Booktube’s ‘Best’ 100 Novels of All Time

In response to the Guardian’s ‘Best 100 Novels of All Time’, I ran a survey, to find out what Booktube viewers thought were the ‘best’ 100 novels of all time, and here are the results . . .

A few disclaimers/things to note:

  • I’ve ordered the books based on their number of votes, by where multiple books got the same number of votes, I’ve ordered them by how high those votes were (i.e. a book where more people said it was their number 1 book of all time is higher than a book where more people said it was their number 10)

  • Series where the novels cannot be read in isolation (i.e. The Lord of the Rings, the Wolf Hall trilogy) have been counted as one work

  • This list is from a survey, not curated by me personally; I haven’t read all of the books on this list

  • The purchase links are Blackwells affiliate links; I will earn a small commission from any books purchased through that list

100. The Sound and the Fury

William Faulkner

1929, USA

9 votes

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99. A Month in the Country

J.L. Carr

1980, UK

9 votes

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98. Invisible Man

Ralph Ellison

1952, USA

9 votes

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97. A Passage to India

E.M. Forster

1924, UK

9 votes

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96. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain

1885, USA

9 votes

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95. Sense and Sensibility

Jane Austen

1811, UK

9 votes

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94. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

C.S. Lewis

1950, UK

10 votes

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93. We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Shirley Jackson

1962, USA

10 votes

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92. The Portrait of a Lady

Henry James

1881, USA/UK

10 votes

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91. Gone with the Wind

Margaret Mitchell

1936, USA

10 votes

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90. The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (Notre-Dame de Paris)

Victor Hugo

1831, France

10 votes

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89. Little Dorrit

Charles Dickens

1857, UK

10 votes

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88. A Prayer for Owen Meany

John Irving

1989, USA

10 votes

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87. Their Eyes Were Watching God

Zora Neale Hurston

1937, USA

10 votes

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86. The Left Hand of Darkness

Ursula K. Le Guin

1969, USA

10 votes

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85. The Kite Runner

Khaled Hosseini

2003, Afghanistan/USA

10 votes

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84. A Room With A View

E.M. Forster

1908, UK

10 votes

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83. Lolita

Vladimir Nabokov

1955, Russia/USA

10 votes

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82. Passing

Nella Larsen

1929, USA

11 votes

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81. Midnight’s Children

Salman Rushdie

1981, India/UK

11 votes

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80. Catch-22

Joseph Heller

1961, USA

11 votes

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79. The Magic Mountain (Der Zauberberg)

Thomas Mann

1924, Germany

11 votes

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78. Madame Bovary

Gustave Flaubert

1857, France

11 votes

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77. The Name of the Rose (Il nome della rosa)

Umberto Eco

1980, Italy

11 votes

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76. Mansfield Park

Jane Austen

1814, UK

11 votes

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75. The Handmaid’s Tale

Margaret Atwood

1985, Canada

12 votes

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74. Giovanni’s Room

James Baldwin

1956, USA

13 votes

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73. The Hobbit

J.R.R. Tolkien

1937, UK

13 votes

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72. Dune

Frank Herbert

1965, USA

13 votes

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71. Jude the Obscure

Thomas Hardy

1895, UK

13 votes

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70. Hamnet

Maggie O’Farrell

2020, UK

13 votes

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69. Villette

Charlotte Brontë

1853, UK

13 votes

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68. A Song of Ice and Fire

George R.R. Martin

1996–, USA

14 votes

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67. Vanity Fair

William Makepeace Thackeray

1848, UK

14 votes

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66. A Fine Balance

Rohinton Mistry

1995, India/Canada

14 votes

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65. Wives and Daughters

Elizabeth Gaskell

1866, UK

14 votes

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64. Slaughterhouse-Five

Kurt Vonnegut

1969, USA

14 votes

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63. The Age of Innocence

Edith Wharton

1920, USA

14 votes

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62. My Brilliant Friend/The Neapolitan Novels (L'amica Geniale)

Elena Ferrante

2011–2014, Italy

14 votes

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61. The Book Thief

Markus Zusak

2005, Australia

15 votes

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60. Stoner

John Williams

1965, USA

15 votes

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59. Dracula

Bram Stoker

1897, Ireland

16 votes

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58. The Woman in White

Wilkie Collins

1860, UK

16 votes

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57. Howards End

E.M. Forster

1910, UK

16 votes

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56. Brideshead Revisited

Evelyn Waugh

1945, UK

16 votes

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55. Barchester Towers

Anthony Trollope

1857, UK

16 votes

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54. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Betty Smith

1943, USA

16 votes

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53. The Master and Margarita (Мастер и Маргарита)

Mikhail Bulgakov

1967, Russia

17 votes

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52. A Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens

1843, UK

17 votes

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51. Piranesi

Susanna Clarke

2020, UK

18 votes

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50. Ulysses

James Joyce

1922, Ireland

18 votes

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49. In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu)

Marcel Proust

1913–1927, France

18 votes

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48. And Then There Were None

Agatha Christie

1939, UK

19 votes

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47. The Secret History

Donna Tartt

1992, USA

19 votes

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46. The Catcher in the Rye

J.D. Salinger

1951, USA

20 votes

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45. One Hundred Years of Solitude (Cien años de soledad)

Gabriel García Márquez

1967, Colombia

20 votes

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44. The House of Mirth

Edith Wharton

1905, USA

21 votes

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43. All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen nichts Neues)

Erich Maria Remarque

1928, Germany

21 votes

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42. Our Mutual Friend

Charles Dickens

1865, UK

22 votes

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41. Don Quixote (El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha)

Miguel de Cervantes

1605/1615, Spain

22 votes

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40. The Way We Live Now

Anthony Trollope

1875, UK

23 votes

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39. A Tale of Two Cities

Charles Dickens

1859, UK

23 votes

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38. Never Let Me Go

Kazuo Ishiguro

2005, UK

24 votes

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37. To the Lighthouse

Virginia Woolf

1929, UK

24 votes

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36. Little Women

Louisa May Alcott

1868, USA

25 votes

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35. The Wolf Hall trilogy

Hilary Mantel

2009–2020, UK

25 votes

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34. Far from the Madding Crowd

Thomas Hardy

1874, UK

25 votes

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33. Tess of the d’Urbervilles

Thomas Hardy

1892, UK

25 votes

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32. Lonesome Dove

Larry McMurtry

1985, USA

27 votes

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31. 1984

George Orwell

1949, UK

29 votes

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30. The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde

1890, UK

29 votes

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29. Mrs Dalloway

Virginia Woolf

1925, UK

33 votes

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28. The Grapes of Wrath

John Steinbeck

1939, USA

34 votes

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27. Beloved

Toni Morrison

1987, USA

37 votes

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26. David Copperfield

Charles Dickens

1850, UK

38 votes

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25. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Anne Brontë

1848, UK

39 votes

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24. North and South

Elizabeth Gaskell

1855, UK

42 votes

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23. Great Expectations

Charles Dickens

1861, UK

43 votes

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22. The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald

1925, USA

45 votes

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21. To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee

1960, USA

47 votes

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20. Anne of Green Gables

L.M. Montgomery

1908, Canada

47 votes

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19. The Remains of the Day

Kazuo Ishiguro

1989, UK

48 votes

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18. The Brothers Karamazov (Братья Карамазовы)

Fyodor Dostoevsky

1880, Russia

48 votes

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17. Crime and Punishment (Преступление и наказание)

Fyodor Dostoevsky

1867, Russia

49 votes

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16. Persuasion

Jane Austen

1817, UK

51 votes

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15. Moby-Dick

Herman Melville

1851, USA

51 votes

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14. East of Eden

John Steinbeck

1952, USA

55 votes

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13. Rebecca

Daphne du Maurier

1938, UK

57 votes

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12. Bleak House

Charles Dickens

1853, UK

59 votes

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11. Les Misérables

Victor Hugo

1862, France

59 votes

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10. Emma

Jane Austen

1815, UK

65 votes

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9. The Count of Monte Cristo (Le Comte de Monte-Cristo)

Alexandre Dumas

1846, France

66 votes

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8. Anna Karenina (Анна Каренина)

Leo Tolstoy

1878, Russia

66 votes

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7. Frankenstein

Mary Shelley

1818/1831, UK

68 votes

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6. War and Peace (Война и мир)

Leo Tolstoy

1869, Russia

68 votes

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5. Middlemarch

George Eliot

1872, UK

85 votes

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4. The Lord of the Rings

J.R.R. Tolkien

1954–1955, UK

95 votes

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3. Wuthering Heights

Emily Brontë

1847, UK

114 votes

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2. Jane Eyre

Charlotte Brontë

1848, UK

138 votes

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1. Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen

1813, UK

168 votes

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