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
Jane Austen
Paper Book
One of the most universally loved and admired English novels, Pride and Prejudice was penned as a popular entertainment. But the consummate artistry of Jane Austen (1775-1817) transformed this effervescent tale of rural romance into a witty, shrewdly observed satire of English...
Jane Eyre
Charlotte Brontë
Paper Book
The Scarlet Letter
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Paper Book
The Woman in White
Wilkie Collins
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,...
David Copperfield
Charles Dickens
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
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Paper Book
  Uncle Tom, Topsy, Sambo, Simon Legree, little Eva: their names are American bywords, and all of them are characters in Harriet Beecher Stowe's remarkable novel of the pre-Civil War South. Uncle Tom's Cabin was revolutionary in 1852 for its passionate indictment of slavery and...
Candide
Voltaire
Paper Book
Les Misérables
Victor Hugo
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...
Silas Marner
George Eliot
Paper Book
The classic novel of hope, redemption, and the indomitable human spirit, from beloved novelist George Eliot. In this heartwarming classic by George Eliot, a gentle linen weaver named Silas Marner is wrongly accused of a heinous theft actually committed by his best friend. Exiling...
The Three Musketeers
Alexandre Dumas
Paper Book
Tom Jones
Henry Fielding
Ebook
The Last of the Mohicans
James Fenimore Cooper
Paper Book
The wild rush of action in this classic frontier adventure story has made The Last of the Mohicans the most popular of James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales. Deep in the forests of upper New York State, the brave woodsman Hawkeye (Natty Bumppo) and his loyal Mohican friends Chingachgook and...
The Castle of Otranto
Horace Walpole
Ebook
The Gothic masterwork that revolutionized popular fiction When Prince Manfred of Otranto loses his son in a strange and terrifying accident, he fears that an ancient prophecy has come to pass and his family will be stripped of its castle and lands before he can produce a new...
Fathers and Sons
Ivan Turgenev
Ebook
As Arkady Kirsanov returns home after graduation, his father waits patiently for him--excited to see his much-loved son once again. But in returning home to a world that has remained static, Arkady and his friend Bazarov, a self-defined nihilist, find themselves wholly changed, and must now...
The Betrothed
Alessandro Manzoni
Ebook
Tom Brown's School Days
Thomas Hughes
DVD
Stephen Fry, Jemma Redgrave, Joseph Beattie, and Alex Pettyfer star in director Dave Moore's adaptation of Thomas Hughes' timeless coming of age tale. The time is the mid-1800s, and Tom Brown is a timid student at Rugby Public School. Confronted with relentless bullying, the homesick schoolboy makes...
The Master of Ballantrae
Robert Louis Stevenson
Paper Book
Stevenson’s brooding historical romance demonstrates his most abiding theme—the elemental struggle between good and evil—as it unfolds against a hauntingly beautiful Scottish landscape, amid the fierce loyalties and violent enmities that characterized Scottish history. When two...
The Absentee
Maria Edgeworth
Ebook
The Absentee is the story of Lord and Lady Clonbrony, who neglect their responsibilities to their Irish estates in favor of their preoccupation with fashionable London society. Their son travels incognito to Ireland to seek the truth of the circumstances....

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