What is THE great British Novel?

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

This may be right - not British novel, but English novel, Scottish novel, etc...

Rob Roy & the Waverley Novels by Walter Scott range across England and Scotland, might they fit? Or are those Scottish novels providing a much wider perspective than Sassenach works :)

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Yes, maybe English novel would be more accurate but it would be nice to see some suggestions of the other countries of Britain as well.

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Originally Posted by Kjetil

Well, the English are in good company. What's the great French novel, in the above sense? Or German? Italian? Spanish? There isn't one. The notion seems peculiarly american, and even there, there is little consensus. Or maybe the notion is fundamentally only possible in a demoratic culture, which really only the american has been for the whole length of its existence?

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i think that there may really be something in your idea that it is a particularly or at least especially american notion. i agree with you.

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Originally Posted by kelby_lake

Yes, maybe English novel would be more accurate but it would be nice to see some suggestions of the other countries of Britain as well.

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http://www.heraldscotland.com/books-...cottish-novels

Of those I've read, besides the great Scott:

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark
Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh
Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson
The Thirty-Nine Steps, John Buchan,
Lanark, Alasdair Gray

I've also read: Black and Blue, Ian Rankin, but I think the guy is over-rated and over-hyped, not a patch on the five above, a genre hack, not serious literature, not even that exciting, compared to Stevenson, Welsh, or Scott.

Is Scott the greatest British novelist?

I think Rob Roy is a good choice, I hear you can't embody Englishness, but if you could, if there were such a thing as a national cultural identity, Scott's moderation, passion for honor and love of truth would be something close. But how about Hereward the Wake.

Modern times it would have to be Trainspotting or Acid House by Irvine Welsh. Without a doubt one of the best writers alive is Mr. Welsh. And as asked above if Scott is the great British novelist; I have to say that it is Welsh!

Classics wise there are far, far too many to name as many are inextricably British and have all been mentioned in this thread (I think.)

Pride and Prejudice maybe? That's a very English book.

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Originally Posted by kelby_lake

Pride and Prejudice maybe? That's a very English book.

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I concur. Austen's books would come first on my list of English novels, and then probably Middlemarch. Then maybe Brideshead Revisited, then Tom Jones...

I think Dickens' Great Expectations is the greatest British novel.

As mentioned by others, Middlemarch, Brideshead Revisited, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Tom Jones.

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Originally Posted by DianeAdams

I think Rob Roy is a good choice, I hear you can't embody Englishness, but if you could, if there were such a thing as a national cultural identity, Scott's moderation, passion for honor and love of truth would be something close.

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Rob Roy was subject of the Literature Network Book Club a few years ago. Apparently, I alone thought it worth completing. The Scottish dialect is a bit daunting and the novel is light on subtlety.

I loved George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss. I like to think there's more to the ending than the obvious.

My favourite is The Golden Bowl by the expatriate American, Henry James, with its exquisite marriage machinations.

Middlemarch has to be in contention. Bleak House as well.

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Originally Posted by ralfyman

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,...

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Greatest Irish novel? Maybe...

Brideshead Revisited and Tom Jones are good novels but I don't think stand up against Middlemarch, which I've just re-read. The latter is remarkable for the number of characters it portrays across all sectors of English society, in some depth, ... not only does it give a portrait of an artist as a young man, but also a portrait of a scientist as young man (who makes a very bad marriage), and a portrait of a young woman as a social reformer (who also makes a very bad marriage!) and the list goes on through iconic portrayals of builders, farmers, industrialists, religious nuts, vicars, doctors, lawyers, politicians, campaigning journalists, yokels, uneducated yokels, matriarchs, confidence men, misers, dried-up scholars, teachers, tally-ho aristocrats, mayors, layabout sons, gadabout daughters, lords, tramps... does any other novel have such breadth and depth? Also, it is set in a critical time of British history... around the time of the Victorian reform act when the power of the aristocracy was waning, and the middle class coming to prominence... nothing defines modern Britain better!

The suggestion of Wuthering Heights, mentioned several times in this thread, made me think of a little story Sergei Rachmaninoff told on the way to identifying the greatest pianist of his day (He claimed it was Josef Hoffman):

On a certain street in Paris, the first tailor who set up shop put this hyperbolic claim on his sign: "The best tailor in France." A couple of years later a second tailor started doing business a couple of blocks away, inscribing on his sign: "The best tailor in Paris." Still later a third tailor opened up shop halfway between the other two. His sign read: "The best tailor in this street." I think Anne Bronte was the best writer in that house.

Middlemarch is a great novel and very English as is Wuthering Heights. There is no such beast as the Great British Novel although there might be great novels from Britain.

There's Great Expectations, Middlemarch, The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, Bleak House, and A Tale of Two Cities, as my own short list for Great British Novel, though there are obviously more