Greatest English novel of all time . . .

[sartorias]

Seen all over, this list I found more interesting than most lists. In fact, these days I usually don't click on lists, especially "best novels of the year," as there's just no way to filter out "best hype

Comments

[_profiterole_]

I was thinking that it was probably going to be yet another list where I've only read a handful of books (because what I read is basically the opposite of what tends to be on these lists), and in a way it is, but I have read #3, Mrs Dalloway. <3

[oursin]

There are a few items on there that look like 'supposed to feature on lists of best novels' (how many people have actually struggled through Clarissa besides people whose professional field is the C18th novel?) rather than 'This is a great book that I regularly return to'.

Henry James' pick as Novelist of Destiny To Be Remembered Down The Ages was Hugh Walpole (I do not venture to guess whether his crush on him had any bearing).

[sartorias]

Yes, I was trying to remember Walpole's name. His novels are pretty forgettable, though they are interesting for people reading gay-coded books.

I think Clarissa (at least the first half, which is sometimes hilarious and full of wit) is a whole lot more readable than Mrs. Dalloway, though admittedly Woolf's style is brilliant. But then it belongs to the "intellectual treat" category of books in my own head, rather than the category of books I find insightful and affective.

[movingfinger]

Deleted comment!! Nothing wrong, just barked at the wrong tree.

This is a pretty good list of influential, structural books which are also pleasurable to read. If a book isn't pleasurable to read, IMO, it will never make it into the infrastructure. We read Tom Jones because it's funny.

[sartorias]

Yes! (And I agree with half your deleted comment, the other half I don't know since I find the second-mentioned author utterly unreadable)

The introductions to each part are even wittier than the novel, and a fascinating glimpse at English life at that time.

[whswhs]

I find it unusual to see a native English speaker use "criterium" rather than "criterion"; I see "criterium" occasionally in prose by continental authors, but I've always changed it to the Greek ending. Did you pick up "criterium" from reading continental authors, or is it used in some academic discipline that you've studied, or is that the form you learned when young and have always used?

I couldn't venture to have an opinion on your actual main topic! I've read only a fraction of the big historical names. I have to say that if I had to pick a desert island book it would be The Lord of the Rings.

[sartorias]

Me, too.

My brain sometimes hitches over to German pronouns and words for no reason I can tell. (I'm not that fluent anymore.)

I'll fix it.

[whswhs]

Now that you mention it, I think I've seen it mainly in papers by German writers. It seems to be something of a linguistic pattern; I also sometimes see the chemical element referred to as "silicium" rather than "silicon." That kind of linguistic slippage is part of how languages evolve, of course.

I just went through the list and counted twenty items that I have read all the way through, though not all recently-I think I read Wuthering Heights fifty years ago. The only conventionally defined major historical work of fiction that strikes me as an omission is Kim, which I reread a year or so ago and found even more wonderful than I remembered. There are a couple of items I would not have called "novels"-the Narnia series and His Dark Materials-and it seems especially odd to include the whole Narnia series as one entry but not do likewise for the two Alice books, especially since I think the second of those much the deeper. But for that matter, though I consider the Alice books classics, I don't know if I'd call them classics as novels

[sartorias]

Yes, Kim's omission surprised me as well. I don't think the Pullman very good, but it has tremendous hype, so it didn't surprise me to see it there. Narnia might have been influential in childhood? It surprised me to see it there. If any Lewis were to be considered, I would think it would be Till We Have Faces, which I think criminally overlooked.

[yendi]

I sometimes wonder how often we (and I most certainly include myself here) take "this is imprinted on my cultural landscape" and conflate that with "great."

It's not necessarily wrong, per se (if you use "great' in the way historians who talk about the "great man theory" do), but there's a very strong argument that "great" isn't necessarily "good." I'm more receptive to Frankenstein than you are, but WH has always seemed more important than actually good. And I know I've commented before on how much I detest Tolkien's writing, no matter how significant he was.

As always, alas, my favorite Austen (Northanger Abbey) failed to make the list. Sigh.

[sartorias]

I think the problem with Northanger is that she never finished rewriting it, so the second half is the old version, written when she was young. If she had lived to rewrite it all, it would have been as brilliant as the first half.

[yendi]

*nod* And to be fair, most of what I love is that brilliant first half. The second I enjoy because of the leftover goodwill.

[sartorias]

Yeah, me, too.

[anonymous]

Wives & Daughters should absolutely be on this list! But other than that omission, I like it. Many of my favorites are on here. I look at "best of" lists like this simply for motivate myself to read books that I'm already interested in, but may not be the easiest to pick up.

Several years ago I picked up a doorstopping volume of Gaskell's letters, and it seems she admired Eliot, as well (although obviously she died before Eliot wrote her best work). She was determined to find out who the author of Adam Bede was, and what shock she expressed when she found it was written by the scandalous Mary Ann Evans! I remember her disbelief that such a woman could write with such moral clarity and uprightness.

--Janeheiress

[sartorias]

Heh! Yes--Gaskell did have her blinkers, but I think she was learning all along. I wish she, as well as Jane Austen (and Keats and Anne Bronte and a host of others) had lived long, long, productive lives.