Essential English Novels?

[Loganm]

I have decided to try my hand at reading about 20 English novels chronologically to acquire an idea of the development of the novel, however I'm having some trouble with my list.

So far, I have decided on:
-Gulliver's Travels
-Tom Jones
-Tristam Shandy
-Two or Three novels of Austen
-One by Dickens.. Whats his best?
-Barchester Towers by Trollope (Or another if anyone has any recs)
-Heart of Darkness by Conrad
-Moby Dick by Melville
-Tess and Casterbridge and/or Jude, obscure by Hardy
-Portrait of the Lady and one or two other of James
-Ulysses by Joyce (already read Dubliners and Portrait a few times)

I know I'm likely excluding someone important! I've thought about Madox Ford and Kipling but figured there's better. I'm reading more for and outline of works rather than breadth so decided to exclude them, am I wrong about that? Any general suggestions appreciated.

[OrphanPip]

You're missing an example of an epistolary novel, like Pamela by Samuel Richardson.

For an introduction to Dickens, I recommend Hard Times, it's short but also one of his best novels.

It would probably be a shame to overlook Virginia Woolf.

You are also missing American modernist, or maybe you've already read Faulkner, Fitzgerald and Hemingway.

20 is probably too few to survey all the major novelist, but you might consider reading E.M. Forster, D.H. Lawrence, John Steinbeck, and Upton Sinclair.

Maybe something more recent, but highly influential, like Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart would be useful too.

(Edit: You're also missing a Gothic novel, like Matthew Lewis' The Monk or later gothic influenced stuff like Frankenstein or Jane Eyre.)

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I have decided to try my hand at reading about 20 English novels chronologically to acquire an idea of the development of the novel, however I'm having some trouble with my list.

So far, I have decided on:
-Gulliver's Travels
-Tom Jones
-Tristam Shandy
-Two or Three novels of Austen
-One by Dickens.. Whats his best?
-Barchester Towers by Trollope (Or another if anyone has any recs)
-Heart of Darkness by Conrad
-Moby Dick by Melville
-Tess and Casterbridge and/or Jude, obscure by Hardy
-Portrait of the Lady and one or two other of James
-Ulysses by Joyce (already read Dubliners and Portrait a few times)

I know I'm likely excluding someone important! I've thought about Madox Ford and Kipling but figured there's better. I'm reading more for and outline of works rather than breadth so decided to exclude them, am I wrong about that? Any general suggestions appreciated.
Some of your choices kind of seem odd, if you're really wanting to read "the big one" of the English language. Tristam Shandy, Tom Jones, Tollope? Just seem like weird choices. Then again, they very well could be excellent choices, and I'm just ignorant of their significance (quite likely).

Names/works that immediately come to mind that aren't on your list are The Great Gastby, The Scarlet Letter, Poe (I think he wrote a novel), Mark Twain, Hemingway, and I second all of Pip's recommendations, especially Faulkner and Achebe's Things Fall Apart.

[MarkBastable]

Some of your choices kind of seem odd, if you're really wanting to read "the big one" of the English language. Tristam Shandy, Tom Jones, Tollope? Just seem like weird choices. Then again, they very well could be excellent choices, and I'm just ignorant of their significance (quite likely). [/I]


Ignorance is nothing to be ashamed of, especially if you're ready to admit it - which we all should be, frankly.

In terms of structure, approach and breadth of intention (everything from philosophy to dirty jokes), I'd say Tristam was one of the ten or twelve most important novels in the language, and it deserves a place on Loganm's list. James and Melville, on the other hand, I wouldn't wish on anyone.

[kiki1982]

I agree about the epistolary novel. MIddle of the 18th century. One of the frst attempts at psychological fiction. Pamela or Clarissa are certainly candidates, but very very very long and in minute detail. That said, though, your English will definitely improve. It is quite amusing and actaully commendable that Richardson succeeded not only in describing certain people's actions and why, but also in adopting another voice from character to character.

If I am right, Pamela deals with Pamela who is treated badly by a rake/rogue like Rochester, Lovelace (Clarissa), but eventually reforms him or something. Clarissa is about a girl who is taken in by a rake (Lovelace) because of certain circumstances, but can't reform him, or at least not in time... I'll say no more.

What about Defoe? That is 17th century still. I am not so much interestedin Robinson Crusoe as the topic doesn't interest me, but I read Moll Flanders and that pleasantly surprised me in its readability. It is also very profound towards the end... somehow.

And maybe Cleland (Fanny Hill, or the Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure)? Intersting libertine 18th century stuff. It'll definitely open your eyes to pre-Victorian, not-so-prudish times... Surprisingly it is not vile at all. Rather amusing actually. Still, I quickly finished it before leaving for Poland (I didn't think it was appropriate...).

[prendrelemick]

you need to bring it all forwards a bit, something like Money by Martin Amiss as a development of several of those titles - as well as a commentry on its time.

[kelby_lake]

Names/works that immediately come to mind that aren't on your list are The Great Gastby, The Scarlet Letter, Poe (I think he wrote a novel), Mark Twain, Hemingway, and I second all of Pip's recommendations, especially Faulkner and Achebe's Things Fall Apart.

I think the OP might be looking at British novels. But then Moby Dick is American so I can't help feeling there needs to be two different lists...

For Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities is very good but Bleak House is more indicative of his work. A Christmas Carol is worth a read too.

I see no Brontes (I can't do the little marks above the 'e' on my keyboard). I suppose Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights would provide a good insight. I suppose they're a type of 19th century gothic romanticism.

[kiki1982]

I thought about the Brontës (I can do it on my keyboard!) too, but I think Dracula wuld be more obvious.

[Hira]

While I am not as well-read as the other folks around here, I would suggest including D.H.Lawrence in your list too. And, as OrphanPip has already mentioned, Virginia Woolf.

[Veho]

Maybe some George Eliot. She was important in the development of realist novels.

[Red-Headed]

Elizabeth Gaskell (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Elizabeth_Gaskell)

[dfloyd]

One for English writers and one for American. the development of the English novel is quite different from the American,

As far as Dickens goes, Great Expectations is a good one for Dickens at his best. I like Bleak house also, but it is really long. Watch the BBC movie or the Masterpiece Theatre one.

Some people classify Henry James as English since he spent so much time there. But I would still call him an American author.

You need to break down your list by century. You shouldn't leave out Defoe.
The inclusion of Tom Jones, Tristram Shandy, and Gulliver's Travels is correct. They are major influences on the English novel.

Pamel, shamela. It's too long and not necessary. The epistolary novel went nowhere except possibly Dangerous Liasons which is French.

Start reading, your work is cut out for you.

[Des Essientes]

I suggest you include Somerset Maugham's "Of Human Bondage".

[kiki1982]

Pamel, shamela. It's too long and not necessary. The epistolary novel went nowhere except possibly Dangerous Liasons which is French.

Except for The Sorrows of Young Werther, Hyperion, a few works by Rousseau and Montequieu, Dracula and Frankenstein, there were indeed no epistolary novels of note. But then there are those that pose as a novel containing only one letter, like Moll Flanders, Fanny Hill, The Tenant of Wildfeel Hall and such.

[stlukesguild]

So far, I have decided on:
-Gulliver's Travels
-Tom Jones
-Tristam Shandy
-Two or Three novels of Austen
-One by Dickens.. Whats his best?
-Barchester Towers by Trollope (Or another if anyone has any recs)
-Heart of Darkness by Conrad
-Moby Dick by Melville
-Tess and Casterbridge and/or Jude, obscure by Hardy
-Portrait of the Lady and one or two other of James
-Ulysses by Joyce (already read Dubliners and Portrait a few times)

The list is not bad. Personally I see nothing undeserving here (and would quite agree that Tristram Shandy ranks among the greatest novels in English.

I would suggest more than one Dickens novel. All of the suggestions others have made seem quite sound. I might suggest something by Sir Walter Scott, Tobias Smollett, and Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray. If you are looking to push into the 20th century you should look at something by Faulkner (As I Lay Dying is a good start). I won't recommend a Hemingway novel because I honestly feel his greatest work (like that of Hawthorne and Poe) is to be found in his short stories. But what of Thomas Wolfe (Look Homeward Angel and You Can't Go Home Again), Saul Bellow (Seize the Day or The Adventures of Augie March), Philip Roth (Zuckerman Bound or Sabbath's Theater), Thomas Pynchon (V., Mason & Dixon, etc...), Norman Mailer (The Naked and the Dead), Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian).

[kelby_lake]

While I am not as well-read as the other folks around here, I would suggest including D.H.Lawrence in your list too.

Lady Chatterley's Lover, definitely. Not because it's his best work but because of the social significance. It was part of an infamous trial under the Obscene Publications Act and though it was written in the late nineteen-twenties, it wasn't published in full until 1960.

[OrphanPip]

Pamel, shamela. It's too long and not necessary. The epistolary novel went nowhere except possibly Dangerous Liasons which is French.


That's not true, the epistolary novel is an important part of the development of novels. It is part of the movement towards verisimilitude you can see in the fictional travel logs of the time (like Gulliver's, Robinson Crusoe, Oronoko) and fictionalized diaries or recounted first person tales (like Defoe's Journal of the Plague Years, and of which Tristam Shandy is a parody of). The epistolary novel was groundbreaking in the development of several narrative voices within a single text, and was a major step towards psychological realism. There is no coincidence in the fact that Austen's most direct influences are Richardson and Burney instead of Fielding, who is part of a different path of novelistic development.

Apart from the importance stylistically of the epistolary, Richardson is also an aesthetic counter-point to the Scriblerians (Fielding, Pope, Gay, and Swift), who pretty much despised him. Richardson is part of a movement towards greater sentimentalism and moralizing in the novel, which is undeniably influential in the 19th century.

[Heteronym]

Except for The Sorrows of Young Werther, Hyperion, a few works by Rousseau and Montequieu, Dracula and Frankenstein, there were indeed no epistolary novels of note. But then there are those that pose as a novel containing only one letter, like Moll Flanders, Fanny Hill, The Tenant of Wildfeel Hall and such.

Darn it, you just beat me to it!

dfloyd's mistake is that he thinks the epistolary novel is related only to letters. In fact any novel that is constructed mimicking real-life documents such as diaries, newspaper articles, official reports, essays, etc., is an epistolary novel.

It's worth noting too that one of Saul Bellow's best novels is Herzog, which is composed mostly of letters. Evidently the 20th century wasn't done with the form. Nor is the 21st century, as Carlos Fuentes' The Eagle's Throne shows.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Ignorance is nothing to be ashamed of, especially if you're ready to admit it - which we all should be, frankly.

In terms of structure, approach and breadth of intention (everything from philosophy to dirty jokes), I'd say Tristam was one of the ten or twelve most important novels in the language, and it deserves a place on Loganm's list. James and Melville, on the other hand, I wouldn't wish on anyone.
No way. Moby Dick is one of the greatest novels ever written. :nod:

I think the OP might be looking at British novels. But then Moby Dick is American so I can't help feeling there needs to be two different lists...
I just assumed he was talking about the English language in general. Still, if he wants to see how novels evolve, he will have to differentiate between British and American, as others have mentioned.


The list is not bad. Personally I see nothing undeserving here (and would quite agree that Tristram Shandy ranks among the greatest novels in English.

I would suggest more than one Dickens novel. All of the suggestions others have made seem quite sound. I might suggest something by Sir Walter Scott, Tobias Smollett, and Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray. If you are looking to push into the 20th century you should look at something by Faulkner (As I Lay Dying is a good start). I won't recommend a Hemingway novel because I honestly feel his greatest work (like that of Hawthorne and Poe) is to be found in his short stories. But what of Thomas Wolfe (Look Homeward Angel and You Can't Go Home Again), Saul Bellow (Seize the Day or The Adventures of Augie March), Philip Roth (Zuckerman Bound or Sabbath's Theater), Thomas Pynchon (V., Mason & Dixon, etc...), Norman Mailer (The Naked and the Dead), Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian).
Well, I'll definitely be checking out Tristram Shandy. I'd heard of the name before, but nothing beyond that. That's why I love these forums.

The Oscar Wilde suggestion of Dorian Gray is one definitely to check out. I just read it--it's brilliant. Pynchon is also key for contemporary writers. I'd also like to throw in Frankenstein; I think it's very much underrated.

[LitNetIsGreat]

With only 20 novels to work I’m finding it difficult to narrow a reading list of essential English novels (leaving American literature aside). I’ve left out a lot, a case of which could easily be made for their inclusion, but I think the following is a fair ‘backbone’ reading list of around 20 English novels from the rise to modernist.


Defoe, Moll Flanders
Richardson, Pamela
Fielding, Tom Jones
Stern, Trisram Shandy

Burney, Evelina
Scott, Ivanhoe or Rob Roy
Austen, Pride and Prejudice/Sense and Sensibility/Northanger Abbey

Brontes, Wuthering Heights/Jane Eyre
Gaskell, North and South
Dickens, Oliver Twist/Great Expectations
Eliot, The Mill on the Floss/Silas Marner or Middlemarch

Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles/Jude the Obscure

Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Woolf, Mrs Dalloway or To the Lighthouse
Joyce, Ulysses


If I was being less objectionable it would be a little different – I would sex it up and be more brutal, but that would be my own personal take and probably not what you are looking for. This is instead nevertheless a very good typical list of essentials you’d likely to find on standard reading lists for English novels.

When I get back from my short break I might include the sexed up biased list for fun, but for now, this is one is pretty solid stuff that would keep most English professors happy and makes sense (maybe ditch Burney and
Scott and Shelley and Stoker as it is hard to ignore the influence of those works).

Naturally, you’ll also need to dip into at least a little secondary/social context material of which there is probably far too much of available. I would very much recommend for example Ian Watt’s The Rise of the Novel for the early stuff and a general time line reference. A History of English Literature by Michael Alexander is a little bit thin on the ground but is a fair starter in that department.

[Paulclem]

There are endless list threads on here - which is fine, but few consider the modern novels which come out. I think a good balance would be good of old and new. Where the novel is going is just as important as where it has come from - perhaps more so.

i was listening to to some review show a few months ago where they were considering the entries for one of the literary prizes, and they noted that narative complexity was much the norm now.

If you consider Midnight's Children by Rusdie or Wolf Hall by Mantel and compare their narrative styles to the past, the first thing you notice is how much work the reader has to do - or rather how much adjusting they have to do in order to "keep up" with the narrative. No more spoon feeding, but then we're so much more informed now with information at the touch of a button. I think this end of the development of the novel is really interesting.

[Loganm]

18th Century

-Robinson Crusoe by Defoe (1719)
-Moll Flanders by Defoe (1722)
-Gullivers Travels by Swift (1726)
-Tom Jones by Fielding (1749)
-Tristram Shandy by Sterne (1759-69)

19th Century

-Pride and Prejudice by Austen (1813)
-Northanger Abbey by Austen (1818)
-Ivanhoe by Scott (1819)
-Moby Dick by Melville (1851)*
-Barchester Towers by Trollope (1857)
-Great Expectations by Dickens (1860-61)
-Middlemarch by Eliot (1870)
-The American by James (1870)*
-The Portrait of a Lady by James (1881)*
-Tess of the d'Ubervilles by Hardy (1891)
-Jude the Obscure by Hardy (1895)

20th Century

-Heart of Darkness by Conrad (1899)
-Lord Jim by Conrad (1900)
-Ulysses by James Joyce (1918-20)
-To the Lighthouse by Woolf (1927)

Revised list, asterisks are American novels that I think are large enough to justify their inclusion on an otherwise British list. Originally had Ulysses as my ending point but decided to extend it to include a Woolf novel. Thanks to everyone for their suggestions.

[Heteronym]

i was listening to to some review show a few months ago where they were considering the entries for one of the literary prizes, and they noted that narative complexity was much the norm now.

Several decades ago already, Jorge Luis Borges had written that the 20th century was the century of the plot. I think it's funny that Loganm intended to end his project with Ulysses; that's a fine idea if you do not want to know how the 20th century novel evolved. Joyce's novel is the apogee of the 19th century realistic novel, so obsessed with capturing the now and the real that it tossed away plot to just describe the pointless wanderings of a bunch of banal characters across a city in a twenty-four-hour span.

It's a pity everyone who came afterwards took a cue from Kafka's weird, intricate, marvellous plots instead. If you want to study the birth of the 20th century novel, this is who you have to read.

[JCamilo]

Everyone is a bit too much no?

Anyways, I would not consider Poe, his one possible novel is not that relevant, much less relevant than Hawthorne. I think the oddest thing in the initial list is not even Trolllope, but rather seeing 1 Dickens and 3 Austen. Dickens is pretty much the "archetypical novelist" after all and had several works to be picked.

With Dorian in the market, we should consider his superiors, Stevenson, Chesterton and H.G.Wells.

[mal4mac]

[COLOR="DarkRed"]
I might suggest something by Sir Walter Scott...


I've just read "Rob Roy", and would certainly recommend it.

[wessexgirl]

LoganM, I don't know if you're in the UK, or if you can access our TV, but if you get the chance there's a repeat of the programme "The Birth of the British Novel" tonight at 11.30 on BBC 4. It's well worth watching.

[irinmisfit92]

Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights is a classic and it should be on your list. It's a good insight to life during Victorian times. Anyway, no one would probably think that this recommendation is good as it is not considered a classic or that important in English literature as it is very recently written around 2007 or 2008 in Swedish.

It's called Harbour by John Ajvide Lindqvist (the guy who wrote Let The Right One In). His insight and style of writing is just ****ing amazing.

[Venerable Bede]

I agree that Sir Walter Scott would make a nice addition to your list. Of all his novels that I've read I think Ivanhoe is the best so I would recommend that.

I haven't read enough English novels yet, so I might cannibalize your list a little bit for myself.

[kiki1982]

Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights is a classic and it should be on your list. It's a good insight to life during Victorian times.

It may relfect some Victorian morality (if any really), but it actually takes place during the Regency and Georgian era (George IV who was regent to his father).

Essentially it is like its gothic counterparts Frankenstein and Dracula (amongst some others). To be cruel and harsh to this magnificent piece of lit, it should be called a little out-dated for its time. The time of dingy Radcliffe-type stuff was past, but Emily Brontë apparently liked it. Victorians had moved on from deep passion to subdued passion and the excesses of the Byronic hero were a bit mildened by then. The only thing that could be called remotely Victorian was teh note of hope at the end. Bryonic heroes namely always went down. At least Heathcliff somehow redeemed himself and everyone grew happy again.

Still, magnificent, but not really Victorian in the strictest sense of the word.

[Paulclem]

LoganM, I don't know if you're in the UK, or if you can access our TV, but if you get the chance there's a repeat of the programme "The Birth of the British Novel" tonight at 11.30 on BBC 4. It's well worth watching.

I'll try to catch that. Thanks.

[Heteronym]

Everyone is a bit too much no?

Certainly. But it's funny that even those who put James Joyce on the highest of pedestals, like Vladimir Nabokov, didn't manage to purge the plot from their own novels. So although a few may be writing stories about people doing nothing nowadays, any reader midly familiar with 20th century literature will agree that many of its best writers still find the plot a natural aspect of the novel that can't expunged.

[kiki1982]

LoganM, I don't know if you're in the UK, or if you can access our TV, but if you get the chance there's a repeat of the programme "The Birth of the British Novel" tonight at 11.30 on BBC 4. It's well worth watching.

Yes, very good program that! I was so disappointed when I found out there was no second bit.

[JCamilo]

Certainly. But it's funny that even those who put James Joyce on the highest of pedestals, like Vladimir Nabokov, didn't manage to purge the plot from their own novels. So although a few may be writing stories about people doing nothing nowadays, any reader midly familiar with 20th century literature will agree that many of its best writers still find the plot a natural aspect of the novel that can't expunged.

Well, I would say Ulysses has a plot. Finnegans not, but I would not consider that either are natural realistic novels from XIX century, in fact, I think it is as much as the paralels with Odyssey, a bait for familiriaty since the true aspect of joyce is language. He is more close as narrative goes to Lewis Carroll than Flaubert, as much Flaubert taught him what is, so he can cause the distortion in the works.

But then again, I think there is enough "followers" joyce and woolf in this world (not Nabokov just, more a flaubert follower than anything else), wehave Mann, Dos Passos, Faulkner, Rosa, Musil, McCarthy, Pychon, Maulrax, Breton (and all thoe surrealists), who are more like Joyce than Kafka, altough Kafka is not even that far...

[JBI]

That's not true, the epistolary novel is an important part of the development of novels. It is part of the movement towards verisimilitude you can see in the fictional travel logs of the time (like Gulliver's, Robinson Crusoe, Oronoko) and fictionalized diaries or recounted first person tales (like Defoe's Journal of the Plague Years, and of which Tristam Shandy is a parody of). The epistolary novel was groundbreaking in the development of several narrative voices within a single text, and was a major step towards psychological realism. There is no coincidence in the fact that Austen's most direct influences are Richardson and Burney instead of Fielding, who is part of a different path of novelistic development.

Apart from the importance stylistically of the epistolary, Richardson is also an aesthetic counter-point to the Scriblerians (Fielding, Pope, Gay, and Swift), who pretty much despised him. Richardson is part of a movement towards greater sentimentalism and moralizing in the novel, which is undeniably influential in the 19th century.

One should throw an earlier example of fiction though, such as Nash's Unfortunate Traveler which is quite the first great prose work of English fiction.

[Heteronym]

Well, I would say Ulysses has a plot. Finnegans not, but I would not consider that either are natural realistic novels from XIX century, in fact, I think it is as much as the paralels with Odyssey, a bait for familiriaty since the true aspect of joyce is language. He is more close as narrative goes to Lewis Carroll than Flaubert, as much Flaubert taught him what is, so he can cause the distortion in the works.

But then again, I think there is enough "followers" joyce and woolf in this world (not Nabokov just, more a flaubert follower than anything else), wehave Mann, Dos Passos, Faulkner, Rosa, Musil, McCarthy, Pychon, Maulrax, Breton (and all thoe surrealists), who are more like Joyce than Kafka, altough Kafka is not even that far...

Some of those I agree followed Joyce, like John dos Passos, Robert Musil, João Guimarães Rosa, and Andrei Bely, whom you failed to mention.

But you're being unfair to Breton, whose style matured during his Dada phase, which predates Ulysses. I also fail to see the influence on Thomas Mann, who was already publishing when Joyce was a child. Thomas Pynchon and Cormac McCarthy are very strange choices for men who often write tightly plotted, fantastical novels, the opposite of the mundane world captured by Ulysses. I don't know the influences of McCarthy, but it's clear Pynchon is channeling Rabelais and Kafka's worlds where dream and reality mix seamlessly.

[JCamilo]

Pretty much why i said "followers", more like people who are not plot driven authors. Mann was able to pull out the entire story of Fastus in the mind. It is certainly a good example. As Breton, surrealists always reckonize Joyce influence, but it was not even it, Nadja is pretty much a casual meeting in a city, where nothing happens and Joyce detailed descrption replaced by photography. But like I said, it is followers in a relative menaing, hence why I added Woolf, could have added Proust as well, as examples of the path of the novels which are not plot driven.

MacCarty plots are not so driven, you have hours of hours of conteplation, he is very near Faulkner (in fact, I would say he is a Guimaraes Rosa). Pychon has elements, specially the word play and textuality that joycean.

I agree there is distincts way to build a story, I do not agree the main works followed Kafka, simple because Kafka is not exactly plot driven. He is more sittuation driven, this happens and he goes developing the sittuation from the character interaction. In this, The Castle or Ulysses are both a big of geography game with the main (in Ulysses 2 main characters). I would think someone like Henry James or Kipling or Eça de Queiroz are more plot-structure authors. I agree of course, XX century presented reactions to the realistic model, the hyper-balzacian structures, towards a "false realism" which could be in language like Joyce or in sittuations like Kafka, while some authors like Nabokov or James still using traditional techniques such as narrator perspective.

[LitNetIsGreat]

18th Century

-Robinson Crusoe by Defoe (1719)
-Moll Flanders by Defoe (1722)
-Gullivers Travels by Swift (1726)
-Tom Jones by Fielding (1749)
-Tristram Shandy by Sterne (1759-69)

19th Century

-Pride and Prejudice by Austen (1813)
-Northanger Abbey by Austen (1818)
-Ivanhoe by Scott (1819)
-Moby Dick by Melville (1851)*
-Barchester Towers by Trollope (1857)
-Great Expectations by Dickens (1860-61)
-Middlemarch by Eliot (1870)
-The American by James (1870)*
-The Portrait of a Lady by James (1881)*
-Tess of the d'Ubervilles by Hardy (1891)
-Jude the Obscure by Hardy (1895)

20th Century

-Heart of Darkness by Conrad (1899)
-Lord Jim by Conrad (1900)
-Ulysses by James Joyce (1918-20)
-To the Lighthouse by Woolf (1927)

Revised list, asterisks are American novels that I think are large enough to justify their inclusion on an otherwise British list. Originally had Ulysses as my ending point but decided to extend it to include a Woolf novel. Thanks to everyone for their suggestions.

Yes that's not bad. I wonder if there is a need for two James novels in omission of something else, but that's just a little nickpicking on my behalf perhaps? Also is Lord Jim AND Heart of Darkness necessary for the same reason? I notice also that you are ducking out of the pain of reading Richardson. That is a good move because he doesn't make fun reading, but he is something of an essential evil. Read a few extracts and hit yourself on the back and I'll let you off this once.

Edit: but oh god where are the Brontes? Seriously essential English novels. Foundation stuff. :cuss: Dump something for them. Also there is no way that Moby Dick is anything but an American novel still.

[ashulman]

I second the Elliot, and I also liked Jude so that's a good pick. I would think about Dos Passos USA Trilogy, which was very important.

[Seasider]

What no Middlemarch?

[WyattGwyon]

Gaddis, The Recognitions.

Joycean influence on Bely? Huh?

[ralfyman]

Try books like Ian Watt's The Rise of the Novel.

[OrphanPip]

Try books like Ian Watt's The Rise of the Novel.

Watt is a little outdated, he's a good starting resource, but people should keep in mind that he really oversimplifies the history of the novel by turning it into a pretty straightforward little narrative trajectory. It's a tidy little explanation of literary realism, but the focus on only three major novelist will give people a limited view of literary culture from the period (it's easy to make an argument for a unifying quality of the novel if you just ignore 95% of what was written). Also, most scholars today disagree with much of Watt's assertions about how much of a break there is from classical/Platonic concerns in the novel. I personally see authors like Defoe as deeply concerned with classical aesthetics, they just express it differently from their predecessors.

It's a testament to Watt's scholarship that his work remains relevant 60 years after it was published.

(I'm going to go out on a limb and recommend the Cambridge History of the English Novel for the purposes of a broad overview of many different works. This is despite the fact that I disagree with John Richetti's opinions on pretty much everything.)

[mal4mac]

I have decided to try my hand at reading about 20 English novels chronologically to acquire an idea of the development of the novel, however I'm having some trouble with my list.

So far, I have decided on:
-Gulliver's Travels
-Tom Jones


Good choices, but why not start with Robinson Crusoe by Defoe



-Two or Three novels of Austen


Well worth reading but why not just one (P&P) if you are looking at "development"? Her style didn't change that much. Try Middlemarch by George Eliot if you want "more women" + "development".



-One by Dickens.. Whats his best?


This will start an argument :) I could choose any one of ten, I'll plump for "Bleak House" given that you seem to be leaning towards "tough" and "deep".

Tess by Hardy is surely the one to start with, why not stick to reading just one novel by each author?

Try "Kim" by Kipling, I doubt you'll find better! I read it recently and its up there with the best, for me... certainly should be in a top twenty.

I dislike Tristram Shandy and Ulysses, but they are important in the development of the novel, I guess.

Others to consider:

H.G Wells - The Time Machine
R.L. Stevenson - Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde
Forster A Room With a View
Orwell 1984

Walter Scott is essential, he comes just before Austen and was a great influence on her, and others, try "Ivanhoe" for starters.

[mal4mac]

OK - removing Americans, Scots, adding Brontës, only one book per author, more 20th century (and 21st!), how about:

18th Century

-Robinson Crusoe by Defoe (1719)
-Gullivers Travels by Swift (1726)
-Tom Jones by Fielding (1749)

19th Century

-Pride and Prejudice by Austen (1813)
-Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (1847)
-Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (1847)
-The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë (1848)
-Great Expectations by Dickens (1860-61)
-Middlemarch by Eliot (1870)
-Tess of the d'Ubervilles by Hardy (1891)
-Heart of Darkness by Conrad (1899)

20th Century
- Kim by Rudyard Kipling (1901)
- A Room with a View by E. M. Forster (1908)
- Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence (1913)
- To the Lighthouse by Woolf (1927)
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1931)
- Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood (1939)
- Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (1949)
- Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis (1954)

21st century
- Saturday by Ian McEwan (2003)

No Joyce 'cause OP had read more than enough Joyce :)

[blackbird_9]

No body likes Frankenstein :-(. It's probably my favorite British novel ever. So good. So darn good.

[kev67]

When I was drawing up a similar list on another forum, it included:

Wuthering Heights,
To Kill a Mockingbird,
Catcher in the Rye,
Lord of the Flies,
Catch-22.

Then I can tick off most the books all the intelletuals refer to on BBC Radio 4. I won't bother with On the Road. Longer term my reading list will include:

Emma, which would conclude 19th century British romantic fiction for me
Far from the Madding Crowd, one of Thomas Hardy's less miserable offerings
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
Kim by Rudyard Kipling (as The Jungle Book was so good)
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
Maybe something by Virginia Woolf
Probably For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemmingway
Maybe Middlemarch by George Elliot

Also books on my bookshelf waiting to be read:

New Grub Street by George Gissing
The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe

[kev67]

OK - removing Americans, Scots, adding Brontës, only one book per author, more 20th century (and 21st!), how about:

18th Century

-Robinson Crusoe by Defoe (1719)
-Gullivers Travels by Swift (1726)
-Tom Jones by Fielding (1749)

19th Century

-Pride and Prejudice by Austen (1813)
-Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (1847)
-Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (1847)
-The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë (1848)
-Great Expectations by Dickens (1860-61)
-Middlemarch by Eliot (1870)
-Tess of the d'Ubervilles by Hardy (1891)
-Heart of Darkness by Conrad (1899)

20th Century
- Kim by Rudyard Kipling (1901)
- A Room with a View by E. M. Forster (1908)
- Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence (1913)
- To the Lighthouse by Woolf (1927)
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1931)
- Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood (1939)
- Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (1949)
- Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis (1954)

21st century
- Saturday by Ian McEwan (2003)

No Joyce 'cause OP had read more than enough Joyce :)

It is quite a big jump from 1954 to 2003. Is Saturday Ian McEwan's best book anyway? I thought Atonement was. Lucky Jim is a good book, but I am not sure it is deep or meaningful. Isn't Goodbye to Berlin autobiographical rather than outright fiction? Heart of Darkness is a novella. I'd suggest The Secret Agent instead.

[islandclimber]

OK - removing Americans, Scots, adding Brontës, only one book per author, more 20th century (and 21st!), how about:

18th Century

-Robinson Crusoe by Defoe (1719)
-Gullivers Travels by Swift (1726)
-Tom Jones by Fielding (1749)

19th Century

-Pride and Prejudice by Austen (1813)
-Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (1847)
-Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (1847)
-The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë (1848)
-Great Expectations by Dickens (1860-61)
-Middlemarch by Eliot (1870)
-Tess of the d'Ubervilles by Hardy (1891)
-Heart of Darkness by Conrad (1899)

20th Century
- Kim by Rudyard Kipling (1901)
- A Room with a View by E. M. Forster (1908)
- Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence (1913)
- To the Lighthouse by Woolf (1927)
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1931)
- Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood (1939)
- Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (1949)
- Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis (1954)

21st century
- Saturday by Ian McEwan (2003)

No Joyce 'cause OP had read more than enough Joyce :)

As the poster above said... Nothing from 1954-2003?

I can think of three authors off the top of my head who certainly belong.

Angela Carter ~ The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr Hoffmann (1984); Nights at the Circus (1969); Heroes and Villains (1969)

Martin Amis ~ Money: A Suicide Note (1984); Time's Arrow: Or the Nature of the Offense (1991)

Anthony Burgess ~ Earthly Powers (1980); A Clockwork Orange (1962)

[mal4mac]

Maybe Orwell's 1984 is a good place to end the list? Surely it needs at least 50 years before something can be seen as definitive? Also, on reflection, I don't think my personal taste should affect this list, which is about *development*, so Ulysses has to be on there, doesn't it? Also I don't think anyone would dispute that one of Wells' science fiction classics should be there, would they? Revised list:

18th Century

-Robinson Crusoe by Defoe (1719)
-Gullivers Travels by Swift (1726)
-Tom Jones by Fielding (1749)

19th Century

-Pride and Prejudice by Austen (1813)
-Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (1847)
-Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (1847)
-The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë (1848)
-Great Expectations by Dickens (1860-61)
-Middlemarch by George Eliot (1870)
-Tess of the d'Ubervilles by Hardy (1891)
-The Time Machine by H. G. Wells (1895)
-Heart of Darkness by Conrad (1899)

20th Century
- Kim by Rudyard Kipling (1901)
- A Room with a View by E. M. Forster (1908)
- Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence (1913)
- Ulysses by James Joyce (1922)
- To the Lighthouse by Woolf (1927)
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1931)
- Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood (1939)
- Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (1949)

Maybe Anne Brontë and Isherwood are most open to question here. I read their works recently and was greatly impressed, but I can think of novels with greater reputations that I don't happen to like very much. But I'll leave others to push for them... adding Ulysses was enough of a strain.

[mal4mac]

It is quite a big jump from 1954 to 2003. Is Saturday Ian McEwan's best book anyway? I thought Atonement was. Lucky Jim is a good book, but I am not sure it is deep or meaningful. Isn't Goodbye to Berlin autobiographical rather than outright fiction? Heart of Darkness is a novella. I'd suggest The Secret Agent instead.

I preferred Saturday to Atonement. Does the novel have to be deep and meaningful? I think Lucky Jim scores highly on development... it shows a move away from modernist experimentalism (is that what you mean by not deep?) It stresses humour, class, campus... all heavily represented in the late 20th century novel in the UK (maybe a backward development... but still a development...) Maybe Orwell is a good "deep and meaningful" place to stop? Maybe we need a sea faring Conrad? "Victory" would be my choice. "Kim" covers developments in "colonialism" and "secret agents".

[PeterL]

While all lists like this are funny; this is the first one that I have actually laughed at.

[ralfyman]

Indeed. There's also Eagleton, Trotter, and more. For those looking for a wiki entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_novel

[Eiseabhal]

20 To get an idea of the development? Hmm. Couple of zeros missing. Give yourself a chance pal.