Ten Novels and Their Authors

Ten Novels and Their Authors

First UK edition (1954)
Author	W. Somerset Maugham
Original title	Great Novelists and Their Novels
Language	English
Genre	Essays
Publisher	Winston (US) Heinemann (UK)
Publication date	New York (1948) London (1954)
Publication place	United States United Kingdom

Ten Novels and Their Authors (originally published as Great Novelists and Their Novels) is a 1948 work of literary criticism by William Somerset Maugham. ^[1] Maugham collects together what he considers to have been the ten greatest novels and writes about the books and the authors. The ten novels are: ^{[2] [3] [4]}

1. The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding (1749)
2. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (1813)
3. The Red and the Black by Stendhal (1830)
4. Le Père Goriot by Honoré de Balzac (1835)
5. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (1849)
6. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (1856)
7. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (1851)
8. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (1847)
9. The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky (1880)
10. War and Peace by Tolstoy (1869)

This book was originally a series of magazine articles commissioned by Redbook .

Notes

1. Ten Novels and Their Authors . London: William Heinemann Ltd. 1954 – via Internet Archive.
2. "Guests At Mr. Somerset Maugham's Party". The Illustrated London News. 20 November 1954. p. 28. Retrieved 28 November 2025.
3. "Favourite Authors". Staffordshire Newsletter. 18 December 1954. p. 14. Retrieved 28 November 2025.
4. "The 10 Greatest Novels?". The Tennessean. 8 May 1955. p. 69. Retrieved 28 November 2025.