LitNet Top 100 Authors!

[bazarov]

So, after 4 months of voting; I believe some relevant list could be made.
Here it goes; LitNet Top 100 Authors!


1.Dostoevsky
2.Shakespeare
3.Dickens
4.Tolstoy
5.Steinbeck
6.-7.
Austen
Proust
8.-11.
Nabokov
Hemingway
Hardy
Joyce
12.-16.
Hugo
Dante
Faulkner
Kafka
Tolkien
17. -20.
Homer
Wilde
Pushkin
Brontte, Charlotte
21.-24.
Orwell
Salinger
Fitzgerald
Elliot
25. – 49.
Murakami
Turgenev
Marquez
Ibsen
Conrad
Beckett
Stevenson
Vonnegut
Ellis
Milton
Goethe
Lawrence
Gogol
Poe
Keats
Doyle
Selimovic
Eco
Woolf
Heese
Twain
Lewis
Gaskell
Camus
Krleža
50. – 100.
London
Williams
Yesenin
Bradbury
Wilder
James
Lermontov
Chesterton
White
Fowles
Christie
Bellow
Bronte, Emily
Zola
Flaubert
Leopardi
Shaw
Bamkinchandra
Ovid
Racine
Amarnath
Cooper
Whitman
Caragiale
Norris
Sinclair
Solzhenytsin
Scott
Carr
Moliere
Laxness
Auster
Roth
Platho
Sexton
Chaucer
Maugham
Yeats
Hamsun
Sartre
Colfer
Remarque
Adams
Aesop
Blake
Sienkiewicz
Euripides
Swift
Elton
Sharpe
Nietzsche
Tagore
Dreiser
Carter
Synge



--------------------------------


Authors that share place have same number of votes. It would be unfair to say that someone is better if they are equal - so they share position; in random order.

[Petronius]

Umm... as far as I can tell (mostly from Mortalterror's count in the original thread) all authors from 50-100 only got one vote, so how come they are all on the list, but three of mine are missing? By what standards was the selection made?

[mayneverhave]

I wonder how the inclusive 50-100 section ranks the writers, or whether it is an arbitrary listing.

[bazarov]

From 50. till end - they all got same number of votes - one. Thats why I didn't rank them as 51st, 52nd because it would be unfair.

[Petronius]

Thank you for the correction.

[onioneater]

Who the crap voted for Virginia Woolf? BARF. Oh, sorry. Was that too obvious about how I feel about her writing?

[Bumbeli]

Nice list, thanks for putting so much effort into that.
I really like to see Dostoevsky and Tolstoy so high, and I'm quite surprised Nabokov is so high too.

[no one special]

This is a joke, right? Dickens above Joyce, Proust, Woolf and Lawrence? That's really funny. Orwell in the top 30? That's funny too. Ellis? Brett Easton? OK, I geddit - it's meant tuh beh funneh. Ha, Ha, Help!

[Niamh]

Can we please respect the over all choices of the forum? What one person dislikes does not mean another has to. there is quaility in all lit.
Thank you.

[Nikhar]

Christie's so low! It's a bit shocking!

[islandclimber]

Interesting List... But...

?!?!?!?!

Where are writers like Borges, Chekhov, Calvino, Melville, Llosa, Cortazar, Bulgakov, Gorky, Rushdie, Irving, Balzac, Cao Xueqin, Luo Guanzhong, Ba Jin, Narayan, etc???? this list neglects South America and Asia completely... I know it's only a list and all, but it's just surprising at how Western-centred it is...

[JBI]

Interesting List... But...

?!?!?!?!

Where are writers like Borges, Chekhov, Calvino, Melville, Llosa, Cortazar, Bulgakov, Gorky, Rushdie, Irving, Balzac, Cao Xueqin, Luo Guanzhong, Ba Jin, Narayan, etc???? this list neglects South America and Asia completely... I know it's only a list and all, but it's just surprising at how Western-centred it is...

In concept - but it isn't the "best 100" authors list, but the "highest voted" 100 authors list. In reality, I suspect few people have heard of Luo Guanzhong, let alone gotten through the whole Romance of the Three Kingdoms, much less Ba Jin - as far as I know, too, there aren't many widely available translations of Dream of Red Mansions - the translation I got was a moderate propaganda version from the 70s put out by the Chinese institutions, with at least a half dozen quotes by Chairman Mao, who was still living then I believe, in the introduction, and not to mention all the names in Wade-Gilles, which made them impossible to remember. Strangely enough though, the translators, Gladys and Yang Xianyi, who are supposedly noteworthy translators. Penguin supposedly put out a copy in the 90s, but it's only 300 pages!

That is, of course, no excuse to exclude Li Bei, or Su Shi, or even the most important, Confucius, yet I think few here really know much about non-English literature, with the exception of a few Russian classics, and perhaps a couple German and French titles thrown in for good measure.

[mortalterror]

In concept - but it isn't the "best 100" authors list, but the "highest voted" 100 authors list. In reality, I suspect few people have heard of Luo Guanzhong, let alone gotten through the whole Romance of the Three Kingdoms, much less Ba Jin - as far as I know, too, there aren't many widely available translations of Dream of Red Mansions - the translation I got was a moderate propaganda version from the 70s put out by the Chinese institutions, with at least a half dozen quotes by Chairman Mao, who was still living then I believe, in the introduction, and not to mention all the names in Wade-Gilles, which made them impossible to remember. Strangely enough though, the translators, Gladys and Yang Xianyi, who are supposedly noteworthy translators. Penguin supposedly put out a copy in the 90s, but it's only 300 pages!

That is, of course, no excuse to exclude Li Bei, or Su Shi, or even the most important, Confucius, yet I think few here really know much about non-English literature, with the exception of a few Russian classics, and perhaps a couple German and French titles thrown in for good measure.

The Master said: "The wise are without perplexity; the good are without sorrow; the brave are without fear."

I have read Confucius. Plato is better. Also, I have a two volume copy of Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The other day I put it out on the sell back pile I keep for used books, along with The Tale of Gengi. I was taking too long to get through them and didn't think I'd want to schedule them into my line up this year. Meanwhile, they were just taking up space. By the way, you are right. The Penguin version of Dream of the Red Chamber is only 300 pages, in 6 volumes.

[JBI]

I have read Confucius. Plato is better. Also, I have a two volume copy of Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The other day I put it out on the sell back pile I keep for used books, along with The Tale of Gengi. I was taking too long to get through them and didn't think I'd want to schedule them into my line up this year and they were just taking up space. By the way, you are right. The Penguin version of Dream of the Red Chamber is only 300 pages, in 6 volumes.

Ah, you are right, my apologies - didn't realize they were printing it under an alternative title (The Golden Days) - mixed it up with this edition http://www.amazon.com/Dream-Red-Cham...7366833&sr=8-1

As for Plato being better - as a philosopher, perhaps, as an anthologist, perhaps not - I am quite fond of much of the book of Songs, for instance.

It doesn't matter though - both are quite important. As for The Romance - I hear they have a huge television series from the 70s on youtube of it, which essentially captures everything in the novel - perhaps you may look into that.

[mortalterror]

As for The Romance - I hear they have a huge television series from the 70s on youtube of it, which essentially captures everything in the novel - perhaps you may look into that.

Perhaps I'll check it out, but I'd rather read the books and I don't find their styles at all unlikeable. The Romance of the Three Kingdoms is very laconic, direct, and action packed. The Dream of the Red Chamber is luxurious, poetic, and beautiful. I'd just rather finish up my ancient world studies and then move on to the Shahnameh, which I'm loving. As for Genji, I wasn't really enjoying that anyway.