1898 C.K. Shorter List of Best 100 Novels

In 1898, an editor named Clement K. Shorter made a list of the 100 best novels (with a limit of one book per author).
Updated September 19, 2022
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Pride and prejudice
Austen, Jane 1775-1817
Paper Book
When Elizabeth Bennet first meets eligible bachelor Fitzwilliam Darcy, she thinks him arrogant and conceited; he is indifferent to her good looks and lively mind. When she later discovers that Darcy has involved himself in the troubled relationship between his friend Bingley and her beloved sister...
Jane Eyre
BrontĂŠ, Charlotte 1816-1855
Paper Book
Orphaned Jane Eyre grows up in the home of her heartless aunt, where she endures loneliness and cruelty, and at a charity school with a harsh regime. This troubled childhood strengthens Jane's natural independence and spirit - which prove necessary when she finds a position as governess at...
Wuthering Heights : the 1847 text, backgrounds and contexts, criticism
BrontĂŠ, Emily 1818-1848
Paper Book
For the Fourth Edition, the editor collated the 1847 text with the two modern texts (Norton's William J. Sale collation and the Clarendon), and found a great number of variants, including accidentals. This discovery led to changes in the body of the Norton Critical Edition text that are explained in...
The scarlet letter
Hawthorne, Nathaniel 1804-1864
Paper Book
Gulliver's travels
Swift, Jonathan 1667-1745
Paper Book
Regarded as the preeminent prose satirist in the English language, Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) intended this masterpiece, as he once wrote Alexander Pope, to "vex the world rather than divert it." Savagely ironic, it portrays man as foolish at best, and at worst, not much more than an...
The woman in white
Collins, Wilkie 1824-1889
Paper Book
The Woman in White famously opens with Walter Hartright's eerie encounter on a moonlit London road. Engaged as a drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie, Walter is drawn into the sinister intrigues of Sir Percival Glyde and his 'charming' friend Count Fosco, who has a taste for white mice,...
Frankenstein : the 1818 text, contexts, nineteenth-century responses, modern criticism
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft 1797-1851
Paper Book
Contemporary perspectives of the text are provided in two sections: Contexts helps place the novel in relation to the mind of its creator through writings by Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, and John William Polidori; Nineteenth-Century Responses collects six reactions to the book...
Crime and punishment : the Coulson translation, backgrounds and sources, essays in criticism
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor 1821-1881
Paper Book
New footnotes have been added, based on discoveries by the leading Soviet Dostoevsky scholar, Sergei Belov. "Backgrounds and Sources", highly praised in the Second Edition, remains unaltered. Included are a detailed map of nineteenth-century St. Petersburg, selections from Dostoevsky's notebooks...
The personal history of David Copperfield
Dickens, Charles 1812-1870
Paper Book
When David Copperfield escapes from the cruelty of his childhood home, he embarks on a journey to adulthood which will lead him through comedy and tragedy, love and heartbreak and friendship and betrayal. Over the course of his adventure, David meets an array of eccentric characters and learns...
Uncle Tom's cabin : or, Life among the lowly
Stowe, Harriet Beecher 1811-1896
Paper Book
The novel that changed the course of American history Published in 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel was a powerful indictment of slavery in America. Describing the many trials and eventual escape to freedom of the long-suffering, good-hearted slave Uncle Tom, it aimed to show...
Candide ; or, Optimism
Voltaire 1694-1778
Paper Book
"All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds"   It was the indifferent shrug and callous inertia that this "optimism" concealed which so angered Voltaire, who found the "all for the best" approach a patently inadequate response to suffering, to natural disasters,...
Les miserables
Hugo, Victor 1802-1885
Paper Book
Few novels ever swept across the world with such overpowering impact as Les Misérables. Within 24 hours, the first Paris edition was sold out. In other great cities of the world it was devoured with equal relish. Sensational, dramatic, packed with rich excitement and...
Vanity fair : a novel without a hero
Thackeray, William Makepeace 1811-1863
Paper Book
A panoramic satire of English society during the Napoleonic Wars, Vanity Fair is William Makepeace Thackeray's masterpiece. At its center is one of the most unforgettable characters in nineteenth-century literature: the enthralling Becky Sharp, a charmingly ruthless social climber who is...
Don Quixote
Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de 1547-1616
Paper Book
"Don Quixote, a lanky scarecrow of a man with his withered face and lantern jaw, dons his rusty armour and mounts his ramshackle steed, Rozinante. With lance couched he still rides through our lives, followed by his potbellied squire Sancho Panza." With these words, Walter Starkie launches...
Robinson Crusoe : an authoritative text, contexts, criticism
Defoe, Daniel 1661?-1731
Paper Book
Michael Shinagel has collated the reprint with all six authorized editions published by Taylor in 1719 to achieve a text that is faithful to Defoe's original edition.  Annotations assist the reader with obscure words and idioms, biblical references, and nautical terms.
Silas Marner
Eliot, George 1819-1880
Paper Book
When Silas Marner is wrongly accused of crime and expelled from his community, he vows to turn his back upon the world. He moves to the village of Raveloe, where he remains an outsider and an object of suspicion until an extraordinary sequence of events, including the theft of his gold and...
The three musketeers
Dumas, Alexandre 1802-1870
Paper Book
"We read The Three Musketeers to experience a sense of romance and for the sheer excitement of the story," reflected Clifton Fadiman. "In these violent pages all is action, intrigue, suspense, surprise--an almost endless chain of duels, murders, love affairs, unmaskings, ambushes, hairbreadth...
The history of Tom Jones, a foundling
Fielding, Henry 1707-1754
Paper Book
One of the first and most influential of English novels--originally published in 1749--is blessed with a lively and endearing hero at the center of one of the most ingeniously constructed comic plots in fiction. * Inspiration for the PBS MASTERPIECE series Tom Jones starring...
The last of the Mohicans
Cooper, James Fenimore 1789-1851
Paper Book
Cooper's most enduringly popular novel combines heroism and romance with powerful criticism of the destruction of nature and tradition. Set against the French and Indian siege of Fort William Henry in 1757,The Last of the Mohicansrecounts the story of two sisters, Cora and...
The castle of Otranto : a gothic story
Walpole, Horace 1717-1797
Paper Book
First published pseudonymously in 1764, The Castle of Otranto purported to be a translation of an Italian story of the time of the crusades. In it Walpole attempted, as he declared in the Preface to the second edition, `to blend the two kinds of romance: the ancient and the modern'. He gives us a...
The mysteries of Udolpho : a romance
Radcliffe, Ann Ward 1764-1823
Paper Book
This was the most popular novel of Radcliffe's time and Radcliffe's portrayal of her heroine's inner life raised the Gothic romance to a new level. The atmosphere of fear and the gripping plot continue to thrill today. This is the story of the orphaned Emily St Aubert who finds herself separated...
Père Goriot
Balzac, HonorĂŠ de 1799-1850
Paper Book
This fine example of the French realist novel contrasts the social progress of an impoverished but ambitious aristocrat with the tale of a father, whose obsessive love for his daughters leads to his personal and financial ruin. About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's...
Fathers and sons
Turgenev, Ivan Sergeevich 1818-1883
Paper Book
Turgenev's timeless tale of generational collision, in a sparkling new translation When Arkady Petrovich returns home from college, his father finds his eager, na ve son changed almost beyond recognition, for the impressionable Arkady has fallen under the powerful influence of the friend...
The vicar of Wakefield
Goldsmith, Oliver 1730?-1774
Paper Book
When Dr Primrose loses his fortune in a disastrous investment, his idyllic life in the country is shattered and he is forced to move with his wife and six children to an impoverished living on the estate of Squire Thornhill. Taking to the road in pursuit of his daughter, who has been seduced by the...
Barchester Towers
Trollope, Anthony 1815-1882
Paper Book
"I never saw anything like you clergymen ... you are always thinking of fighting each other"   After the death of old Dr Grantly, a bitter struggle begins over who will succeed him as Bishop of Barchester. And when the decision is finally made to appoint the evangelical Dr...
The betrothed
Manzoni, Alessandro 1785-1873
Paper Book
Set in Lombardy during the Spanish occupation of the late 1620s, The Betrothed tells the story of two young lovers, Renzo and Lucia, prevented from marrying by the petty tyrant Don Rodrigo, who desires Lucia for himself. Forced to flee, they are then cruelly separated, and must face many dangers...
Evelina ; or, The history of a young lady's entrance into the world
Burney, Fanny 1752-1840
Paper Book
Arcadia Kids is a new series of fun, colorful, easy-to-read books for children ages 7-11 featuring attention-grabbing cover art, inviting conversational style content, and vivid full-color images of landmarks and geography. Parents, grandparents, and savvy shoppers will appreciate the feel good...
Clarissa, or, The history of a young lady
Richardson, Samuel 1689-1761
Paper Book
Pressured by her unscrupulous family to marry a wealthy man she detests, the young Clarissa Harlowe is tricked into fleeing with the witty and debonair Robert Lovelace and places herself under his protection. Lovelace, however, proves himself to be an untrustworthy rake whose vague promises of...
Uncle Silas : a tale of Bartram-Haugh
Le Fanu, Joseph Sheridan 1814-1873
Paper Book
Perhaps no other writer in the history of English fiction so completely mastered the technique of creating an atmosphere of unrelieved suspense and terror as Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-73). This is surely evident in all of his supernatural fiction: such superb examples of the English...
The history of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia
Johnson, Samuel 1709-1784
Paper Book
Rasselas and his companions escape the pleasures of the "happy valley" in order to make their "choice of life." By witnessing the misfortunes and miseries of others they come to understand the nature of happiness, and value it more highly. Their travels and enquiries raise important practical and...
Tom Brown's School Days
Thomas Hughes
The master of Ballantrae : a winter's tale
Stevenson, Robert Louis 1850-1894
Paper Book
Salammbo
Flaubert, Gustave 1821-1880
Paper Book
An epic story of lust, cruelty, and sensuality, this historical novel is set in Carthage in the days following the First Punic War with Rome.
Kenilworth : a romance
Scott, Walter 1771-1832
Paper Book
The definitive edition of Walter Scott's 1821 pageant of Elizabethan life. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.
Bracebridge Hall
Irving, Washington 1783-1859
Paper Book
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references...
The wandering Jew
Sue, Eugène 1804-1857
Paper Book
The wide, wide world
Warner, Susan 1819-1885
Paper Book
First published in 1850 and exceeded in popularity then only by Uncle Tom's Cabin, this domestic epic narrates the seven-year pilgrimage of a girl sent out into the world at age ten by a dying mother and a careless father. Moved from relative to relative, Ellen Montgomery astonishes by...
The adventures of Roderick Random
Smollett, T. (Tobias) 1721-1771
Paper Book
Roderick is combative, often violent, but capable of great affection and generosity. His father had been disinherited and has left Scotland leaving his son penniless. After a brief apprenticeship to a surgeon, the innocent Roderick travels to London where he encounters various rogues.
Marriage
Ferrier, Susan 1782-1854
Paper Book
Susan Ferrier sold more copies of her novels than her contemporary, Jane Austen. Sir Walter Scott declared her his equal. Why, then has she been lost to history? On the 200th anniversary of this sharply observed, comic novel, it is time to rediscover her brilliance. 'Edinburgh is...

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