Modern Library's 100 Best Novels is a 1998 list of the best English-language novels published during the 20th century, [a] as selected by Modern Library from among 400 novels published by Random House, which owns Modern Library. [1] The purpose of the list was to "bring the Modern Library to public attention" and stimulate sales of its books. [2] A separate Modern Library 100 Best Nonfiction list of the 100 best non-fiction books of the 20th century was created the same year.
During early 1998, the Modern Library polled its editorial board to find their opinions of the best 100 novels. The board of review consisted of Daniel J. Boorstin, A. S. Byatt, Christopher Cerf, Shelby Foote, Vartan Gregorian, Edmund Morris, John Richardson, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., William Styron and Gore Vidal. All but Gregorian were published by Random House or an affiliate. [2]
Ulysses by James Joyce topped the list, followed by F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man . The most recent novel in the list is William Kennedy's Ironweed , published in 1983; the oldest is The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler, which was written between 1873 and 1884, but not published until 1902. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness was technically first published as a three-part serial in 1899; however, it was not published as a novel in a single volume until 1902, making it eligible for the list. Conrad has four novels on the list, the most of any author. William Faulkner, E. M. Forster, Henry James, James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, and Evelyn Waugh each have three novels. There are ten other authors with two novels.
The following table shows the top ten novels from the editors' list: [3]
# | Year | Title | Author |
---|---|---|---|
1 | 1922 | Ulysses | James Joyce |
2 | 1925 | The Great Gatsby | F. Scott Fitzgerald |
3 | 1916 | A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man | James Joyce |
4 | 1955 | Lolita | Vladimir Nabokov |
5 | 1932 | Brave New World | Aldous Huxley |
6 | 1929 | The Sound and the Fury | William Faulkner |
7 | 1961 | Catch-22 | Joseph Heller |
8 | 1940 | Darkness at Noon | Arthur Koestler |
9 | 1913 | Sons and Lovers | D. H. Lawrence |
10 | 1939 | The Grapes of Wrath | John Steinbeck |
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist, poet and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century. Joyce's novel Ulysses (1922) is a landmark in which the episodes of Homer's Odyssey are paralleled in a variety of literary styles, particularly stream of consciousness. Other well-known works are the short-story collection Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939). His other writings include three books of poetry, a play, letters, and occasional journalism.
Ford Madox Ford was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals The English Review and The Transatlantic Review were important in the development of early 20th-century English and American literature.
Ulysses is a modernist novel by the Irish writer James Joyce. Partially serialized in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, the entire work was published in Paris by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, Joyce's fortieth birthday. It is considered one of the most important works of modernist literature and has been called "a demonstration and summation of the entire movement".
The English novel is an important part of English literature. This article mainly concerns novels, written in English, by novelists who were born or have spent a significant part of their lives in England, Scotland, Wales, or Northern Ireland. However, given the nature of the subject, this guideline has been applied with common sense, and reference is made to novels in other languages or novelists who are not primarily British, where appropriate.
This is a list of book lists (bibliographies) on Wikipedia, organized by various criteria.
The Modern Library is an American book publishing imprint and formerly the parent company of Random House. Founded in 1917 by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright as an imprint of their publishing company Boni & Liveright, Modern Library became an independent publishing company in 1925 when Boni & Liveright sold it to Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer. Random House began in 1927 as a subsidiary of the Modern Library and eventually overtook its parent company, with Modern Library becoming an imprint of Random House.
British literature is from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands. This article covers British literature in the English language. Anglo-Saxon literature is included, and there is some discussion of Latin and Anglo-Norman literature, where literature in these languages relate to the early development of the English language and literature. There is also some brief discussion of major figures who wrote in Scots, but the main discussion is in the various Scottish literature articles.
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The Modern Library 100 Best Nonfiction was created in 1998 by the Modern Library. The list is what it considers to be the 100 best non-fiction books published since 1900.
Literature of the 20th century refers to world literature produced during the 20th century.
Daniel R. Schwarz is Frederick J. Whiton Professor of English Literature and Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow at Cornell University, where he has taught since 1968. He has directed nine NEH seminars and has lectured widely in the United States and abroad, including a number of lecture tours under the auspices of the academic programs of the USIS and the State Department. He was a founding member of the Society for the Study of Narrative Literature and served as its President from 1990 to 1991. He has held three endowed visiting professorships. He was a guest Fellow for short periods at Oxford (Brasenose) and Cambridge (Girton) in the UK. He has been the President of the Cornell Phi Beta Kappa chapter since 2009. He is the author of eighteen significant books and numerous articles, many of which have appeared in prestigious journals and collections of essays.
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Bokklubben World Library is a series of classical books, mostly novels, published by the Norwegian Book Clubs since 2002. It is based on a list of the hundred best books, as proposed by one hundred writers from fifty-four countries, compiled and organized in 2002 by the Book Club. This list endeavors to reflect world literature, with books from all countries, cultures, and time periods.
The 20th Century's Greatest Hits: 100 English-Language Books of Fiction is a list of the 100 best English-language books of the 20th century compiled by American literary critic Larry McCaffery. The list was created largely in response to the Modern Library 100 Best Novels list (1999), which McCaffery considered out of touch with 20th-century fiction. McCaffery wrote that he saw his list "as a means of sharing with readers my own views about what books are going to be read 100 or 1000 years from now".
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