Another list of best 20th century novels

This list was made by the Radcliffe Publishing Course, long considered the top course in preparing people for work in publishing. It was made at the request of the Modern Library to increase the discussion.

BTW, the Modern Library list (provided in the earlier post) was quite controversial from the beginning.

Writing in … The New Yorker, Mr. Styron said he ”cheerfully” assented to the view that the Modern Library’s final list was ”weird” and that it displayed a ”generally oppressive stodginess.” He also acknowledged that the panel of judges that made the selection was ”entirely white, predominately male and somewhat doddering.” Mr. Schlesinger had calculated their average age at 69.

Styron explained that the top books weren’t necessarily regarded as the best, rather they were just the novels all of the judges agreed should be included somewhere on the list.

Here’s the other list, the Radcliffe list. Its judges were mostly in their twenties, a majority were female, and not all were white.

  1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  2. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
  3. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
  4. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
  5. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
  6. Ulysses by James Joyce
  7. Beloved by Toni Morrison
  8. The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
  9. 1984 by George Orwell
  10. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
  11. Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov
  12. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
  13. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
  14. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
  15. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
  16. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
  17. Animal Farm by George Orwell
  18. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
  19. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
  20. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
  21. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
  22. Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne
  23. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
  24. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
  25. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
  26. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
  27. Native Son by Richard Wright
  28. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
  29. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
  30. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
  31. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
  32. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
  33. The Call of the Wild by Jack London
  34. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
  35. Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
  36. Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
  37. The World According to Garp by John Irving
  38. All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
  39. A Room with a View by E.M. Forster
  40. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
  41. Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally
  42. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
  43. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
  44. Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
  45. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
  46. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
  47. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
  48. Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
  49. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
  50. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
  51. My Antonia by Willa Cather
  52. Howards End by E.M. Forster
  53. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
  54. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
  55. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
  56. Jazz by Toni Morrison
  57. Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
  58. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
  59. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
  60. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
  61. A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor
  62. Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  63. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
  64. Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
  65. Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
  66. Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
  67. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
  68. Light in August by William Faulkner
  69. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
  70. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
  71. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
  72. A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
  73. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
  74. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
  75. Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence
  76. Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe
  77. In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway
  78. The Autobiography of Alice B. Tokias by Gertrude Stein
  79. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
  80. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
  81. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
  82. White Noise by Don DeLillo
  83. O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
  84. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
  85. The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
  86. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
  87. The Bostonians by Henry James
  88. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
  89. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
  90. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
  91. This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  92. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
  93. The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles
  94. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
  95. Kim by Rudyard Kipling
  96. The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  97. Rabbit, Run by John Updike
  98. Where Angels Fear to Tread by E.M. Forster
  99. Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
  100. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

7 thoughts on “Another list of best 20th century novels”

  1. Now we’re cookin’! Much better. And this list includes A Separate Peace, often overlooked, one of the greatest books ever.

    Then again, that g’darn Grapes of Wrath is still on there. UGH!

    I’ve read quite a few of these, many for the enjoyment, not as assignment.

    Best line of the post, regarding the judges who decided the other list “entirely white, predominately male and somewhat doddering” I almost made a comment about the race and age of who the judges might be, but held my tongue. Turns out I was right.

    My best friend, an English Lit teacher in Las Cruces, often speaks of tiring of having to teach “the dead white guys”

  2. Well, there you go. I’ve read 48 from this list.

    Apparently, stuffy, ancient white guys and I don’t have similar points of view. Who knew. 😉

  3. Didn’t count, and the source explains it – but decidedly western european/american slant.

    Still spotty – but I never have found a list I liked.

    Even when one goes back to the day of the Modern Classics, The Everyman library – I have never actually found a single book list I agree with entirely.

  4. As the foremost scholar of the works of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. in St. Matthews, Kentucky, I’d like to say this: Sure, Slaughterhouse Five is a great book, and no question but that Cat’s Cradle was Von’s breakthrough. But in retrospect, I have to say that I, personally, prefer God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater to Cat’s Cradle. I understand I will be ridiculed for this. But one must be brave in a search for truth. Also, I relate to books about fat guys who sit around in their underwear all day. I’m not sure why that is.

  6. Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible is far superior to many, many of these titles.

  7. Perhaps it is, but The Poisonwood Bible was published just after the list was made. Barbara Kingsolver’s novel did rate as one of the five fiction books of the year by The New York Times.

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