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
Drag items up and down to your preferred order then select the "Save Order" button.
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...
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (REVISED)
Austen, Jane
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...
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...
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,...
Frankenstein (Norton Critical Editions)
Mary Shelley
Paper Book
The best-selling student edition on the market, now available in a Second Edition. 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...
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...
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...
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 naive Candide,...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
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 Mohicansrecounts the story of two sisters, Cora and...
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...
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...
The Mysteries of Udolpho
Ann Radcliffe
Paper Book
A best-seller in its day and a potent influence on Walpole, Poe, and other writers of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Gothic horror, The Mysteries of Udolpho remains one of the most important works in the history of European fiction. After Emily St. Aubuert is imprisoned by her evil guardian,...
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...
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...
The Vicar of Wakefield
Oliver Goldsmith
Paper Book
This newly edited critical edition of an enduringly popular tale, one of the most widely reprinted and illustrated works of fiction in English, offers readers an authoritative text along with extensive and helpful annotation. Following the lives of the vicar and his family, and the various...
The betrothed : a tale of XVII century Milan /
Manzoni, Alessandro,
Paper Book
"The first English translation in more than fifty years of Alessandro Manzoni's masterpiece, a work of foundational Italian literature on par with the Divine Comedy and the Decameron."-The Wall Street Journal "An exemplary historical novel" (The New Yorker) from...
Evelina
Frances Burney
Paper Book
'Lord Orville did me the honour to hand me to the coach, talking all the way of the honour I had done him! O these fashionable people!'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...
Clarissa, or, the history of a young lady /
Richardson, Samuel,
Paper Book
Ruth
Elizabeth Gaskell
Paper Book
'I think I must be an improper woman without knowing it, I do so manage to shock people.'Elizabeth Gaskell's second novel challenged contemporary social attitudes by taking as its heroine a fallen woman. Ruth Hilton is an orphan and an overworked seamstress, an innocent preyed upon by a weak,...
Uncle Silas: A Tale of Bartram-Haugh
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
Paper Book
'The old woman opened the door, and the next moment I was in the presence of Uncle Silas.' In Victorian Derbyshire, 17 year old orphan and heiress Maud Ruthyn is sent to live at the claustrophobic Bartram-Haugh house with her mysterious Uncle Silas. Silas has a reputation for gambling debts and past...
Vathek
William Beckford
Ebook
Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
No detailed description available for "Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship".
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...

Library staff! You can create and contribute to lists. Contact your catalog administrator or log in here.