best british novels

(Credit: Random House)The first of three novels by the Nobel laureate that Margaret Drabble dubbed Lessing’s “inner space fiction” centres around the four notebooks in which Anna Wulf records and deciphers her life (and the fifth “golden” notebook in which she works to integrate the others). “This novel is a touchstone for a generation of readers.

To read Middlemarch is “to encounter an intelligence wholly sympathetic towards, and wholly unsurprised by, human foibles and frailties,” writes The Australian’s Geordie Williamson. It’s a perfect blend of a little bit of magic in a historical setting filled with interesting characters. We asked each to name the 10 greatest British novels ever published, with their top pick receiving 10 points in the tabulation. “Why? They live in Willesden, north-west London, where Smith was raised. (Credit: Penguin Random House)“Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story,” Anne Elliott tells Captain Harville, in one of Austen’s pointed allusions to the ways in which women’s lives and history have been narrated by men. “Braided together and working in concert, these two strands tell the tale of Esther Summerson, Honoria Deadlock, Mr Tulkinghorn, John Jarndyce, Richard Carstone, Ada Clare, Mr Guppy, Mr Krook, Nemo the copyist, Miss Flite, Jo the crossing sweeper, Herbert Skimpole, Mr Woodcourt, Sargent George, Inspector Bucket, Mr Smallweed and dozens of others.

This list includes no nonfiction, no plays, no narrative or epic poems (no Paradise Lost or Beowulf), no short story collections (no Morte D’Arthur) – novels only, by British authors (which means no James Joyce).The British novel has influenced the form around the world for centuries, so we felt it was important to get a global perspective.

Every locality is suffused with anxiety about what’s happening in distant spaces.” Conrad’s Nostromo ranked 69th in this BBC Culture poll. Mrs Dalloway is a novel by Virginia Woolf that details a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway in post-World War I England. “Each time I read [it] I am confronted by the shock of meeting language, by the shock of confronting existence,” writes Krys Lee (Drifting House).

Her testimony implicates a neighbour, with long-lasting effects.

“But this 1847-1848 doorstop novel (originally serialised) features probably the greatest anti-heroine in English literature, Becky Sharp, and a plot that revolves around class, social climbing and a financial crisis that will seem eerily familiar to modern readers.” “Vanity Fair has it all,” writes Dan Akst of The Wall Street Journal and Newsday, “scope, humour, pathos, and unforgettable characters. (Credit: Vintage International)“I will never forget the depth of emotion I felt upon reading the words ‘Only connect,’” writes Anne Boyd Rioux of The Millions and The Rumpus.

The narrative of The Waves consists of six voices – soliloquies with the intimacy of interior monologue – and a seventh character off stage. In the course of 19 years, his ambitions are stymied by his involvement with Arabella Donn and then his cousin Sue Bridehead, the birth of his son Jude, other children, and the limits of his class.

(Credit: Penguin Classics) Austen’s posthumous final novel revolves around a woman whose virtues seem invisible to those around her as she grows older, but who, in the end, makes a fulfilling marriage to a man she loves. Malcolm Jones of The Daily Beast says it is “the only novel that has ever enthralled me so thoroughly that I skipped ahead to find out what happened to a particular character.” “It’s sobering to confront [the interminable lawsuit] Jarndyce and Jarndyce when you’re just launching your own career and thinking hardheadedly about money for the first time,” writes Barbara Hoffert of Library Journal. Dazzling debut novels, searing polemics, the history of humanity and trailblazing memoirs ... Read our pick of the best books since 2000 (Credit: Barnes and Noble)“Great Expectations might be the quintessential British novel,” writes Dawn Raffel of the San Francisco Chronicle. Ford’s handling of paradox sets an example for all novelists.” (Credit: Penguin Classics)Orwell’s dystopian novel of governmental control and surveillance, with its indelible and lasting vocabulary, is “as relevant today – if not more relevant – as when it was published in 1949,” writes Stephen Romei of The Australian.