison Song of Solomon 1977
Toni Morrison Beloved 1987
William Morris News From Nowhere 1890
John Mortimer Charade 1947
John Mortimer Titmuss Regained 1990
Walter Mosley Devil in a Blue Dress 1990
Timothy Mo Sour Sweet 1982
Alice Munro Who Do You Think You Are? 1978
Haruki Murakami Norwegian Wood 1987
Haruki Murakami The Wind-up Bird Chronicle 1995
Iris Murdoch Under the Net 1954
Iris Murdoch The Black Prince 1973
Robert Musil The Man Without Qualities 1930-32
Irène Némirovsky Suite Française 2004
Vladimir Nabokov Lolita, or the Confessions of a White Widowed Male 1955
Vladimir Nabokov Pnin 1957
Vladimir Nabokov Pale Fire 1962
Vladimir Nabokov Ada or Ardor 1969
Shiva Naipaul Fireflies 1970
VS Naipaul A House for Mr Biswas 1961
VS Naipaul A Bend in the River 1979
RK Narayan The Painter of Signs 1976
Audrey Niffenegger The Time Traveler's Wife 2003
Bao Ninh The Sorrow of War 1994
Anaïs Nin Delta of Venus 1978
Larry Niven Ringworld 1970
Jeff Noon Vurt 1993
Cees Nooteboom All Souls Day 1999
Frank Norris McTeague 1899
Kenzaburo Oe Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness 1969
Ben Okri The Famished Road 1991
Michael Ondaatje The English Patient 1992
E Phillips Oppenheim The Strange Boarders of Palace Crescent 1934
E Phillips Oppenhein The Great Impersonation 1920
Baroness Emmuska Orczy The Scarlet Pimpernel 1905
George Orwell Burmese Days 1934
George Orwell Animal Farm 1945
George Orwell Nineteen Eighty-four 1949
Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club 1996
Orhan Pamuk My Name Is Red 1998
Sara Paretsky Toxic Shock 1988
Sara Paretsky Blacklist 2003
Pier Paolo Pasolini The Ragazzi 1955
John Dos Passos Three Soldiers 1921
John Dos Passos U.S.A. 1930-36
Boris Pasternak Doctor Zhivago 1957
Alan Paton Cry, The Beloved Country 1948
Cesare Pavese The Moon and the Bonfire 1949
David Peace Nineteen Seventy-Four 1999
David Peace Nineteen Seventy Seven 2000
David Peace GB84 2004
Thomas Love Peacock Headlong Hall 1816
Thomas Love Peacock Nightmare Abbey 1818
Mervyn Peake Titus Groan 1946
George Pelecanos The Big Blowdown 1996
George Pelecanos Hard Revolution 2004
Victor Pelevin The Sacred Book of the Werewolf 2008
Walker Percy The Moviegoer 1961
Georges Perec La Disparition 1969
Georges Perec Les Revenentes 1972
Georges Perec La Vie mode d'emploi 1978
Robert M Pirsig Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance 1974
Sylvia Plath The Bell Jar 1963
Robert Plunkett My Search for Warren Harding 1983
Frederik Pohl & CM Kornbluth The Space Merchants 1953
Chaim Potok My Name is Asher Lev 1972
Anthony Powell Afternoon Men 1931
Anthony Powell A Dance to the Music of Time 1951-75
Anthony Powell The Valley of Bones 1964
Anthony Powell The Soldier's Art 1966
Anthony Powell The Military Philosophers 1968
Dawn Powell A Time to Be Born 1942
John Cowper Powys A Glastonbury Romance 1932
Abbé Prévost Manon Lescaut 1731
Terry Pratchett The Discworld series 1983-
Richard Price Lush Life 2008
JB Priestley The Good Companions 1929
Christopher Priest The Prestige 1995
Annie Proulx The Shipping News 1993
Marcel Proust Remembrance of Things Past 1913-27
Philip Pullman His Dark Materials 1995-2000
Mario Puzo The Godfather 1969
Barbara Pym Excellent Women 1952
Barbara Pym Less Than Angels 1955
Thomas Pynchon V 1963
Thomas Pynchon The Crying of Lot 49 1966
Thomas Pynchon Gravity's Rainbow 1973
Thomas Pynchon Vineland 1990
Raymond Queneau Zazie in the Metro 1959
François Rabelais Gargantua and Pantagruel 1532-34
Ann Radcliffe The Mysteries of Udolpho 1794
Ian Rankin Black & Blue 1997
Ian Rankin The Hanging Garden 1998
Ian Rankin Exit Music 2007
Rudolf Erich Raspe The Surprising Adventures Of Baron Munchausen 1785
Simon Raven Alms for Oblivion 1964-76
Piers Paul Read A Married Man 1979
Erich Maria Remarque All Quiet on the Western Front 1929
Ruth Rendell Judgment in Stone 1977
Ruth Rendell Live Flesh 1986
Alastair Reynolds Revelation Space 2000
Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea 1966
Dorothy Richardson Pointed Roofs 1915
Henry Handel Richardson Maurice Guest 1908
Henry Handel Richardson The Fortunes of Richard Mahony 1930
Samuel Richardson Pamela 1740
Samuel Richardson Clarissa 1748
Mordecai Richler Solomon Gursky Was Here 1990
Kim Stanley Robinson The Years of Rice and Salt 2002
Marilynne Robinson Gilead 2004
Jooundso Guimaroundses Rosa The Devil to Pay in the Backlands 1956
Henry Roth Call It Sleep 1934
Joseph Roth The Radetzky March 1932
Philip Roth Portnoy's Complaint 1969
Philip Roth American Pastoral 1997
Philip Roth The Human Stain 2000
Jean-Jacques Rousseau Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloïse 1761
JK Rowling Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone 1997
Arundhati Roy The God of Small Things 1997
Salman Rushdie Midnight's Children 1981
Salman Rushdie Shame 1983
Salman Rushdie The Satanic Verses 1988
Joanna Russ The Female Man 1975
Geoff Ryman Air 2005
Rafael Sabatini Scaramouche 1921
Rafael Sabatini Captain Blood His Odyssey 1922
Françoise Sagan Bonjour Tristesse 1954
Kurban Said Ali and Nino 1928
Saki The Westminster Alice 1902
Saki The Unbearable Bassington 1912
JD Salinger The Catcher in the Rye 1951
James Salter The Hunters 1956
James Salter A Sport and a Pastime 1967
James Salter Light Years 1975
Cora Sandel Alberta and Jacob 1926
CJ Sansom Dissolution 2003
José Saramago Blindness 1995
Dorothy L Sayers Whose Body? 1923
Dorothy L Sayers Murder Must Advertise 1933
Bernhard Schlink The Reader 1995
Leonardo Sciascia To Each His Own 1966
Paul Scott Staying On 1977
Walter Scott Ivanhoe 1819
Aara Seale The Reluctant Orphan 1947
Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle Molesworth 2000
Ronald Searle Hurrah for St Trinian's 1948
WG Sebald The Rings of Saturn 1995
WG Sebald Austerlitz 2001
Erich Segal Love Story 1970
Hubert Selby Jr Last Exit to Brooklyn 1964
Will Self Great Apes 1997
Will Self How the Dead Live 2000
Samuel Selvon The Lonely Londoners 1956
Ousmane Sembène God's Bit of Wood 1960
Victor Serge The Case of Comrade Tulayev 1950
Vikram Seth A Suitable Boy 1993
Anna Sewell Black Beauty 1877
Tom Sharpe Porterhouse Blue 1974
Tom Sharpe Blott on the Landscape 1975
Irwin Shaw The Young Lions 1949
Wilfred Sheed Office Politics 1966
Mary Shelley Frankenstein 1818
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu Uncle Silas 1864
Lao She Rickshaw Boy 1936
Carol Shields Unless 2002
Lionel Shriver We Need to Talk About Kevin 2003
Nevil Shute A Town Like Alice 1950
Alan Sillitoe Saturday Night & Sunday Morning 1958
Georges Simenon The Madman of Bergerac 1932
Georges Simenon The Blue Room 1965
Charles Simmons Belles Lettres Papers: A Novel 1987
Dan Simmons Hyperion 1989
May Sinclair The Three Sisters 1914
Upton Sinclair The Jungle 1906
Isaac Bashevis Singer The Family Moskat 1950
Isaac Bashevis Singer Enemies, a Love Story 1972
Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö The Laughing Policeman 1968
Elizabeth Smart At Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept 1945
Jane Smiley A Thousand Acres 1991
Jane Smiley Moo 1995
Dodie Smith I Capture the Castle 1948
Martin Cruz Smith Gorky Park 1981
Stevie Smith Novel on Yellow Paper 1936
Thorne Smith Topper Takes a Trip 1932
Zadie Smith White Teeth 2000
Zadie Smith On Beauty 2005
Tobias Smollett The Adventures of Roderick Random 1748
Tobias Smollett The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle 1751
Tobias Smollett The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom 1753
Tobias Smollett The Expedition of Humphry Clinker 1771
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich 1962
Ahdaf Soueif The Map of Love 1999
Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre Fantômas 1911
Muriel Spark The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie 1961
Muriel Spark The Girls of Slender Means 1963
Muriel Spark The Driver's Seat 1970
Muriel Spark Loitering With Intent 1981
Muriel Spark A Far Cry from Kensington 1988
Art Spiegelman Maus: A Survivor's Tale 1973-1991
Olaf Stapledon Star Maker 1937
Christina Stead The Man Who Loved Children 1940
John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men 1937
John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath 1939
John Steinbeck East of Eden 1952
Stendhal The Red and the Black 1830
Stendhal The Charterhouse of Parma 1839
Neal Stephenson Snow Crash 1992
Neal Stephenson Cryptonomicon 1999
Laurence Sterne The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman 1759
Laurence Sterne A Sentimental Journey 1768
Robert Louis Stevenson Treasure Island 1883
Robert Louis Stevenson Kidnapped 1886
Robert Louis Stevenson The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde 1886
Mike Stocks White Man Falling 2006
Bram Stoker Dracula 1897
Robert Stone A Flag for Sunrise 1981
David Storey This Sporting Life 1960
Rex Stout The League of Frightened Men 1935
Harriet Beecher Stowe Uncle Tom's Cabin 1852
Noel Streatfeild Ballet Shoes 1936
August Strindberg The Red Room 1879
William Styron Sophie's Choice 1979
Patrick Suüskind Perfume 1985
RS Surtees Handley Cross 1843
Jacqueline Susann Valley of the Dolls 1966
Italo Svevo Confessions of Zeno 1923
Graham Swift Waterland 1983
Jonathan Swift A Tale of a Tub 1704
Colm Tóibín The Blackwater Lightship 1999
Rabindranath Tagore The Home and the World 1916
Junichiro Tanizaki Diary of a Mad Old Man 1961
Booth Tarkington Penrod 1914
Booth Tarkington The Magnificent Ambersons 1918
Donna Tartt The Secret History 1992
Elizabeth Taylor Angel 1957
Josephine Tey The Daughter of Time 1951
William Makepeace Thackeray The Luck of Barry Lyndon 1844
William Makepeace Thackeray Vanity Fair 1848
Angela Thirkell Before Lunch 1939
Leslie Thomas Tropic of Ruislip 1974
Flora Thompson Lark Rise to Candleford 1945
Jim Thompson The Getaway 1959
Rupert Thomson The Insult 1996
JRR Tolkien The Hobbit 1937
JRR Tolkien The Lord of the Rings 1954-55
Leo Tolstoy War and Peace 1869
Leo Tolstoy Anna Karenina 1877
John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces 1980
Sue Townsend The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4 1982
Rose Tremain Music and Silence 1999
Robert Tressell The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists 1914
William Trevor Death in Summer 1998
Anthony Trollope Barchester Towers 1857
Anthony Trollope The Last Chronicle of Barset 1867
Anthony Trollope The Way We Live Now 1875
Kilgore Trout Venus on the Half-Shell 1974
Ivan Turgenev First Love 1860
Ivan Turgenev Fathers and Sons 1862
Mark Twain The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 1876
Mark Twain The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 1885
Mark Twain A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court 1889
Mark Twain Pudd'nhead Wilson 1894
Mark Twain The Mysterious Stranger 1916
Anne Tyler The Accidental Tourist 1985
Anne Tyler Breathing Lessons 1988
Miguel de Unamuno Peace in War 1897
John Updike The Rabbit Omnibus 1960-90
John Updike Couples 1968
John Updike The Witches of Eastwick 1984
Vassilis Vassilikos Z 1967
Jules Verne A Journey to the Centre of the Earth 1864
Jules Verne Around the World in Eighty Days 1873
Gore Vidal Williwaw 1946
Barbara Vine A Dark-Adapted Eye 1986
Barbara Vine A Fatal Inversion 1987
Barbara Vine King Solomon's Carpet 1991
Voltaire Candide 1759
Kurt Vonnegut Sirens of Titan 1959
Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse-Five 1969
Kurt Vonnegut Breakfast of Champions 1973
Alice Walker The Color Purple 1982
David Foster Wallace Infinite Jest 1996
Edgar Wallace The Four Just Men 1905
Horace Walpole The Castle of Otranto 1764
Robert Walser Institute Benjamenta 1909
Chris Ware Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth 2000
Alan Warner Morvern Callar 1995
Sylvia Townsend Warner Lolly Willowes 1926
Keith Waterhouse Billy Liar 1959
Sarah Waters Affinity 1999
Sarah Waters Fingersmith 2002
Sarah Waters The Night Watch 2006
Evelyn Waugh Decline and Fall 1928
Evelyn Waugh Vile Bodies 1930
Evelyn Waugh Black Mischief 1932
Evelyn Waugh A Handful of Dust 1934
Evelyn Waugh Scoop 1938
Evelyn Waugh Put Out More Flags 1942
Evelyn Waugh The Loved One 1948
Evelyn Waugh Men at Arms 1952
Charles Webb The Graduate 1963
Fay Weldon The Life and Loves of a She-Devil 1983
HG Wells The Time Machine 1895
HG Wells The Island of Dr Moreau 1896
HG Wells The War of the Worlds 1898
HG Wells Tono Bungay 1909
HG Wells The History of Mr Polly 1910
Irvine Welsh Trainspotting 1993
Robert Westall The Machine-Gunners 1975
Nathanael West The Day of the Locust 1939
Rebecca West The Return of the Soldier 1918
Rebecca West The Fountain Overflows 1957
Edith Wharton The House of Mirth 1905
Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence 1920
Antonia White Frost in May 1933
Patrick White The Tree of Man 1955
Patrick White Voss 1957
TH White The Sword in the Stone 1938
Oscar Wilde The Picture of Dorian Gray 1891
Nigel Williams The Wimbledon Poisoner 1990
Angus Wilson Anglo-Saxon Attitudes 1956
Angus Wilson The Old Men at the Zoo 1961
Jeanette Winterson Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit 1985
Jeanette Winterson The Passion 1987
Owen Wister The Virginian 1902
PG Wodehouse Something Fresh 1915
PG Wodehouse Piccadilly Jim 1918
PG Wodehouse Heavy Weather 1933
PG Wodehouse Thank You Jeeves 1934
PG Wodehouse The Code of the Woosters 1938
PG Wodehouse Joy in the Morning 1947
Gene Wolfe The Book of the New Sun 1980-83
Tom Wolfe The Bonfire of the Vanities 1987
Gerard Woodward I'll Go to Bed at Noon 2004
Mrs Henry Wood East Lynne 1861
Virginia Woolf Mrs Dalloway 1925
Virginia Woolf To the Lighthouse 1927
Virginia Woolf Orlando 1928
Herman Wouk The Caine Mutiny 1951
Richard Wright Native Son 1940
Wu Cheng'en Monkey 1590s
John Wyndham Day of the Triffids 1951
John Wyndham The Midwich Cuckoos 1957
Johann David Wyss The Swiss Family Robinson 1812
Richard Yates Revolutionary Road 1961
Yevgeny Zamyatin We 1924
Émile Zola Therese Raquin 1867
Émile Zola Germinal 1885
Émile Zola La Bête Humaine 1890
Émile Zola The Debacle 1892

Author by frequency

Author Frequency
Charles Dickens 9
Evelyn Waugh 8
Graham Greene 8
PG Wodehouse 6
Joseph Conrad 6
Jane Austin 6
HG Wells 5
Mark Twain 5
Muriel Spark 5
Anthony Powell 5
Henry James 5
Thomas Hardy 5
George Eliot 5
Agatha Christie 5
Émile Zola 4
Tobias Smollett 4
Thomas Pynchon 4
Vladimir Nabokov 4
Cormac McCarthy 4
DH Lawrence 4
Dashiell Hammett 4
André Gide 4
Elizabeth Gaskell 4
Fyodor Dostoevsky 4
Michael Dibdin 4
Willa Cather 4
Saul Bellow 4
JG Ballard 4
Virginia Woolf 3
Sarah Waters 3
Kurt Vonnegut 3
Barbara Vine 3
John Updike 3
Anthony Trollope 3
Robert Louis Stevenson 3
John Steinbeck 3
James Salter 3
Salman Rushdie 3
Philip Roth 3
Ian Rankin 3
Georges Perec 3
David Peace 3
George Orwell 3
Toni Morrison 3
Ian McEwan 3
Thomas Mann 3
Doris Lessing 3
Rosamond Lehmann 3
Stephen King 3
James Joyce 3
PD James 3
Hermann Hesse 3
Hergé 3
Ernest Hemingway 3
EM Forster 3
Ian Fleming 3
Gustave Flaubert 3
William Faulkner 3
Daphne du Maurier 3
Arthur Conan Doyle 3
Daniel Defoe 3
Angela Carter 3
JL Carr 3
John le Carré 3
Peter Carey 3
Anthony Burgess 3
Charlotte Brontë 3
William Boyd 3
Elizabeth Bowen 3
Honoré de Balzac 3
Beryl Bainbridge 3
Margaret Atwood 3
Martin Amis 3
Eric Ambler 3
John Wyndham 2
Jeanette Winterson 2
Angus Wilson 2
Patrick White 2
Edith Wharton 2
Rebecca West 2
Jules Verne 2
Anne Tyler 2
Ivan Turgenev 2
Leo Tolstoy 2
JRR Tolkien 2
William Makepeace Thackeray 2
Booth Tarkington 2
Laurence Sterne 2
Neal Stephenson 2
Stendhal 2
Zadie Smith 2
Jane Smiley 2
Isaac Bashevis Singer 2
Georges Simenon 2
Tom Sharpe 2
Will Self 2
WG Sebald 2
Dorothy L Sayers 2
Saki 2
Rafael Sabatini 2
Samuel Richardson 2
Henry Handel Richardson 2
Ruth Rendell 2
Barbara Pym 2
George Pelecanos 2
Thomas Love Peacock 2
John Dos Passos 2
Sara Paretsky 2
VS Naipaul 2
Iris Murdoch 2
Haruki Murakami 2
John Mortimer 2
Elsa Morante 2
Nancy Mitford 2
Rohinton Mistry 2
George Meredith 2
Carson McCullers 2
William Maxwell 2
Naguib Mahfouz 2
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis 2
Gabriel García Márquez 2
Jack London 2
David Lodge 2
Sinclair Lewis 2
Elmore Leonard 2
Milan Kundera 2
Thomas Keneally 2
Franz Kafka 2
Kazuo Ishiguro 2
Christopher Isherwood 2
Aldous Huxley 2
Alan Hollinghurst 2
Patricia Highsmith 2
Georgette Heyer 2
Nathaniel Hawthorne 2
LP Hartley 2
Thomas Harris 2
Robert Harris 2
Patrick Hamilton 2
H Rider Haggard 2
Ursula K Le Guin 2
John Grisham 2
William Golding 2
George Gissing 2
Michael Frayn 2
John Fowles 2
CS Forester 2
Richard Ford 2
Ford Madox Ford 2
F Scott Fitzgerald 2
Henry Fielding 2
Jeffrey Eugenides 2
James Ellroy 2
Maria Edgeworth 2
Umberto Eco 2
Alexandre Dumas 2
Theodore Dreiser 2
Philip K Dick 2
Colin Dexter 2
Don DeLillo 2
Len Deighton 2
Michael Crichton 2
Jim Crace 2
Douglas Coupland 2
Wilkie Collins 2
JM Coetzee 2
Raymond Chandler 2
Joyce Cary 2
Lewis Carroll 2
Albert Camus 2
Italo Calvino 2
James M Cain 2
AS Byatt 2
Samuel Butler 2
James Lee Burke 2
John Buchan 2
Flann O'Brien 2
Arnold Bennett 2
Samuel Beckett 2
HE Bates 2
Julian Barnes 2
Iain Banks 2
James Baldwin 2
Paul Auster 2
Chinua Achebe 2
Yevgeny Zamyatin 1
Richard Yates 1
Johann David Wyss 1
Wu Cheng'en 1
Richard Wright 1
Herman Wouk 1
Mrs Henry Wood 1
Gerard Woodward 1
Tom Wolfe 1
Gene Wolfe 1
Owen Wister 1
Nigel Williams 1
Oscar Wilde 1
TH White 1
Antonia White 1
Nathanael West 1
Robert Westall 1
Irvine Welsh 1
Fay Weldon 1
Charles Webb 1
Keith Waterhouse 1
Sylvia Townsend Warner 1
Alan Warner 1
Chris Ware 1
Robert Walser 1
Horace Walpole 1
Edgar Wallace 1
David Foster Wallace 1
Alice Walker 1
Voltaire 1
Gore Vidal 1
Vassilis Vassilikos 1
Miguel de Unamuno 1
Kilgore Trout 1
William Trevor 1
Robert Tressell 1
Rose Tremain 1
Sue Townsend 1
John Kennedy Toole 1
Rupert Thomson 1
Jim Thompson 1
Flora Thompson 1
Leslie Thomas 1
Angela Thirkell 1
Josephine Tey 1
Elizabeth Taylor 1
Donna Tartt 1
Junichiro Tanizaki 1
Rabindranath Tagore 1
Colm Tóibín 1
Jonathan Swift 1
Graham Swift 1
Italo Svevo 1
Jacqueline Susann 1
RS Surtees 1
Patrick Suüskind 1
William Styron 1
August Strindberg 1
Noel Streatfeild 1
Harriet Beecher Stowe 1
Rex Stout 1
David Storey 1
Robert Stone 1
Bram Stoker 1
Mike Stocks 1
Christina Stead 1
Olaf Stapledon 1
Art Spiegelman 1
Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre 1
Ahdaf Soueif 1
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1
Thorne Smith 1
Stevie Smith 1
Martin Cruz Smith 1
Dodie Smith 1
Elizabeth Smart 1
Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö 1
Upton Sinclair 1
May Sinclair 1
Dan Simmons 1
Charles Simmons 1
Alan Sillitoe 1
Nevil Shute 1
Lionel Shriver 1
Carol Shields 1
Lao She 1
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu 1
Mary Shelley 1
Wilfred Sheed 1
Irwin Shaw 1
Anna Sewell 1
Vikram Seth 1
Victor Serge 1
Ousmane Sembène 1
Samuel Selvon 1
Hubert Selby Jr 1
Erich Segal 1
Ronald Searle 1
Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle 1
Aara Seale 1
Walter Scott 1
Paul Scott 1
Leonardo Sciascia 1
Bernhard Schlink 1
José Saramago 1
CJ Sansom 1
Cora Sandel 1
JD Salinger 1
Kurban Said 1
Françoise Sagan 1
Geoff Ryman 1
Joanna Russ 1
Arundhati Roy 1
JK Rowling 1
Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1
Joseph Roth 1
Henry Roth 1
Jooundso Guimaroundses Rosa 1
Marilynne Robinson 1
Kim Stanley Robinson 1
Mordecai Richler 1
Dorothy Richardson 1
Jean Rhys 1
Alastair Reynolds 1
Erich Maria Remarque 1
Piers Paul Read 1
Simon Raven 1
Rudolf Erich Raspe 1
Ann Radcliffe 1
François Rabelais 1
Raymond Queneau 1
Mario Puzo 1
Philip Pullman 1
Marcel Proust 1
Annie Proulx 1
Christopher Priest 1
JB Priestley 1
Richard Price 1
Terry Pratchett 1
Abbé Prévost 1
John Cowper Powys 1
Dawn Powell 1
Chaim Potok 1
Frederik Pohl & CM Kornbluth 1
Robert Plunkett 1
Sylvia Plath 1
Robert M Pirsig 1
Walker Percy 1
Victor Pelevin 1
Mervyn Peake 1
Cesare Pavese 1
Alan Paton 1
Boris Pasternak 1
Pier Paolo Pasolini 1
Orhan Pamuk 1
Chuck Palahniuk 1
Baroness Emmuska Orczy 1
E Phillips Oppenhein 1
E Phillips Oppenheim 1
Michael Ondaatje 1
Ben Okri 1
Kenzaburo Oe 1
Frank Norris 1
Cees Nooteboom 1
Jeff Noon 1
Larry Niven 1
Anaïs Nin 1
Bao Ninh 1
Audrey Niffenegger 1
RK Narayan 1
Shiva Naipaul 1
Irène Némirovsky 1
Robert Musil 1
Alice Munro 1
Timothy Mo 1
Walter Mosley 1
William Morris 1
Alberto Moravia 1
Brian Moore 1
Michael Moorcock 1
Nicholas Monsarrat 1
Margaret Mitchell 1
David Mitchell 1
Magnus Mills 1
Spike Milligan 1
Isabel Miller 1
Henry Miller 1
Andrew Miller 1
Walter M Miller Jr 1
James Michener 1
China Miéville 1
Jed Mercurio 1
Herman Melville 1
Larry McMurtry 1
Jay McInerney 1
John McGahern 1
Johnston McCulley 1
Mary McCarthy 1
Patrick McCabe 1
Ed McBain 1
FM Mayor 1
Armistead Maupin 1
W Somerset Maugham 1
Somerset Maugham 1
Charles Maturin 1
Richard Matheson 1
Michael Marshall Smith 1
Frederick Marryat 1
Dacia Maraini 1
Javier Marías 1
Alessandro Manzoni 1
Hilary Mantel 1
Olivia Manning 1
Henning Mankell 1
André Malraux 1
David Malouf 1
Bernard Malamud 1
Norman Mailer 1
David Madsen 1
Ken MacLeod 1
Alastair Maclean 1
Julian Maclaren-Ross 1
Compton Mackenzie 1
Colin MacInnes 1
AG Macdonnell 1
Rose Macaulay 1
Amin Maalouf 1
Alison Lurie 1
Robert Ludlum 1
Malcolm Lowry 1
Audre Lorde 1
Anita Loos 1
Richard Llewellyn 1
David Lindsay 1
MG Lewis 1
CS Lewis 1
Primo Levi 1
Jonathan Lethem 1
Alain-René Lesage 1
Stanislaw Lem 1
Laurie Lee 1
Harper Lee 1
Marghanita Laski 1
Nella Larsen 1
Philip Larkin 1
John Lanchester 1
Andrey Kurkov 1
Hanif Kureishi 1
Jerzy Kosinski 1
Arthur Koestler 1
Rudyard Kipling 1
Colette Khoury 1
Daniel Keyes 1
Ken Kesey 1
Jack Kerouac 1
Pamela Kent 1
AL Kennedy 1
Harry Kemelman 1
Yashar Kemal 1
James Kelman 1
Garrison Keillor 1
Molly Keane 1
Nikos Kazantzakis 1
MM Kaye 1
Yasunari Kawabata 1
MacKinlay Kantor 1
Ismail Kadare 1
Layla al-Juhani 1
James Jones 1
Gwyneth Jones 1
Samuel Johnson 1
BS Johnson 1
Jerome K Jerome 1
Elizabeth Jenkins 1
Elfriede Jelinek 1
Richard Jefferies 1
Randall Jarrell 1
Howard Jacobson 1
Shirley Jackson 1
John Irving 1
Michael Innes 1
Arnaldur Indridason 1
Frances Iles 1
James Hynes 1
Zora Neale Hurston 1
Victor Hugo 1
Thomas Hughes 1
Richard Hughes 1
WH Hudson 1
Bohumil Hrabal 1
Geoffrey Household 1
Michel Houellebecq 1
Khaled Hosseini 1
Paul Hornschemeier 1
Nick Hornby 1
Anthony Hope 1
Winifred Holtby 1
James Hogg 1
Eric Hodgins 1
Russell Hoban 1
Barry Hines 1
Chester Himes 1
Reginald Hill 1
George V Higgins 1
Carl Hiaasen 1
Frank Herbert 1
Joseph Heller 1
Robert A Heinlein 1
Shirley Hazzard 1
Jaroslav Hasek 1
John Harris 1
M John Harrison 1
Knut Hamsun 1
Radclyffe Hall 1
Joe Haldeman 1
CT Rawi Hage 1
Andrew O'Hagan 1
Mark Haddon 1
Peter Høeg 1
Giovanni Guareschi 1
George Grossmith 1
Vasily Grossman 1
Michael Green 1
Henry Green 1
Walter Greenwood 1
Richard Greaves (George Barr McCutcheon) 1
Alasdair Gray 1
Robert Graves 1
Günter Grass 1
Kenneth Grahame 1
René Goscinny 1
Maxim Gorky 1
Nadine Gordimer 1
Ivan Goncharov 1
Oliver Goldsmith 1
Nikolai Gogol 1
Johann Wolfgang Goethe 1
Charlotte Perkins Gilman 1
William Gibson 1
Lewis Grassic Gibbon 1
Stella Gibbons 1
William Gerhardie 1
Alan Garner 1
Alex Garland 1
John Galsworthy 1
Paul Gallico 1
Neil Gaiman 1
William Gaddis 1
Esther Freud 1
Charles Frazier 1
George MacDonald Fraser 1
Jonathan Franzen 1
Henri Alain-Fournier 1
Frederick Forsyth 1
Theodor Fontane 1
Jonathan Safran Foer 1
Penelope Fitzgerald 1
Ronald Firbank 1
Helen Fielding 1
Sebastian Faulks 1
JG Farrell 1
Michel Faber 1
Anne Enright 1
Shusaku Endo 1
Willem Elsschot 1
RJ Ellory 1
Bret Easton Ellis 1
Ralph Ellison 1
Enayat el-Zayyat 1
William Eastlake 1
Lawrence Durrell 1
Gerald Durrell 1
Marguerite Duras 1
Margaret Drabble 1
Roddy Doyle 1
Norman Douglas 1
Julie Doucet 1
JP Donleavy 1
EL Doctorow 1
Benjamin Disraeli 1
Thomas M Disch 1
Joan Didion 1
Denis Diderot 1
James Dickey 1
Giuseppe di Lampedusa 1
Samuel R Delaney 1
EM Delafield 1
Peter De Vries 1
Antoine de Sainte-Exupéry 1
Guy de Maupassant 1
Madame de Lafayette 1
Pierre-Ambroise-François Choderlos de Laclos 1
José Maria de Eça de Queiroz 1
Simone de Beauvoir 1
Marie Darrieussecq 1
Mark Danielewski 1
Friedrich Dürrenmatt 1
Alfred Döblin 1
Amanda Cross 1
Richmal Crompton 1
Edmund Crispin 1
Stephen Crane 1
Francis Coventry 1
Patricia Cornwell 1
Bernard Cornwell 1
Michael G Coney 1
Richard Condon 1
Colette 1
Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette 1
Sidone-Gabrille Colette 1
Jonathan Coe 1
Jean Cocteau 1
Susanna Clarke 1
Arthur C Clarke 1
Kate Chopin 1
Erskine Childers 1
GK Chesterton 1
John Cheever 1
James Hadley Chase 1
Michael Chabon 1
Miguel de Cervantes 1
John Dickson Carr 1
Leonora Carrington 1
Alejo Carpentier 1
Truman Capote 1
Elias Canetti 1
Ramsey Campbell 1
Erskine Caldwell 1
Louis-Ferdinand Céline 1
David B 1
Ron Butlin 1
Octavia Butler 1
William Burroughs 1
Edgar Rice Burroughs 1
Fanny Burney 1
WR Burnett 1
Ivy Compton-Burnett 1
Edward Bulwer-Lytton 1
Mikhail Bulgakov 1
Algis Budrys 1
Rita Mae Brown 1
Charles Brockden Brown 1
Anita Brookner 1
Emily Brontë 1
Hermann Broch 1
Poppy Z Brite 1
André Brink 1
Raymond Briggs 1
Tim O'Brien 1
Patrick O'Brian 1
John Braine 1
Caryl Brahms and SJ Simon 1
Mary E Braddon 1
Ray Bradbury 1
Malcolm Bradbury 1
WE Bowman 1
Paul Bowles 1
Jane Bowles 1
Roberto Bolaño 1
Nicholas Blake 1
RD Blackmore 1
Alfred Bester 1
Thomas Bernhard 1
Anthony Berkeley 1
John Berger 1
EC Bentley 1
EF Benson 1
Alan Bennett 1
Aphra Behn 1
Max Beerbohm 1
Sybille Bedford 1
William Beckford 1
Alison Bechdel 1
Greg Bear 1
Stephen Baxter 1
Nina Bawden 1
Giorgio Bassani 1
Henry Howarth Bashford 1
Stan Barstow 1
Sebastian Barry 1
Djuna Barnes 1
Pat Barker 1
Nicola Barker 1
Clive Barker 1
Lynne Reid Banks 1
Iain M Banks 1
Miklos Banffy 1
Nigel Balchin 1
Nicholson Baker 1
Kate Atkinson 1
Isaac Asimov 1
Mulk Raj Anand 1
Kingsley Amis 1
Nelson Algren 1
Brian W Aldiss 1
Richard Aldington 1
Louisa May Alcott 1
Latifa al-Zayyat 1
Junghyo Ahn 1
Douglas Adams 1
Kobo Abe 1

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10 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wow. Public service indeed.

FWIW I would have grouped the entire Hitchiker's 'trilogy' as one book. The individuals novels in the series cannot be read in isolation.

Minor nitpick. You list JM Coetzee as M Coetzee.

10:29 pm  
Blogger njr said...

Thanks Leon.

I did correct a number of Guardian errors along the way, but missed that one; I've fixed it now. No doubt I introduced my own errors in the process too.

10:35 pm  
Blogger Martin McCallion said...

Nicely done. But who's this "Jane Austin"? Is she any relation to Steve Austin (Astronaut)?

11:08 am  
Blogger njr said...

Martin: Yes, I think the relevant quote is at the start of one of Jane's less famous works, Will and Wanderlust: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of an Apollo Moon Rocket."

7:48 am  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thank you

10:15 am  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

reckon u could run that list thru Project Gutenberg (programmatically) to see what's available to dload?

10:52 am  
Blogger njr said...

Anonymous: Sorry for the delayed reply.

I'm not sure it would be so easy: as far as I can tell, Project Gutenberg doesn't have an API. Sure, one could search and try to parse the results, but it would be painful, especially given the non (7-bit) ASCII characters in a lot of the titles/authors, which really begs for XML or similar.

Still, I can make the raw data available if someone wants to try.

Personally, even though I'm really quite fond of the planet, I don't like reading electronic books with current technologies. Libraries are good though...

9:33 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I've been trying to establish this list myself by cross-referencing the various articles on the website.

The Guardian's "definitive list" has 998 entries. It is missing the 5 "Great Arabic love stories", but has in addition 3 items not appearing in an article:

Vendetta by Michael Dibdin
Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

I wonder if your list is the 1000 that they intended? Are the Great Arabic Love Stories meant to be there? Are they all available in translation? One could argue that Arabic Love Stories might be over-represented at 0.5%, but they have also included 3 Tintin books as separate enties.

7:22 pm  
Blogger njr said...

That's interesting, Mark. I hadn't seen that they'd published their own "definitive list". (I wouldn't have bothered had I known...)

For what it's worth, I assembled my list by going through the (on-line) versions of their various articles. Pulling out just the titles from the main articles left me nearly 200 short. I then added in all the books listed in the minor/specialist articles.
I was rather pleased (and slightly surprised) that this produced a list of exactly 1,000, but took that as confirmation that I'd found them all.

It's interesting that theirs is different. Thanks for pointing it out.

If others are interested, the official Guardian definitive list is available here. I'll probably update the blog entry to include that too as an update.

7:57 pm  
Anonymous kamagra said...

Thanks for the list. But I wonder if all of these still available in the market?

12:17 pm  

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