In 2012 the Guardian published a ‘Top 100 novels written in English’ list. In May 2026 it published a different list, with only around half of the original entries surviving” The initial list in chronological order rather than any form of ranking, and is as follows:

1. The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan (1678)

2. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (1719)

3. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift (1726)

5. Tom Jones by Henry Fielding (1749)

6. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne (1759)

7. Emma by Jane Austen (1816)

8. Frankenstein Mary Shelley (1818)

9. Nightmare Abbey Thomas Love Peacock (1818)

10. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe (1838)

11. Sybil by Benjamin Disraeli (1845)

12. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (1847)

13. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (1847)

14. Vanity Fair by William Thackeray (1848)

15. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (1850)

16. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850)

17. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (1851)

18. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1865)

19. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (1868)

20. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (1868-9)

21. Middlemarch by George Eliot (1871-2)

22. The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope (1875)

23. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (1884/5)

24. Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)

25. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome (1889)

26. The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle (1890)

27. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1891)

28. New Grub Street by George Gissing (1891)

29. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy (1895)

30. The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane (1895)

31. Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897)

32. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (1899)

33. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser (1900)

34. Kim by Rudyard Kipling (1901)

35. The Call of the Wild by Jack London (1903)

36. The Golden Bowl by Henry James (1904)

37. Hadrian the Seventh by Frederick Rolfe (1904)

38. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (1908)

39. The History of Mr Polly by HG Wells (1910)

40. Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm (1911)

41. The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford (1915)

42. The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan (1915)

43. The Rainbow by DH Lawrence (1915)

44. Of Human Bondage by W Somerset Maugham (1915)

45. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (1920)

46. Ulysses by James Joyce (1922)

47. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis (1922)

48. A Passage to India by EM Forster (1924)

49. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos (1925)

50. Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (1925)

51. The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald (1925)

52. Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner (1926)

53. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (1926)

54. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett (1929)

55. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner (1930)

56. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932)

57. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (1932)

58. Nineteen Nineteen by John Dos Passos (1932)

59. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller (1934)

60. Scoop by Evelyn Waugh (1938)

61. Murphy by Samuel Beckett (1938)

62. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler (1939)

63. Party Going by Henry Green (1939)

64. At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’Brien (1939)

65. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1939)

66. Joy in the Morning by PG Wodehouse (1946)

67. All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren (1946)

68. Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry (1947)

69. The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen (1948)

70. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (1949)

71. The End of the Affair by Graham Greene (1951)

72. The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger (1951)

73. The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow (1953)

74. Lord of the Flies by William Golding (1954)

75. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955)

76. On the Road by Jack Kerouac (1957)

77. Voss by Patrick White (1957)

78. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960)

79. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (1961)

80. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961)

81. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing (1962)

82. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (1962)

83. A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood (1964)

84. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (1966)

85. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (1966)

86. Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth (1969)

87. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor (1971)

88. Rabbit Redux by John Updike (1971)

89. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison (1977)

90. A Bend in the River by VS Naipaul (1979)

91. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie (1981)

92. Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson (1981)

93. Money: A Suicide Note by Martin Amis (1984)

94. An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro (1986)

95. The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald (1988)

96. Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler (1988)

97. Amongst Women by John McGahern (1990)

98. Underworld by Don DeLillo (1997)

99. Disgrace by JM Coetzee (1999)

100. True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey (2000)

The revised 2026 list was

1. Middlemarch by George Eliot (1871-2)
2. Beloved by Toni Morrison, 1987
3. Ulysses by James Joyce, 1922
4. To the Lighthouse by Virgina Woolf
5. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
6. Anna Karenina
7. War and Peace
8. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, 1847
9. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
10. Madame Bovary
11. The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald, 1925
12. Bleak House by Charles Dickens, 1852-53
13. Emma by Jane Austen, 1815
14. Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, 1925
15. Moby Dick by Herman Melville, 1851
16. 1984 by George Orwell, 1949
17. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1967
18. Persuasion by Jane Austen, 1817
19. Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne, 1759
20. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, 1857
21. The Portrait of a Lady
22. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe 1958
23. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie, 1981
24. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, 1989
25. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, 1955
26. Don Quixote
27. The Trial
28. The Brothers Karamazov
29. Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
30. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley 1817
31. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark, 1961
32. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, 1997
33. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, 1850
34. Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel, 2009
35. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, 1860
36. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, 1985
37. The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, 1952
38. The Age of Innocence
39. Their Eyes were Watching God
40. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, 1977
41. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, 1902
42. The Magic Mountain by Herman Hesse
43. Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson, 1980
44. Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
45. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing, 1962
46. The Leopard
47. Vanity Fair by W M Thackeray, 1848
48. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, 1915
49. A Fine Balance
50. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, 1967
51. My Brilliant Friend
52. The Golden Bowl by Henry James 1904
53. The Transit of Venus
54. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
55. The Waves by Virginia Woolf
56. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen 1814
57. The Sound and The Fury by James Faulkner
58. Disgrace by J M Coetzee 1999
59. Never Let Me Go By Kazuo Ishiguro, 2005
60. Howards End by E M Forster 1910
61. The Rings of Saturn
62. Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Adichie 2006
63. White Teeth
64. The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford, 1915
65. The Colour Purple
66. The Master and Margarita
67. The Man Without Qualities
68. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy 1985
69. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoievsky
70. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy 1895
71. The Outsider
72. Kindred
73. Our Mutual Friend
74. Austerlitz
75. Nervous Conditions
76. The Bluest Eye
77. Dracula by Bram Stoker, 1895
78. My Antonia
79. The Rainbow by D H Lawrence
80. A House for Mr Biswas by V S Naipaul
81. Go tell it on the Mountain
82. Rebecca
83. Buddenbrooks
84. The End of the Affair by Graham Greene, 1951
85. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
86. The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
87. The Vegetarian
88. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
89. The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
90. Ragtime by E L Doctrow
91. The Left Hand of Darkness
92. Jacob’s Room by Virginia Woolf
93. Life and Fate
94. Sentimental Education
95. Invisible Cities
96. The Known World
97. The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
98. Pedro Paramo
99. Catch 22 by Joseph Heller, 1961
100. The Road by Cormac McCarthy, 2006