50 Books That Defined Their Era

This is one of the 743 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.

About this list

Guardian, 50 Books

Which of these books do you think best defines its era? The panel comprised Nic Bottomley, independent bookseller and Guardian blogger; Hazel Broadfoot, independent bookseller; Sarah Crown, editor of Guardian Unlimited Books; Alastair Giles, book publishing marketing consultant; Jo Henry, executive director of the Book Marketing Society; John Mullan, professor of English at University College London and Guardian contributor; Joel Rickett, deputy editor of the Bookseller and Guardian contributor; Gary Whitlie, managing director, Miller Brands (UK).

The complete list: 50 books that defined their era!

This list was originally published in 2011 and was added to this site about 1 year ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
31 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad 1899 British English
163 The Hound of the Baskervilles Arthur Conan Doyle 1902 British English
177 The Interpretation of Dreams Sigmund Freud 1899 Austrian German
246 Kim Rudyard Kipling 1901 British English
196 Howards End E. M. Forster 1910 British English
83 The Good Soldier Ford Madox Ford 1915 British English
17008 The Penguin Book Of First World War Poetry George Walter 1979 British English
492 The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists Robert Tressell, Peter Miles 1914 British English
197 Lady Chatterley's Lover D. H. Lawrence 1928 British English
315 Relativity Albert Einstein 1916 German German
3 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925 American English
251 The Murder of Roger Ackroyd Agatha Christie 1926 British English
63 The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway 1926 American English
111 The Waste Land T. S. Eliot 1922 British English
27 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf 1927 British English
51 Brave New World Aldous Huxley 1932 British English
219 Brighton Rock Graham Greene 1938 British English
14802 Right Ho, Jeeves P. G. Wodehouse 1934 British English
120 The Big Sleep Raymond Chandler 1939 American English
26 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck 1939 American English
6 Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell 1949 British English
113 The Diary of a Young Girl Anne Frank 1947 Dutch Dutch
429 The Naked and the Dead Norman Mailer 1948 American English
23 The Stranger Albert Camus 1942 French French
2094 From Russia with Love Ian Fleming 1957 British English
2734 Look Back In Anger John Osborne 1956 British English
4 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger 1951 American English
916 The Day of the Triffids John Wyndham 1951 British English
60 Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe 1958 Nigerian English
99 Waiting for Godot Samuel Beckett 1953 Irish French
2652 Ariel Sylvia Plath 1965 American English
33 Catch-22 Joseph Heller 1961 American English
239 Portnoy's Complaint Philip Roth 1969 American English
611 Revolutionary Road Richard Yates 1961 American English
234 The Spy Who Came in From the Cold John le Carré 1963 British English
2625 Valley of the Dolls Jacqueline Susann 1966 American English
1686 Carrie Stephen King 1974 American English
1258 The Female Eunuch Germaine Greer 1970 Australian English
632 Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Robert M. Pirsig 1974 American English
1120 A Brief History of Time Stephen Hawking 1988 British English
49 Beloved Toni Morrison 1987 American English
64 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie 1981 Indian English
749 Money Martin Amis 1984 British English
309 Bonfire of the Vanities Tom Wolfe 1987 American English
1208 The Wasp Factory Iain Banks 1984 British English
4071 Birthday Letters Ted Hughes 1998 British English
638 Bridget Jones's Diary Helen Fielding 1996 British English
3198 Fever Pitch Nick Hornby 1992 British English
2172 No Logo Naomi Klein 1999 Canadian English
1048 The Buddha of Suburbia Hanif Kureishi 1990 British English