The 100 Best Novels Of All Time In English

This is one of the 759 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.

About this list

The Guardian, 100 Books

The Guardian’s 2026 list of the 100 best novels of all time ranks novels published in English, including works originally written in other languages and later translated. The list was compiled from ranked top-10 ballots submitted by 172 authors, critics, and academics from around the world, with titles scored by both number of votes and placement on individual ballots. George Eliot’s Middlemarch took the top spot, followed by Toni Morrison’s Beloved, James Joyce’s Ulysses, Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, and Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. The Guardian notes that this new list is broader than its earlier versions, with more women writers represented and a mix of canonical classics, modernist landmarks, contemporary fiction, and major works in translation.

This list was originally published in 2026 and was added to this site about 1 month ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
28 Middlemarch George Eliot 1871 British English
49 Beloved Toni Morrison 1987 American English
1 Ulysses James Joyce 1922 Irish English
27 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf 1927 British English
2 In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust 1913 French French
10 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy 1877 Russian Russian
12 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy 1869 Russian Russian
29 Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë 1847 British English
13 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen 1813 British English
20 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert 1857 French French
3 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925 American English
121 Bleak House Charles Dickens 1852 British English
83 Emma Jane Austen 1815 British English
32 Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf 1925 British English
7 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 1851 American English
6 Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell 1949 British English
5 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez 1967 Colombian Spanish
192 Persuasion Jane Austen 1817 British English
51 The Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy Laurence Sterne 1759 British English
15 Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë 1847 British English
73 The Portrait of a Lady Henry James 1881 American English
60 Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe 1958 Nigerian English
64 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie 1981 Indian English
204 The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro 1989 British English
14 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov 1955 American English
8 Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes 1605 Spanish Spanish
18 The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky 1880 Russian Russian
21 The Trial Franz Kafka 1925 Czech German
72 Pale Fire Vladimir Nabokov 1962 American English
39 Frankenstein Mary Shelley 1818 British English
169 The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Muriel Spark 1961 British, Scottish English
359 The God of Small Things Arundhati Roy 1997 Indian English
47 David Copperfield Charles Dickens 1849 British English
397 Wolf Hall Hilary Mantel 2009 British English
38 Great Expectations Charles Dickens 1860 British English
132 The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood 1985 Canadian English
36 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 1952 American English
92 The Age of Innocence Edith Wharton 1920 American English
68 Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston 1937 American English
260 Song of Solomon Toni Morrison 1977 American English
31 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad 1899 British English
25 The Magic Mountain Thomas Mann 1924 German German
331 Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson 1980 American English
167 Giovanni's Room James Baldwin 1956 American English
61 The Golden Notebook Doris May Lessing 1962 British English
56 The Leopard Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa 1958 Italian Italian
105 Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray 1847 British English
66 The Metamorphosis Franz Kafka 1915 Czech German
549 A Fine Balance Rohinton Mistry 1995 Indian English
158 Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys 1966 British English
409 My Brilliant Friend Elena Ferrante 2012 American Italian
376 The Golden Bowl Henry James 1904 American English
1096 The Transit of Venus Shirley Hazzard 1980 Australian English
95 Orlando Virginia Woolf 1928 British English
252 The Waves Virginia Woolf 1931 British English
520 Mansfield Park Jane Austen 1814 British English
9 The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner 1929 American English
255 Disgrace J. M. Coetzee 1999 South African English
266 Never Let Me Go Kazuo Ishiguro 2005 British English
197 Howards End E. M. Forster 1910 British English
697 The Rings of Saturn W. G. Sebald 1995 German German
1158 Half of a Yellow Sun Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 2006 Nigerian English
221 White Teeth Zadie Smith 2000 British English
85 The Good Soldier Ford Madox Ford 1915 British English
157 The Color Purple Alice Walker 1982 American English
34 The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov 1967 Russian Russian
82 The Man Without Qualities Robert Musil 1930 Austrian German
198 Blood Meridian Cormac McCarthy 1985 American English
11 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky 1866 Russian Russian
287 Jude the Obscure Thomas Hardy 1895 British English
513 Kindred Octavia E. Butler 1979 American English
387 Our Mutual Friend Charles Dickens 1864 British English
262 Austerlitz W. G. Sebald 2001 German German
746 Nervous Conditions Tsitsi Dangarembga 1988 Zimbabwean English
308 The Bluest Eye Toni Morrison 1970 American English
53 Dracula Bram Stoker 1897 British English
487 Rainbow D.H. Lawrence 1915 British English
223 A House for Mr. Biswas V. S. Naipaul 1961 Trinidadian English
353 Go Tell it on the Mountain James Baldwin 1953 American English
59 Rebecca Daphne du Maurier 1938 British English
90 Buddenbrooks Thomas Mann 1901 German German
176 The End of the Affair Graham Greene 1951 British English
67 A Farewell to Arms Ernest Hemingway 1929 American English
143 The Talented Mr. Ripley Patricia Highsmith 1955 American English
804 The Vegetarian Han Kang 2007 Korean Korean
189 The Turn of the Screw Henry James 1898 American English
723 The Line of Beauty Alan Hollinghurst 2004 British English
406 Ragtime E. L. Doctorow 1975 American English
363 The Left Hand Of Darkness Ursula K. Le Guin 1969 American English
3932 Jacob's Room Virginia Woolf 1922 British English
214 Life and Fate Vasily Grossman 1980 Russian Russian
116 A Sentimental Education Gustave Flaubert 1869 French French
202 Invisible Cities Italo Calvino 1972 Italian Italian
574 The Known World Edward P. Jones 2003 American English
739 The Return of the Native Thomas Hardy 1878 British English
124 Pedro Páramo Juan Rulfo 1955 Mexican Spanish
33 Catch-22 Joseph Heller 1961 American English
290 The Road Cormac McCarthy 2006 American English
602 The Go-Between L. P. Hartley 1953 British English
160 My Antonia Willa Cather 1918 American English