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The nation chooses its big reads (well done, Seb, bad luck Fyodor) Big names greet big-screen adaptations' domination of BBC poll with a barely disguised big yawn

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From: The Independent on Sunday
Date: 20031019
Author:James Morrison and Hannah Forbes Black

The BBC will doubtless present it as a selection of the greatest novels of all time. But nowhere on the shortlist for the final of its much-trumpeted "Big Read" poll to find the nation's favourite work of fiction is there space for anything by George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Virginia Woolf, Fyodor Dostoevsky or Henry James.

In fact, of the 21 books listed, barely half can be described as acknowledged classics. Of these, the bulk are "marquee name" novels familiar from countless television and film dramatisations, among them Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Dickens's Great Expectations, Charlotte ...

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