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1898 C.K. Shorter List of Best 100 Novels
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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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List was unpublished.
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PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (REVISED)
Austen, Jane
Paper Book
One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World' 'The best-loved book by our best-loved novelist' Independent With its 'light and bright and sparkling' dialogue, its romantic denouement and its lively heroine, Pride and Prejudice is Jane...
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Jane Eyre
Charlotte Brontë
Paper Book
Jane Eyre, a penniless orphan, is engaged as governess at Thornfield Hall by the mysterious Mr Rochester. Her integrity and independence are tested to the limit as their love for each other grows, and the secrets of Mr Rochester's past are revealed. Charlotte Brontë's novel about the...
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The Scarlet Letter
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Paper Book
Hailed by Henry James as "the finest pieceof imaginative writing yet put forth in thecountry," Nathaniel Hawthorne's The ScarletLetter reaches to our nation'shistorical and moral roots for the material of greattragedy. Set in an early New England colony, the novelshows the terrible impact a...
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The woman in white /
Collins, Wilkie,
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,...
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Frankenstein (Norton Critical Editions)
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Paper Book
Almost two centuries after its publication, Frankenstein remains an indisputably classic text and Mary Shelley's finest work. This extensively revised Norton Critical Edition includes new texts and illustrative materials that convey the enduring global conversation about...
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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...
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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...
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CANDIDE: OR OPTIMISM (PENGUIN CLASSICS DELUXE EDITION)
Voltaire
Paper Book
With its vibrant new translation, perceptive introduction, and witty packaging, this new edition of Voltaire's masterpiece belongs in the hands of every reader pondering our assumptions about human behavior and our place in the world. Candide tells of the hilarious adventures of the naïve Candide,...
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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...
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Vanity Fair
William Makepeace Thackeray
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...
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Silas Marner
George Eliot
Paper Book
Wrongly accused of theft and exiled from a religious community many years before, the embittered weaver Silas Marner lives alone in Raveloe, living only for work and his precious hoard of money. But when his money is stolen and an orphaned child finds her way into his house, Silas is given the...
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The Three Musketeers
Alexandre Dumas
Paper Book
Alexandre Dumas's most famous tale-- and possibly the most famous historical novel of all time-- in a handsome hardcover volume. This swashbuckling epic of chivalry, honor, and derring-do, set in France during the 1620s, is richly populated with romantic heroes, unattainable heroines,...
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Tom Jones
Henry Fielding
Paper Book
A foundling of mysterious parentage brought up by Mr Allworthy on his country estate, Tom Jones is deeply in love with the seemingly unattainable Sophia Western, the beautiful daughter of the neighbouring squire - though he sometimes succumbs to the charms of the local girls. But when his amorous...
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The Last of the Mohicans
James Fenimore Cooper
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 Mohicans recounts the story of two...
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The Castle of Otranto
Horace Walpole
Paper Book
'Look, my lord! See heaven itself declares against your impious intentions!'The Castle of Otranto (1764) is the first supernatural English novel and one of the most influential works of Gothic fiction. It inaugurated a literary genre that will be forever associated with the effects that...
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The Mysteries of Udolpho
Ann Radcliffe
Paper Book
`Her present life appeared like the dream of a distempered imagination, or like one of those frightful fictions, in which the wild genius of the poets sometimes delighted. Rreflections brought only regret, and anticipation terror.' Such is the state of mind in which Emily St. Aubuert - the orphaned...
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Old Goriot
Honoré de Balzac
Paper Book
&&LDIV&&R&&LDIV&&R&&LDIV&&R&&LI&&RPere Goriot&&L/I&&R, by &&LB&&RHonore de Balzac&&L/B&&R, is part of the &&LI&&RBarnes & Noble Classics&&L/I&&R&&LI&&R &&L/I&&Rseries, which offers quality editions...
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Fathers and Sons
Ivan Turgenev
Paper Book
When Fathers and Sons was first published in Russia, in 1862, it was met with a blaze of controversy about where Turgenev stood in relation to his account of generational misunderstanding. Was he criticizing the worldview of the conservative aesthete, Pavel Kirsanov, and the older...
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Barchester Towers
Anthony Trollope
Paper Book
'Mr Slope flattered himself that he could out-manoeuvre the lady...he did not doubt of ultimate triumph.'Barchester Towers (1857) was the book that made Trollope's reputation and it remains his most popular and enjoyable novel. The arrival of a new bishop in Barchester, accompanied by his formidable...
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The Betrothed
Alessandro Manzoni
Paper Book
Italy's greatest novel and a masterpiece of world literature, The Betrothed chronicles the unforgettable romance of Renzo and Lucia, who endure tyranny, war, famine, and plague to be together. Published in 1827 but set two centuries earlier, against the tumultuous backdrop of...
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Evelina
Frances Burney
Paper Book
Frances Burney's first and most enduringly popular novel is a vivid, satirical, and seductive account of the pleasures and dangers of fashionable life in late eighteenth-century London. As she describes her heroine's entry into society, womanhood and, inevitably, love, Burney exposes the...
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Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady
Samuel Richardson
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...
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The holy war, made by Shaddai upon Diabolus, for the regaining of the metropolis of the world; or, The losing and taking again of the town of Mansoul
John Bunyan
Paper Book
A Masterful Spiritual Classic Once upon a time, the residents of the town of Mansoul were tricked into defying their ruler, Shaddai. Their new ruler, Diabolus, brought them great harm. When Shaddai sends Prince Emmanuel, his son, to rescue them, a...
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