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
Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. When Elizabeth Bennet first meets...
Jane Eyre.
Bronte, 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...
The scarlet letter.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864
Paper Book
The impulsive young woman, her cowardly lover, and her vengeful husband form an unforgettable triangle, consigned to work out their destiny in the chilling atmosphere of seventeenth-century Puritan New England. Melding Nathaniel Hawthorne's rich psychological insight and his fascination with the...
The woman in white.
Holwill, Helen
Paper Book
Penguin Readers is an ELT graded reading series for teenagers and young adults learning English as a foreign language. - Carefully adapted text. - Accompanying audio and digital version with the print edition, accessed securely online. ...
David Copperfield.
Dolan, Hannah
Paper Book
Penguin Readers is an ELT graded reader series for learners of English as a foreign language. With carefully adapted text, new illustrations and language learning exercises, the print edition also includes instructions to access supporting material online. Titles...
Uncle Tom's cabin
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Paper Book
A devoutly Christian slave becomes separated from his wife and family when he is sold to the brutal planter, Simon Legree.
Candide.
Voltaire, 1694-1778
Paper Book
Candide is the story of a gentle man who, though pummeled and slapped in every direction by fate, clings desperately to the belief that he lives in "the best of all possible worlds." On the surface a witty, bantering tale, this eighteenth-century classic is actually a savage, satiric thrust...
Les miserables. [online electronic audiobook]
Hugo, Victor, 1802-1885
Audiobook
Set in the Parisian underworld and plotted like a detective story, Les Misérables follows the adventures of Jean Valjean, originally an honest peasant, who was imprisoned for nineteen years for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister's starving family. A hardened criminal upon his release, he...
Silas Marner.
Eliot, George, 1819-1880
Paper Book
The three musketeers.
Williams, Kate
Paper Book
Penguin Readers is an ELT graded reader series for learners of English as a foreign language. With carefully adapted text, new illustrations and language learning exercises, the print edition also includes instructions to access supporting material online. Titles...
The last of the Mohicans : a narrative of 1757.
Cooper, James Fenimore, 1789-1851
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...
Le p ere Goriot : roman
Balzac, Honor e de
Paper Book
Fathers and sons /
Turgenev, Ivan Sergeevich, 1818-1883
Paper Book
When a young graduate returns home he is accompanied, much to his father and uncle's discomfort, by a strange friend "who doesn't acknowledge any authorities, who doesn't accept a single principle on faith." Turgenev's masterpiece of generational conflict shocked Russian society when it was...
Barchester Towers [sound recording (CD)] /
Trollope, Anthony, 1815-1882
Audiobook
This magnificent sequel to The Warden satirizes the struggle for ascendancy among the clergy of a cathedral city as they contend for each newly vacant post within the archdiocese. The contest for power is between Archdeacon Grantly and his followers, who favor high-church tendencies, and the new...
The betrothed "I promessi sposi," a tale of 17th century Milan
Manzoni, Alessandro
Paper Book
Tom Brown's schooldays. [videorecording (DVD)]
NULL
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.
Stevenson, Robert Louis, 1850-1894
Paper Book
Salammbo
Flaubert, Gustave
Paper Book
It was at Megara, a suburb of Carthage, in the gardens of Hamilcar. The soldiers whom he had commanded in Sicily were having a great feast to celebrate the anniversary of the battle of Eryx, and as the master was away, and they were numerous, they ate and drank with perfect freedom. The captains,...
Kenilworth
Scott, Walter, Sir
Paper Book
The definitive edition of Walter Scott's 1821 pageant of Elizabethan life. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.
Wilhelm Meister's apprenticeship
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von
Paper Book
Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, a novel of self-realization greatly admired by the Romantics, has been called the first Bildungsroman and has had a tremendous influence on the history of the German novel. The story centers on Wilhelm, a young man living in the mid-1700s who...
The Scottish chiefs /
Porter, Jane, 1776-1850
Paper Book
For nearly a century, Scribner has exemplified the very best in publishing by pairing classic texts with the illustrative giants of the time, such as N. C. Wyeth and Maxfield Parrish. With the same commitment to the high standards established by the series' founders, Atheneum Books for Young Readers...
The collegians.
Griffin, Gerald, 1803-1840.
Paper Book
This romantic melodrama set in rural Killarney in the early 19th century was based on a real case of 1829.
Mr. Midshipman easy.
Marryat, Frederick, 1792-1848
Paper Book

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