The 45 Greatest British Novels of All Time

Victorian doorstoppers sit next to slim modern masterpieces, and every Booker winner here has to get past Austen and the Brontes first. Back the one you would actually reread.

1. 1
   Frankenstein

   Mary Shelley's 1818 Gothic novel of a scientist and the creature he brings to life.
   1000pts
2. 2
   Mrs Dalloway

   Virginia Woolf's 1925 novel following one London day of society hostess Clarissa Dalloway.
   805pts
3. 3
   To the Lighthouse

   Virginia Woolf's 1927 modernist study of the Ramsay family and the passage of time.
   772pts
4. 4
   Middlemarch

   George Eliot's 1871-72 panorama of provincial English life, topping the BBC Culture critics' poll.
   677pts
5. 5
   Lord of the Flies

   William Golding's 1954 allegory of schoolboys descending into savagery on a desert island.
   648pts
6. 6
   Clarissa

   Samuel Richardson's vast 1748 epistolary tragedy, among the longest novels in English.
   648pts
7. 7
   Great Expectations

   Charles Dickens's 1861 coming-of-age story of the orphan Pip and his mysterious benefactor.
   595pts
8. 8
   The Way We Live Now

   Anthony Trollope's 1875 satire of financial fraud and greed in London society.
   595pts
9. 9
   Jude the Obscure

   Hardy's bleak 1895 final novel about a stonemason barred from Oxford's scholarly world.
   595pts
10. 10
    White Teeth

    Zadie Smith's 2000 debut tracing two families in multicultural north-west London.
    534pts
11. 11
    Vanity Fair

    William Makepeace Thackeray's 1848 satire following the social climber Becky Sharp.
    534pts
12. 12
    Wuthering Heights

    Emily Bronte's 1847 tale of Heathcliff and Catherine's destructive passion on the Yorkshire moors.
    534pts
13. 13
    Pride and Prejudice

    Jane Austen's 1813 comedy of manners about Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy.
    534pts
14. 14
    Alice in Wonderland

    Lewis Carroll's 1865 nonsense fantasy of a girl who falls down a rabbit hole.
    534pts
15. 15
    Brideshead Revisited

    Evelyn Waugh's 1945 elegy for an aristocratic Catholic family seen through Charles Ryder's eyes.
    463pts
16. 16
    Bleak House

    Dickens's 1853 satire of the Court of Chancery built around the endless Jarndyce case.
    463pts
17. 17
    Midnight's Children

    Salman Rushdie's 1981 Booker of Bookers, tying one man's life to India's independence.
    463pts
18. 18
    The Picture of Dorian Gray

    Oscar Wilde's only novel, about a beautiful man whose portrait ages in his place.
    463pts
19. 19
    Tess of the d'Urbervilles

    Thomas Hardy's 1891 tragedy of a Wessex milkmaid undone by Victorian morality.
    463pts
20. 20
    The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

    Muriel Spark's 1961 novel of a charismatic Edinburgh teacher and her chosen girls.
    463pts
21. 21
    Women in Love

    D. H. Lawrence's 1920 novel of two sisters and their turbulent relationships.
    463pts
22. 22
    Emma

    Jane Austen's 1815 novel about a well-meaning, meddling matchmaker in Highbury.
    379pts
23. 23
    Animal Farm

    Orwell's 1945 fable of a farmyard revolution betrayed by its pig leaders.
    379pts
24. 24
    Persuasion

    Austen's final completed novel, a story of second chances between Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth.
    379pts
25. 25
    Dracula

    Bram Stoker's 1897 epistolary horror novel that defined the vampire for good.
    379pts
26. 26
    The Lord of the Rings

    J. R. R. Tolkien's epic fantasy of the quest to destroy the One Ring.
    379pts
27. 27
    A Clockwork Orange

    Anthony Burgess's 1962 dystopian novel narrated by the violent teenager Alex in Nadsat slang.
    379pts
28. 28
    Atonement

    Ian McEwan's 2001 novel about a child's false accusation and its lifelong consequences.
    379pts
29. 29
    The Waves

    Virginia Woolf's 1931 lyrical novel told through the soliloquies of six friends.
    379pts
30. 30
    Wide Sargasso Sea

    Jean Rhys's 1966 prequel to Jane Eyre giving voice to the 'madwoman in the attic'.
    379pts
31. 31
    Tristram Shandy

    Laurence Sterne's digressive, playful 18th-century comic novel that anticipated modernism.
    278pts
32. 32
    Robinson Crusoe

    Daniel Defoe's 1719 castaway tale, often called the first English novel.
    278pts
33. 33
    Wolf Hall

    Hilary Mantel's Booker-winning 2009 portrait of Thomas Cromwell's rise at Henry VIII's court.
    278pts
34. 34
    Never Let Me Go

    Ishiguro's 2005 quietly devastating story of students raised at the mysterious Hailsham school.
    278pts
35. 35
    Howards End

    Forster's 1910 novel of class and connection between the Schlegel and Wilcox families.
    278pts
36. 36
    Nineteen Eighty-Four

    George Orwell's 1949 dystopia of Big Brother, thoughtcrime and Room 101.
    278pts
37. 37
    Brave New World

    Aldous Huxley's 1932 vision of a pleasure-drugged, genetically engineered World State.
    278pts
38. 38
    Heart of Darkness

    Joseph Conrad's 1899 novella of Marlow's journey up the Congo to find Kurtz.
    278pts
39. 39
    Tom Jones

    Henry Fielding's 1749 picaresque comedy following a lusty, good-hearted foundling.
    278pts
40. 40
    The Remains of the Day

    Kazuo Ishiguro's Booker-winning 1989 novel of an English butler reckoning with his life of service.
    278pts
41. 41
    Jane Eyre

    Charlotte Bronte's 1847 novel of a governess, Mr Rochester and the secret of Thornfield Hall.
    0pts
42. 42
    The Golden Notebook

    Doris Lessing's 1962 experimental novel of a writer's fragmented life told through four notebooks.
    0pts
43. 43
    Nostromo

    Conrad's 1904 political epic set around a silver mine in a fictional South American republic.
    0pts
44. 44
    Rebecca

    Daphne du Maurier's 1938 Gothic thriller haunted by the first Mrs de Winter.
    0pts
45. 45
    Gulliver's Travels

    Jonathan Swift's 1726 satirical voyages to Lilliput, Brobdingnag and beyond.
    0pts

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