The Modern Novel

AB Bookman’s List of the 100 Best Novels in English After 1923

Robert Penn Warren. All the King’s Men. NY and London: Harcourt, Brace,1946.
Theodore Dreiser. An American Tragedy. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1925.
Wallace Stegner. Angle of Repose. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971.
George Orwell. Animal Farm. London: Secker and Warburg, 1945.
Wyndam Lewis. The Apes of God. London: The Arthur Press, 1930.
John O’Hara. Appointment in Samarra. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, (1934).
Sinclair Lewis. Arrowsmith. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, (1925).
Jerzy Kosinski. Being There. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, (1970).
Raymond Chandler. The Big Sleep. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1939.
Lawrence Durrell. The Black Book. Paris: Obelisk Press, 1938.
Aldous Huxley. Brave New World. London: Chatto and Windus, 1932.
Thornton Wilder. The Bridge of San Luis Rey. London: Longman’s Green & Co. 1927.
Ian Fleming. Casino Royale. London: Jonathan Cape, 1953.
Joseph Heller. Catch-22. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1961.
J. D. Salinger. Catcher in the Rye. Boston: Little Brown, 1951.
Vardis Fisher. Children of God. Caldwell, ID and New York: The Caxton Printers and Harper Bros., 1939.
John Fowles. The Collector. London: Jonathan Cape, 1963.
John Kennedy Toole. A Confederacy of Dunces. Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press. 1980.
Alice Walker. The Color Purple. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, (1982).
Nathaniel West. The Day of the Locust. New York: Random House, 1939.
James Agee. A Death in the Family. New York: McDowell, Obolensky, (1958).
Anais Nin. The Delta of Venus. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, (1977).
Anne Tyler. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982.
Ray Bradbury. Fahrenheit 451. New York: Ballantine, (1953).
Rex Stout. Fer-De-Lance. New York: Farrar & Rinehart (1934).
Peter S. Beagle. A Fine and Private Place. New York: The Viking Press, 1960.
James Joyce. Finnegan’s Wake. London & New York: Faber & Faber, Viking Press, 1939.
Daniel Keyes. Flowers for Algernon. New York: Harcourt Brace and World, (1966).
Ayn Rand. The Fountainhead. Indianapolis/New York: The Bobb -Merrill Company, 1943.
James Jones. From Here to Eternity. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1951.
J. P. Donleavy. The Ginger Man. Paris: Olympia Press, 1955.
Erskine Caldwell. God’s Little Acre. New York: The Viking Press, 1933.
Margaret Mitchell. Gone With the Wind. New York: Macmillan, 1936.
James Hilton. Goodbye Mr. Chips. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1934.
John Steinbeck. The Grapes of Wrath. New York: The Viking Press, 1939.
Thomas Pynchon. Gravity’s Rainbow. New York: The Viking Press, 1973.
John Gardner. Grendel. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982.
Carson McCullers. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1940.
William Saroyan. The Human Comedy. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, (1943).
Robert Graves. I, Claudius. London: Arthur Barker, 1934.
Mickey Spillane. I, The Jury. New York: E.P. Dutton, (1947).
Ralph Ellison. The Invisible Man. New York: Random House, 1952.
D.H. Lawrence. Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Florence, Italy: Privately Printed for the Author by G. Orioli, 1928.
Hubert Selby. The Last Exit to Brooklyn. New York: Grove Press, 1964.
George Santayana. The Last Puritan. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936.
Oliver LaFarge. Laughing Boy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1929.
Jim Tully. Laughter in Hell. New York: Albert and Charles Boni, 1932.
Alasdair Grey. Lanark. Edinburgh: Canongate, 1981.
Valdimir Nabokov. Lolita. Paris: The Olympia Press, 1955.
Alan Sillitoe. The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. London: W. H. Allen, 1959.
Thomas Wolfe. Look Homeward Angel. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936.
William Golding. Lord of the Flies. London: Faber and Faber Ltd, (1954).
J. R. R. Tolkien. Lord of the Rings. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1954-5.
Kingsley Amis. Lucky Jim. London: Victor Gollancz, 1953.
Dashiell Hammett. The Maltese Falcon. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1930.
Nelson Algren. The Man With the Golden Arm. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1949.
Edward Abbey. The Monkey Wrench Gang. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co., (1975).
T. F. Powys. Mr. Weston’s Good Wine. London: Chatto & Windus, 1927.
William S. Burroughs. Naked Lunch. Paris: The Olympia Press, 1959.
Richard Wright. Native Son. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1940.
Djuna Barnes. Nightwood. London: Faber and Faber Ltd, (1936).
Jack Kerouac. On the Road. New York: The Viking Press, 1957.
T. H. White. The Once and Future King. London: Collins, 1958.
Eugene Manlove Rhodes. Once in the Saddle and Paso Por Aqui. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1927
Ken Kesey. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. New York: The Viking Press, 1962.
Eudora Welty. The Optimist’s Daughter. New York: Random House, 1972.
C. S. Lewis. Out of the Silent Planet. London: John Lane, 1938.
Grace Metalious. Peyton Place. New York: Julian Messner, 1956.
Chester Himes. Pinktoes. Paris: Olympia Press, 1961.
Du Bose Heyward. Porgy. New York: George H. Doran Co., 1925.
Robert Nathan. Portrait of Jennie. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1930.
James M. Cain. The Postman Always Rings Twice. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1934.
Ronald Firbank. The Prancing Nigger (AKA: Sorrow in Sunlight). NewYork: Brentano’s, 1924.
Muriel Spark. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. London: Macmillan, 1961.
W. Somerset Maugham. The Razor’s Edge. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Doran, 1944.
Daphne Du Maurier. Rebecca. London: Victor Gollancz, 1938.
Russell Hoban. Riddley Walker. London: Jonathan Cape, 1980.
H. P. Lovecraft. The Shadow Over Innsmouth. Everett, PA: Visionary Press, 1936.
Paul Bowles. The Sheltering Sky. London: John Lehmann, 1949.
Katherine Anne Porter. Ship of Fools. Boston: Atlantic-Little, Brown, (1962).
Kurt Vonnegut. Slaughterhouse-Five. New York: Delacorte/ Seymour Lawrence, 1969.
Dorothy L. Sayers. Strong Poison. London: Victor Gollancz, 1930.
Agatha Christie. Ten Little Niggers. London: Collins/Crime Club, 1939.
F. Scott Fitzgerald. Tender is the Night. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1934.
Nevil Shute. A Town Like Alice. London: Heinemann, 1950.
Julia Peterkin. Scarlet Sister Mary. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1928.
Jack Schaefer. Shane. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1949.
William Faulkner. The Sound and the Fury. New York: Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith, 1929.
Ernest Hemingway. The Sun Also Rises. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1926.
Zora Neale Hurston. Their Eyes Were Watching God. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1937.
Mervyn Peake. Titus Groan. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1946.
Thorne Smith. Topper. New York: Robert M. McBride & Company, 1926.
Henry Miller. Tropic of Cancer. Paris: Obelisk Press, 1934.
Philip K. Dick. Ubik. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1969.
Bel Kaufman. Up the Down Staircase. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1965.
Samuel Beckett. Watt. Paris: Olympia Press, 1953.
Richard Brautigan. Willard and His Bowling Trophies. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975.
John Irving. The World According to Garp. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1978.
E. R. Eddison. The Worm Ouroboros. London: Jonathon Cape, 1922.
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. The Yearling. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1938.