George Eliot’s nineteenth-century masterpiece Middlemarch has been named the greatest novel of all time in a major global poll of more than 170 leading authors, critics and academics.
Unveiled in the Guardian’s Saturday Magazine, the ambitious project asked high-profile writers from diverse genres including Stephen King, Ian Rankin, Bernardine Evaristo, and Richard Osman, to rank their top 10 choices to create a definitive countdown of the world’s 100 best novels.
Toni Morrison’s Beloved secured second place in the survey, followed by James Joyce’s Ulysses in third. Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse ranked fourth, whilst Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time took fifth place.
Russian author Leo Tolstoy achieved the rare feat of securing two spots in the middle of the top 10, with Anna Karenina and War and Peace placing sixth and seventh, respectively. Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary rounded out the top 10.
Traditional romance favourites placed much lower than expected by traditionalists. Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre finished in eighth place, while Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice sat at number nine.
An interactive version of the full 100-book list has been launched online, allowing readers to track their own reading progress and see which titles their favourite authors championed.
Debate over the poll results is scheduled to continue on May 19 at Conway Hall, where the Guardian’s Joint Heads of Books, Charlotte Northedge and Liese Spencer, will host a live book club event. They will be joined by a panel of acclaimed authors, including Elif Shafak, Guy Gunaratne, Kate Mosse and Blake Morrison, to dissect the rankings.
The poll bypasses modern blockbusters and standard school syllabus choices to crown a Victorian-era work, cementing Eliot’s 1871 realism masterpiece as the pinnacle of literary achievement amongst contemporary writers and academics.
