Are you wondering, “Which of these books are can’t-miss classics?” Here are our top British novels from the BBC's list.
You all loved the BBC’s children’s books list, so let’s take a look at the BBC’s newest list: British novels for adults.
The BBC asked experts a simple question: What are the greatest British novels?
They chose to poll book critics outside the United Kingdom only, to give an outsider’s perspective on the best in British literature. Eighty-two book critics from Australia to Zimbabwe gave their answers. You can see the full list here.
Are you wondering, “Which of these books are can’t-miss classics?” Here are our top picks from the list for Catholic readers — plus two extras at the end, because we can’t fathom how they weren’t included.
Our final list has 30 books, giving you plenty of reading material. Who knows? Perhaps this list could inspire you to start a book club to read some of the greatest British novels.
The top novels
Middlemarch (George Eliot, 1874)
The Chronicles of Narnia (CS Lewis, 1949-1954)
The Code of the Woosters (PG Wodehouse, 1938)
Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen, 1813)
The Lord of the Rings (JRR Tolkien, 1954)
The Wind in the Willows (Kenneth Grahame, 1908)
Sense and Sensibility (Jane Austen, 1811)
Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë, 1847)
Vanity Fair (William Makepeace Thackeray, 1848)
Frankenstein (Mary Shelley, 1818)
David Copperfield (Charles Dickens, 1850)
Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë, 1847)
Bleak House (Charles Dickens, 1853)
Great Expectations (Charles Dickens, 1861)
Persuasion (Jane Austen, 1817)
Emma (Jane Austen, 1815)
Remains of the Day (Kazuo Ishiguro, 1989)
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll, 1865)
Brighton Rock (Graham Greene, 1938)
Gulliver’s Travels (Jonathan Swift, 1726)
A Room with a View (EM Forster, 1908)
The End of the Affair (Graham Greene, 1951)
Animal Farm (George Orwell, 1945)
Scoop (Evelyn Waugh, 1938)
The Woman in White (Wilkie Collins, 1859)
Nineteen Eighty-Four (George Orwell, 1949)
Robinson Crusoe (Daniel Defoe, 1719)
Barchester Towers (Anthony Trollope, 1857)
Our additions
It’s a travesty that this list doesn’t include Brideshead Revisited (Evelyn Waugh, 1945), one of the finest pieces of writing in British literature and one of the great Catholic novels.
And we’d also add The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Anne Brontë, 1848), which is not only a gripping story but also an important piece of history, as it was among the first novels to grapple with domestic violence, alcoholism, and other critical social issues from a woman's perspective — showing how a good person might have responded to such problems in that place and time.
