The Random House list of the best English-language novels of the 20th Century includes The Magus (listed at number 93). What makes the top-100 selection of The Magus all the more impressive is the fact that the list is heavily skewed toward novels from the first half of the century. In fact, approximately two-thirds of the novels cited were written prior to 1950. The list (see below) was compiled by a panel of scholars and writers that included: authors Gore Vidal, William Styron and A.S. Byatt; historians Shelby Foote, Edmund Morris and Arthur Schlesinger Jr.; and Daniel Boorstin, former librarian of the Library of Congress.
In addition, Time Magazine’s list of 100 Best English-language novels includes The French Lieutenant’s Woman at number 34. To see Time’s entire list, click here.
Random House Top 100 list:
| 1. Ulysses, James Joyce 2. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald 3. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce 4. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov 5. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley 6. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner 7. Catch-22, Joseph Heller 8. Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler 9. Sons and Lovers, D.H. Lawrence 10. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck 11. Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry 12. The Way of All Flesh, Samuel Butler 13. 1984, George Orwell 14. I, Claudius, Robert Graves 15. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf 16. An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser 17. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers 18. Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut 19. Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison 20. Native Son, Richard Wright 21. Henderson the Rain King, Saul Bellow 22. Appointment in Samarra, John O’Hara 23. U.S.A. Trilogy, John Dos Passos 24. Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson 25. A Passage to India, E.M. Forster 26. The Wings of the Dove, Henry James 27. The Ambassadors, Henry James 28. Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald 29. The Studs Lonigan Trilogy, James T. Farrell 30. The Good Soldier, Ford Maddox Ford 31. Animal Farm, George Orwell 32. The Golden Bowl, Henry James 33. Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser 34. A Handful of Dust, Evelyn Waugh 35. As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner 36. All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren 37. The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder 38. Howards End, E.M. Forster 39. Go Tell It on the Mountain, James Baldwin 40. The Heart of the Matter, Graham Greene 41. Lord of the Flies, William Golding 42. Deliverance, James Dickey 43. A Dance to the Music, Anthony Powell 44. , Aldous Huxley 45. The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway 46. The Secret Agent, Joseph Conrad 47. Nostromo, Joseph Conrad 48. The Rainbow, D.H. Lawrence 49. Women in Love, D.H. Lawrence 50. Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller |
51. The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer 52. Portnoy’s Complaint, Phillip Roth 53. Vladimir Nabokov 54. Light in August, William Faulkner 55. On the Road, Jack Kerouac 56. The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett 57. Parade’s End, Ford Maddox Ford 58. The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton 59. Zuleika Dobson, Max Beerbohm 60. The Moviegoer, Walker Percy 61. Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather 62. From Here to Eternity, James Jones 63. The Wapshot Chronicles, John Cheever 64. The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger 65. A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess 66. Of Human Bondage, W. Somerset Maugham 67. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad 68. Main Street, Sinclair Lewis 69. The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton 70. The Alexandria Quartet, Lawrence Durrell 71. A High Wind in Jamaica, Richard Hughes 72. A House for Mr. Biswas, V.S. Naipaul 73. The Day of the Locust, Nathanael West 74. A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway 75. Scoop, Evelyn Waugh 76. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark 77. Finnegans Wake, James Joyce 78. Kim, Rudyard Kipling 79. A Room With a View, E.M. Forster 80. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh 81. The Adventures of Augie March, Saul Bellow 82. Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner 83. A Bend in the River, V.S. Naipaul 84. The Death of the Heart, Elizabeth Bowen 85. Lord Jim, Joseph Conrad 86. Ragtime, E.L. Doctorow 87. The Old Wives’ Tale, Arnold Bennett 88. The Call of the Wild, Jack London 89. Loving, Henry Green 90. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie 91. Tobacco Road, Erskine Caldwell 92. Ironweed, William Kennedy 93. The Magus, John Fowles 94. Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys 95. Under the Net, Iris Murdoch 96. Sophie’s Choice, William Styron 97. The Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles 98. The Postman Always Rings Twice, James Cain 99. The Ginger Man, J.P. Donleavy 100. The Magnificent Ambersons, Booth Tarkington |
