Empire-era satirists, moor-dwelling sisters, a philologist and the woman who outsold all of them. English literature never agreed on a first name.
1Agatha ChristieThe Devon-born crime writer whose 66 detective novels outsold every other British author.
2Charles DickensThe Victorian novelist of Great Expectations and Bleak House, serialised to a mass audience.
3Jane AustenThe Regency novelist of Pride and Prejudice, still the most adapted author in English.
4George OrwellThe essayist and novelist behind Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm.
5Virginia WoolfThe modernist of Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse, and a founder of Hogarth Press.
6Charlotte BrontëThe author of Jane Eyre, published first under the name Currer Bell.
7Emily BrontëThe author of Wuthering Heights, her only novel.
8Thomas HardyThe Wessex novelist of Tess of the d'Urbervilles who turned to poetry after the backlash.
9J.R.R. TolkienThe Oxford philologist whose Middle-earth invented modern epic fantasy.
10Graham GreeneThe novelist of The Third Man and The Quiet American, nominated for the Nobel but never awarded it.
11Daniel DefoeThe author of Robinson Crusoe, often credited with the first English novel.
12Mary ShelleyThe author of Frankenstein, written when she was eighteen.
13Evelyn WaughThe satirist of Brideshead Revisited and Decline and Fall.
14Kazuo IshiguroThe Nobel laureate behind The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go.
15Iris MurdochThe philosopher-novelist of The Sea, the Sea, a Booker Prize winner.
16Zadie SmithThe novelist of White Teeth and NW, the defining voice of multicultural London.
17Ian McEwanThe novelist of Atonement and Amsterdam, a fixture of the Booker shortlists.
18George EliotMary Ann Evans, author of Middlemarch, writing under a man's name to be taken seriously.
Comments 1
Six novels against sixty-six, and Jane Austen is still the one taught, adapted and set as coursework: https://youpick.best/articles/agatha-christie-ranked-many-ways
YP
ypb-teamAug 21
