100 Greatest Novels (From the Perspective of 1898)
Books, Criticism, Novels
“Three Editors” — Shorter as caricatured by Spy (Leslie Ward) in Vanity Fair, December 1894.
Clement K. Shorter (1857-1926) was editor of the Illustrated London News, a prominent journalist, book collector, and critic (specializing in the Brontes). In 1898, in The Bookman, he published a chronological list of the 100 Greatest Novels, restricting himself to one title per author, and excluding living authors, though he felt obliged to include an addendum of eight works by “writers whose reputations are too well established for their juniors to feel towards them any sentiments other than those of reverence and regard.”
1. Don Quixote – 1604 – Miguel de Cervantes
2. The Holy War – 1682 – John Bunyan
3. Gil Blas Р1715 РAlain Ren̩ le Sage
4. Robinson Crusoe – 1719 – Daniel Defoe
5. Gulliver’s Travels – 1726 – Jonathan Swift
6. Roderick Random – 1748 – Tobias Smollett
7. Clarissa – 1749 – Samuel Richardson
8. Tom Jones – 1749 – Henry Fielding
9. Candide Р1756 РFran̤oise de Voltaire
10. Rasselas – 1759 – Samuel Johnson
11. The Castle of Otranto – 1764 – Horace Walpole
12. The Vicar of Wakefield – 1766 – Oliver Goldsmith
13. The Old English Baron – 1777 – Clara Reeve
14. Evelina – 1778 – Fanny Burney
15. Vathek – 1787 – William Beckford
16. The Mysteries of Udolpho – 1794 – Ann Radcliffe
17. Caleb Williams – 1794 – William Godwin
18. The Wild Irish Girl – 1806 – Lady Morgan
19. Corinne – 1810 – Madame de Stael
20. The Scottish Chiefs – 1810 – Jane Porter
21. The Absentee – 1812 – Maria Edgeworth
22. Pride and Prejudice – 1813 – Jane Austen
23. Headlong Hall – 1816 – Thomas Love Peacock
24. Frankenstein – 1818 – Mary Shelley
25. Marriage – 1818 – Susan Ferrier
26. The Ayrshire Legatees – 1820 – John Galt
27. Valerius – 1821 – John Gibson Lockhart
28. Wilhelm Meister – 1821 – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
29. Kenilworth – 1821 – Sir Walter Scott
30. Bracebridge Hall – 1822 – Washington Irving
31. The Epicurean – 1822 – Thomas Moore
32. The Adventures of Hajji Baba – 1824 – James Morier (“usually reckoned his best”)
33. The Betrothed – 1825 – Alessandro Manzoni
34. Lichtenstein – 1826 – Wilhelm Hauff
35. The Last of the Mohicans – 1826 – Fenimore Cooper
36. The Collegians – 1828 – Gerald Griffin
37. The Autobiography of Mansie Wauch – 1828 – David M. Moir
38. Richelieu – 1829 – G. P. R. James (the “first and best” novel by the “doyen of historical novelists”)
39. Tom Cringle’s Log – 1833 – Michael Scott
40. Mr. Midshipman Easy – 1834 – Frederick Marryat
41. Le P̬re Goriot Р1835 РHonor̩ de Balzac
42. Rory O’More – 1836 – Samuel Lover (another first novel, inspired by one of the author’s own ballads)
43. Jack Brag – 1837 – Theodore Hook
44. Fardorougha the Miser – 1839 – William Carleton (“a grim study of avarice and Catholic family life. Critics consider it the author’s finest achievement”)
45. Valentine Vox – 1840 – Henry Cockton (yet another first novel)
46. Old St. Paul’s – 1841 – Harrison Ainsworth
47. Ten Thousand a Year – 1841 – Samuel Warren (“immensely successful”)
48. Susan Hopley – 1841 – Catherine Crowe (“the story of a resourceful servant who solves a mysterious crime”)
49. Charles O’Malley – 1841 – Charles Lever
50. The Last of the Barons – 1843 – Bulwer Lytton
51. Consuelo – 1844 – George Sand
52. Amy Herbert – 1844 – Elizabeth Sewell
53. Adventures of Mr. Ledbury – 1844 – Elizabeth Sewell
54. Sybil – 1845 – Lord Beaconsfield (a. k. a. Benjamin Disraeli)
55. The Three Musketeers – 1845 – Alexandre Dumas
56. The Wandering Jew Р1845 РEug̬ne Sue
57. Emilia Wyndham – 1846 – Anne Marsh
58. The Romance of War – 1846 – James Grant (“the narrative of the 92nd Highlanders’ contribution from the Peninsular campaign to Waterloo”)
59. Vanity Fair – 1847 – W. M. Thackeray
60. Jane Eyre – 1847 – Charlotte Brontë
61. Wuthering Heights – 1847 – Emily Brontë
62. The Vale of Cedars – 1848 – Grace Aguilar
63. David Copperfield – 1849 – Charles Dickens
64. The Maiden and Married Life of Mary Powell – 1850 – Anne Manning (“written in a pastiche seventeenth-century style and printed with the old-fashioned typography and page layout for which there was a vogue at the period . . .”)
65. The Scarlet Letter – 1850 – Nathaniel Hawthorne
66. Frank Fairleigh – 1850 – Francis Smedley (“Smedley specialised in fiction that is hearty and active, with a strong line in boisterous college escapades and adventurous esquestrian exploits”)
67. Uncle Tom’s Cabin – 1851 – H. B. Stowe
68. The Wide Wide World – 1851 – Susan Warner (Elizabeth Wetherell)
69. Nathalie – 1851 – Julia Kavanagh
70. Ruth – 1853 – Elizabeth Gaskell
71. The Lamplighter – 1854 – Maria Susanna Cummins
72. Dr. Antonio – 1855 – Giovanni Ruffini
73. Westward Ho! – 1855 – Charles Kingsley
74. Debit and Credit (Soll und Haben) – 1855 – Gustav Freytag
75. Tom Brown’s School-Days – 1856 – Thomas Hughes
76. Barchester Towers – 1857 – Anthony Trollope
77. John Halifax, Gentleman – 1857 – Dinah Mulock (a. k. a. Dinah Craik; “the best-known Victorian fable of Smilesian self-improvement”)
78. Ekkehard – 1857 – Viktor von Scheffel
79. Elsie Venner – 1859 – O. W. Holmes
80. The Woman in White – 1860 – Wilkie Collins
81. The Cloister and the Hearth – 1861 – Charles Reade
82. Ravenshoe – 1861 – Henry Kingsley (“There is much confusion in the plot to do with changelings and frustrated inheritance” in this successful novel by Charles Kingsley’s younger brother, the “black sheep” of a “highly respectable” family)
83. Fathers and Sons – 1861 – Ivan Turgenieff
84. Silas Marner – 1861 – George Eliot
85. Les Mis̩rables Р1862 РVictor Hugo
86. Salammb̫ Р1862 РGustave Flaubert
87. Salem Chapel – 1862 – Margaret Oliphant
88. The Channings – 1862 – Ellen Wood (a. k. a. Mrs Henry Wood)
89. Lost and Saved – 1863 – The Hon. Mrs. Norton
90. The Sch̦nberg-Cotta Family Р1863 РElizabeth Charles
91. Uncle Silas – 1864 – Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
92. Barbara’s History – 1864 – Amelia B. Edwards (“Confusingly for bibliographers, she was related to Matilda Betham-Edwards and possibly to Annie Edward(e)s . . .”)
93. Sweet Anne Page – 1868 – Mortimer Collins
94. Crime and Punishment – 1868 – Feodor Dostoieffsky
95. Fromont Junior – 1874 – Alphonse Daudet
96. Marmorne – 1877 – P. G. Hamerton (“written under the pseudonym Adolphus Segrave”)
97. Black but Comely – 1879 – G. J. Whyte-Melville
98. The Master of Ballantrae – 1889 – R. L. Stevenson
99. Reuben Sachs – 1889 – Amy Levy
100. News from Nowhere – 1891 – William Morris
And those lucky living eight:
An Egyptian Princess – 1864 – Georg Ebers
Rhoda Fleming – 1865 – George Meredith
Lorna Doone – 1869 – R. D. Blackmore
Anna Karenina – 1875 – Count Leo Tolstoi
The Return of the Native – 1878 – Thomas Hardy
Daisy Miller – 1878 – Henry James
Mark Rutherford – 1881 – W. Hale White
Le R̻ve Р1889 РEmile Zola
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I thought the list was very interesting as a testament of conventional (if somewhat retarditaire) critical opinion of the period. I was also most delighted to be provided with listings of so many now-forgotten titles, once greatly admired, and immediately proceeded to start collecting and reading them. It is interesting see how the fortunes of (most, but not all) individual novels and authors commonly go up and down. The novel-most-admired-in-1898 is commonly forgotten in 1930. Autre temps, autre livres!
Our list was clearly complied at a time when the reputation of several of the great Russians had yet to catch on. Mark Twain was clearly too vulgar and colonial to have attracted the admiration of Clement K. Shorter. I thought most of his list was predictable, but I really relished hearing about all the unfamiliar titles, all those Walter-Scott-inspired historical novels. Even better, these older books tend to be free these days. Just download the ebook to your reader and go.
