The 100 Greatest Novels Of All Time

In response to the BBC's Big Read campaign to discover the UK's 'best loved' books, The Observer decided to compiled its own list of essential fiction from the past 300 years. They say the list is fundamentally English and inevitably reflects the age, sex and education of its Observer contributors. They started with an intra-office email, inviting nominations for a top 10. The matrix of replies produced a surprising unanimity.

Article: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,1061036,00.html
List: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,1061037,00.html

"Ours is not a list of 'best loved' books. It is less sentimental, and probably less contemporary. It is a catalogue of just a hundred 'essential' titles - as we see it. Of course it is not scientific. Neither Mori nor Gallup was involved. It is partial, prejudiced and highly personal. It reflects whim and fashion. And as we compiled it we began to see actually how difficult - even questionable - the idea of such a unified literary inheritance has become at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Even more agonising are the impossibly hard choices that a list of a hundred forces one to make."

Posted by Tom on October 15, 2003