Modern Library 100 Best Novels

Modern Library 100 Best Novels is a list of 100 books selected by a jury as the best English-language novels of the 20th century. It was published in 1998 by the Modern Library publishing house . The ten jurors were Gore Vidal , Daniel J. Boorstin , AS Byatt , Arthur M. Schlesinger , William Styron , Christopher Cerf , Shelby Foote , Vartan Gregorian , Edmund Morris and John Richardson .

Authors with multiple books

Most frequently represented is Joseph Conrad , who wrote in English and was of Polish origin. Four titles were noted by him in the list, with his 1907 work The Secret Agent placed best in 46th place. William Faulkner , EM Forster , Henry James , James Joyce , DH Lawrence and Evelyn Waugh each have three novels on the list. Ten other writers are represented with two works.

Edith Wharton is the only author who is twice represented with Time of Innocence and The House of Joy .

Oldest and youngest book in the list

The oldest novels in the Modern Library list date back to the 19th century. Samuel Butler's The Way of All Meat was written between 1873 and 1884. The work criticizes Victorian England in the harshest terms, which is why Butler did not want it to be published until after his own death. The Way of All Meat was finally published in 1903 and ranks 12th on the Modern Library's list.

The other work from the 19th century is Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness , which ranks 67th. This novel, sometimes referred to as a novella , was published as early as 1899, but still made it into the ranking. From a first-published standpoint, Conrad's Heart of Darkness is the oldest novel on the list.

William Kennedy is the most recent novel, Ironweed , published in 1983 .

Book translated from German

The novel solar eclipse of Arthur Koestler was originally written in German. However, the original version had been lost since 1940; German-language editions were back translations from English. In 2015 the manuscript was rediscovered.

Contents of the list

No.	Original English title	German title	author	year
1	Ulysses	Ulysses	James Joyce	1922
2	The Great Gatsby	The Great Gatsby	F. Scott Fitzgerald	1925
3	A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man	A portrait of the artist as a young man	James Joyce	1916
4th	Lolita	Lolita	Vladimir Nabokov	1955
5	Brave New World	Beautiful new world	Aldous Huxley	1932
6th	The Sound and the Fury	Madness and madness	William Faulkner	1929
7th	Catch-22	Catch-22	Joseph Heller	1961
8th	Darkness at Noon	Solar eclipse	Arthur Koestler	1940
9	Sons and Lovers	Sons and lovers	DH Lawrence	1913
10	The Grapes of Wrath	Grapes of Wrath	John Steinbeck	1939
11	Under the volcano	Under the volcano	Malcolm Lowry	1947
12	The Way of All Flesh	The way of all flesh	Samuel Butler	1903
13	1984	1984	George Orwell	1949
14th	I, Claudius	I, Claudius	Robert Graves	1934
15th	To the lighthouse	To the lighthouse	Virginia Woolf	1927
16 to 100	The complete list on the internet

Criticism of the list

The selection of the Modern Library was criticized for the fact that of the hundred novels listed, only nine were by female authors. It was also criticized that almost all works came from American and British authors. The only exceptions were three novels by the Irishman James Joyce.

It was also noted that 59 of the 100 books listed were published by Bertelsmann Group publishers and nine of the ten jurors published their works with the Bertelsmann Group. Random House , the mother company of Modern Library , has also been part of this since 1998 .

See also

• Category: Ranking list (literary works)

Web links

• 100 Best Novels on the Modern Library website

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Paul Lewis: 'Ulysses' at Top As Panel Picks 100 Best Novels . In: New York Times . July 20, 1998. Retrieved October 5, 2018.
2. ↑ Lost Koestler original found in: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , 14. August 2015, accessed August 22, 2015.