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.
Pride and prejudice /
Austen, Jane,
Paper Book
A beautiful, display-worthy collector's hardcover of one of the most beloved novels ever written, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. No novel in English has given more pleasure than Pride and Prejudice. Because it is one of the great works in our literature, critics...
Jane Eyre /
Brontče, Charlotte,
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...
The Scarlet Letter
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Paper Book
The woman in white.
Collins, Wilkie,
Paper Book
"The Woman In White"--now a dazzling new musical by the incomparable Andrew Lloyd Webber Wilkie Collinss sensational tale of madness, betrayal, and greed, "The Woman in White," is thrilling its West End audiences at the magnificent Palace Theatre in Londonand is coming to Broadway in the future....
David Copperfield /
Dickens, Charles,
Paper Book
.0000000000Dickens's tale of David Copperfield follows him from birth through to his successful career as a novelist. The novel boasts a famously rich cast of outlandish characters: the glamorous Steerforth, the cheerful Mr Micawber, the villainous Uriah Heep and David's eccentric aunt Betsy...
Uncle Tom's cabin, or, Life among the lowly /
Stowe, Harriet Beecher,
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 /
Voltaire,
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 misâerables /
Hugo, Victor,
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 /
Thackeray, William Makepeace,
Paper Book
A masterpiece of social satire, featuring one of literature's best-loved characters, Becky Sharp. Ruthless social climber and irrepressible anti-hero Becky Sharp will do anything to raise her position in Society, from impoverished orphan to woman of means. Clever, lively and...
Silas Marner :
Eliot, George,
Paper Book
Eliot's penetrating portrayal of a miser who learns to love an orphaned and abandoned child, this novel is a cherished masterwork and a moving story of redemption by the one of the Victorian era's most accomplished novelists.
The three musketeers /
Dumas, Alexandre,
Paper Book
"All for one, one for all!"--Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers The Three Musketeers, by French writer Alexandre Dumas, was first released in serial form in 1844, a year before Dumas' publication of The Count of Monte Cristo. The story was an instant...
The history of Tom Jones, a foundling /
Fielding, Henry,
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 neighboring squireathough he sometimes succumbs to the charms of the local girls. When Tom is banished to...
The last of the Mohicans :
Cooper, James Fenimore,
Paper Book
Chingachgook and Uncas are the last living members of the great Mohican tribe. Hawkeye, a colonial scout, is their companion and loyal friend. In the midst of the French and Indian War, the three take great risks to lead the two daughters of a British colonel to safety through the battle-torn...
The castle of Otranto :
Walpole, Horace,
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
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...
Barchester Towers
Anthony Trollope
Ebook
The master of Ballantrae :
Stevenson, Robert Louis,
Paper Book

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