English Literature And Grammar For Everyone

18/12/2021

Let's learn together

✍Verbs → *Informal & Formal*

say sorry ➖ apologize, apologise
go up ➖ increase
go down ➖ decrease
set up ➖ establish
look at ➖ examine
blow up ➖ explode
find out ➖ discover
bring about ➖ cause
put off ➖ postpone, delay
rack up ➖ accumulate
make up ➖ fabricate
stand for ➖ represent
find out ➖ discover, ascertain
leave out ➖ omit
point out ➖ indicate
go against ➖ oppose
get in touch with ➖ contact
It’s about ➖ It concerns, It’s in regards to
need to ➖ required
think about ➖ consider
get ➖ obtain
put up ➖ tolerate
deal with ➖ handle
seem ➖ appear
show ➖ demonstrate, illustrate, portray
start ➖ commence
keep ➖ retain
free ➖ release
get on someone’s nerves ➖ bother
ring up ➖ call
show up ➖ arrive
let ➖ permit
fill in ➖ substitute, inform
block ➖ undermine
give the go ahead, greenlight ➖ authorize, authorise
━━━━━━━━━

04/09/2021

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26/04/2021

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26/03/2021

Joseph Andrews: A Picaresque ☀️🌻🌸🌺👇🙋

The title page of Henry Fielding’s first novel reads as, “The history of the adventures of Joseph Andrews and of his friend Mr. Abraham Adams, Written in imitation of the Manner of Cervantes, Author of Don Quixote.” The allusion to Cervantes and his masterpiece Don Quixote is significant as it shows Fielding’s indebtedness to Cervantes . Parson Adams is indeed a truly Quixotic figure, and the structure of the book also follows Cervantes’ picaresque model. Joseph Andrews is a novel of adventures met while travelling on the road. Joseph loses his employment in Lady B***y’s service in London, on his way home to the country to his sweetheart F***y, he meets Parson Adams. Together they run all kinds of adventures meeting a host of characters from low and middle-class layers of society: innkeepers, chambermaids, country squires and clergymen.

The picaresque tradition belongs to Spain and derived from the word “picaro”, meaning a rogue or a villain. The picaresque originally involved the misadventure of the rogue-hero, mainly on the highway. Soon, however, the rogue was replaced by a conventional hero – gallant and chivalric. The comic element lay in the nature of the hero’s adventures, through which, generally, society was satirized.

Fielding’s affinity with picaresque model appears first of all in the representation of rogue and villainous; secondly, in the humorous style which often takes a mock-heroic turn, and in the geniality of temperament; thirdly, in the portrait of characters of certain lower classes of men and women; and finally, in the humorous or satiric descriptions of the contents of the chapters and the introduction of side stories or episodes into the main narrative.

Thus, the journey in Joseph Andrews is not a mere picaresque rambling, a device solely for the purpose of introducing new adventures such as we find in the classic picaresque story, , but an allegorical journey, a moral pilgrimage, from the vanity and corruption of the city-life to the relative naturalness and simplicity of the country. The picaresque motif helps Fielding to fulfill his aim of ridiculing the affectations of human beings. The different strata of society can be represented through the picaresque mode. The travelers meet squires, innkeepers, landladies, persons, philosophers, lawyers and surgeons, beggars, pedlars and robbers and rogues. Fielding’s satire is pungent as he presents the worldly and crafty priests and the callous, vicious and inhuman country squires. Malice, selfishness, vanities, hypocrisies, lack of charity, all are ridiculed as human follies.

The Picaresque novel is the loosest in plot – the hero is literally let loose on the high road for his adventures. The hero wanders from place to place encountering thieves and rogues, rescuing damsels in distress, fighting duels, falling in love, being thrown in prison, and meeting a vast section of society. As the hero meets a gamut of characters from the country squire to the haughty aristocrat, from hypocrite to ill-tempered soldiers, the writer is able to introduce with the least possible incongruity, the saint and the sinner, the virtuous and the vicious. The writer has a chance to present the life, culture and morality prevalent in his time, and to satirize the evils.

Fielding acknowledged his debt to Cervantes, whose Don Quixote is the best known picaresque novel in Spanish.

Like the Don Quixote and Panza, Parson Adams and Joseph set out on a journey which involves them in a series of adventures, some of them burlesque, at several country inns or rural houses. Like the Don, Parson Adams is a dreamy idealist. But there are differences, too, between Joseph Andrews and the picaresque tradition, vital enough to consider Fielding’s novel as belonging to the genre of its own.

The central journey in Joseph Andrews is not mainly a quest for adventure as it is in the picaresque tradition. It is a sober return journey homewards. Joseph and Lady B***y are taken to London and the reader is given a glimpse of society’s ways in that great city.

It is in Chapter 10 of Book I that the picaresque element enters the novel, with Joseph setting out in a borrowed coat towards home. The picaresque tradition is maintained uptil the end of Book III. Joseph meets with the first misadventure when he is set upon by robbers, beaten, stripped and thrown unconscious into a ditch. A passing stage-coach and its passengers very reluctantly convey Joseph to an inn. The incident gives ample scope to Fielding for satirizing the pretences and affectations of an essentially inhuman society.

The Tow-wouse Inn provides a grim picture of callous human beings – the vain and ignorant surgeon and the drinking parson. Once again kindness and generosity come from an apparently immoral girl, Betty the chambermaid. With the arrival of Parson Adams, the picaresque journey takes on a more humorous tone, with plenty of farce. The encounter with the “Patriot” who would like to see all cowards banged but who turns tail at the first sight of danger, leads to the meeting with F***y. She is rescued by Adams in proper picaresque-romance style with hero. Several odd characters are met on the way – such as the hunting squire – the squire who makes false promises. Then comes the abduction of F***y – and the reintroduction of something more serious.

We also have the interpolated stories, which belong to the picaresque tradition. In his use of this device, Fielding shows how far he has come from the picaresque school.

To conclude, Joseph Andrews has a rather rambling and discursive narrative, which makes us to believe that it is a picaresque novel. But, on the whole, it is not a picaresque novel rather the picaresque mode has helped him in the development of his comic theory – that of ridiculing the affectations of human beings.

07/03/2021

FEMINISM IN LITERATURE
🦋🍁🌹🌟👇
Overview

Feminism has gradually become more far-ranging and subtle in its attacks on male-dominated society. Many injustices still need to be corrected, but equally necessary is a more down-to-earth, tolerant and compassionate view of fellow human beings.

Introduction

Many feminists dislike theory. Sharp intellectual categories, argumentation, seeming objectivity, and the whole tradition they grow out of are just what feminists are seeking to escape. And if their reasoning seems unsystematic they can draw support from the psychoanalysis of Lacan and Julia Kristeva, from Derrida's deconstruction, and from Rorty's view that philosophy should model itself on an edifying conversation seeking rapprochement rather than no-holds-barred gladiatorial combat.

Androgynist Poetics

Critics, being generally male, had not generally concerned themselves with gender issues. Most of the world's great literature had been written by men. Sappho, Austen, the Brontës and Emily Dickinson apart, it was difficult to think women really had it in them to write at the highest level. Literature was literature, and critics saw no need to distinguish a specifically feminine way of writing or responding to a text.

Virginia Woolf was herself a refutation of that thesis, though her mental breakdown was perhaps brought on by the strain of balancing male self-realization with female abnegation. But in her essay Professions for Women, Woolf complained only that women's social obligations hindered a writing career. Their lives gave them a different perspective, but women were not fundamentally different from men in their psychological needs and outlooks.

Gynocriticism

The gathering feminist movement very much disagreed, and argued that women's writing expressed a distinctive female consciousness, which was more discursive and conjunctive than its male counterpart. Such consciousness was radically different, and had been adversely treated. Simone de Beauvoir in The Second S*x documented the ways "Legislators, priests, philosophers, writers and scientists have striven to show that the subordinate position of women is willed in heaven and advantageous on earth." Women had been made to feel that they were inferior by nature and, though men paid lip-service to equality, they would resist its implementation. Some men might be sympathetic to women's issues, but only women themselves knew what they felt and wanted.

And perhaps they always knew. The essays collected in Susan Cornillon's 1972 anthology Images of Women in Fiction all suggested that nineteenth and twentieth century fiction was simply untrue to women's experience. Rather than search for the essentially feminine, critics now turned to the social context of women's writing, to the ways a male-orientated society had formed or deformed individual novels, plays and poems written by women. Adventure and romance, whoever written for, seemed to stress the male competitive element, and even the submissive partner of gay literature only imitated the female stereotype.

Not all agreed, of course. Norman Mailer's The Prisoner of S*x: disliked the blanket criticism of Kate Millet's S*xual Politics, arguing its examples were too selective chosen.

Gynesis

Nonetheless, by the early eighties, feminists had advanced to a much more confrontational attack on male hegemony, advocating a complete overthrow of the biased (male) canon of literature. French feminists argued that women should write with a greater consciousness of their bodies, which would create a more honest and appropriate style of openness, fragmentation and non-linearity. Parallel studies in the visual arts stressed a feminine sensibility of soft fluid colours, an emphasis on the personal and decorative, and on forms that evoked the female genitalia.

And the problem lay deeper still, in the language itself. Words had been coined to express a male point of view, and that was indeed misogynist. Some 220 words exist in English for the s*xually promiscuous woman, but only 22 for promiscuous men. And in the s*xual matters that really concerned them, the vocabulary was hopelessly restricted. Discourse was power, said Foucault, and psychoanalysts like Lacan and Kristeva stressed the liberating role that literature should play, particularly to allow the semiotic flux of the unconscious in early childhood, i.e. before the symbolic world of public discourse imposed its male-favouring rules. Poets worked on the boundaries of the two realms, and Kristeva urged them to engender political and feminist revolutions by dissolving the conventions of normal discourse.

Gender Theory

Five years later the debate had moved on, from exclusively feminine concerns to the wider issues of gender in social and cultural contexts. Patriarchy and capitalism should be examined more closely, perhaps as Althusser had attempted, and sophisticated models built to integrate the larger web of economics, education, division of labour, biological constraints and cultural assumptions.

Michèle Barrett demanded facts, research. How does gender stereotyping arise in various social contexts? How are the canons of literary excellence actually established? What is the practical effect on literature? Shouldn't we remember that attitudes are struck within a fictional framework, and can't be simply pulled out and convicted by a kangaroo court of feminist morals?

Critique

Literature will often reflect the cultural assumptions and attitudes of its period, and that of course includes attitudes towards women: their status, their roles, their expectations. But a literature doctored of male-orientated views would be failing in its first requirement, to present a realistic or convincing picture of the world. Moralizing, which includes political correctness, has its dangers.
Feminists have argued for positive discrimination as the only way to correct centuries of bias. Nonetheless, the consensus emerging among black Americans is that positive discrimination is counter-productive. Disadvantaged minorities desperately need the odds levelled, but not patronizingly tilted in their favour.

Psychoanalysis has little scientific standing, and Lacanian theory is further disputed within the psychoanalytical community itself. Feminism does itself few favours by relying on these supports.
A more damaging criticism is the concept of the feminine itself.

Does it really exist? There are very real differences in the psychological make-up between the s*xes, but testing also indicates what anthropologists have long accepted: the expression of those differences is more determined by cultural factors than s*xuality per se. Feminists who argue for a more understanding, fluid, and delicate attitude are not so much advocating qualities native to women but for attitudes still repressed by society. That in turn suggests society itself needs exploring rather than s*x differences per se, which is indeed a view more recognized in contemporary feminist studies.

31/12/2020

Wordsworth on Metre 🍁🌸🌸🌸☘️💐💐💐👇

Wordsworth’s Defence of Metre: Its Weakness

The Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, says Garrod, "is quite as much a defence of the employment of metre in poetry as a protest against the use of poetic diction." Wordsworth does not consider metre as essential to poetry. He regards it as merely, ‘pleasure superadded’, but all the same he allows its use, while he rejects the use of poetic diction. He rejects poetic diction because it is artificial, capricious and lawless, and he allows the use of metre for metre obeys definite laws, and its use is sanctified by tradition and authority.

This defence of metre is the weakest part of the Preface. It has rightly been pointed out that if Poetic Diction is artificial, Metre is equally artificial, and should be rejected for the same reasons. His view, that metre has been used since limes immemorial and that its rules are fixed while the use of poetic diction is capricious and arbitrary, is not justified by literary history.

Reasons for the Defence

Wordsworth himself was conscious of the contradiction inherent in his attitude. Therefore, latter in the Preface he gives a more elaborate defence of metre. He points out that he himself has written in verse and not in prose, because in his poems, he has written of universal passions of men, of their most interesting occupations, and of the world of nature. He could have very well written of these subjects in prose, but he has preferred to write in verse, first, because the use of metre is an additional source of pleasure. It is pleasure, “superadded”. Secondly, in support of his defence of metre Wordsworth appeals to authority and tradition. He points out that people in all ages and countries have acknowledged the charm of metrical language, and in this respect he has simply followed tradition. Thirdly, it would not be correct to say that only a very small part of the poetic pleasure depends on metre, and that metre must be accompanied with an appropriate poetic diction if it is to impart full satisfaction. Such views underrate the power of metre to give pleasure. That metre in itself is a source of great pleasure is borne out by the fact that there are poems on more humbler subjects and more naked and simple in language than the poet's own compositions, which have continued to give pleasure from generation to generation. Therefore, the poet is justified in using metre and rejecting poetic diction.

Fourthly, the end of poetry is to produce emotional excitement, and excitement is an unusual stale of mind. In a state of excitement, ideas and feelings do not follow each other in the accustomed order. Sometimes, emotional excitement may be too excessive and some kind of restraint may become necessary. Metre has this restraining and tempering effect. Fifthly, Metre is something regular, and as the mind is accustomed to it, its use introduces an element of the regular and the usual which restrains and softens unusual menial states. The use of metre is indispensable when the more pathetic and painful situations have to be rendered. Metre has a distancing effect; it divests the language of its reality, and imparts to the description an unsubstantial, dreamlike quality. Hence the painful seems remote and so becomes more endurable. This view is borne out by many an old ballad, and by the most pathetic scenes in Shakespeare. Sixthly, the use of metre intermingles an element of pleasure with the painful, and so softens and mitigates it. Seventhly, the use of metre imparts passion to the words, and thus enables the poet to produce the necessary emotional excitement.

The use of metre is desirable, for some other reasons also. It is a general principle that the human mind receives pleasure from a perception of similarity in dissimilarity or of dissimilarity in similarity. It is this principle which is the basis of our pleasure in s*x, and it is for this very reason that we derive pleasure from simile and metaphor. It is this very principle which accounts for the pleasure of metre, for the use of metre provides this element of contrast. Metre is regular, while a poem has a number of other varied elements. However, we may point out that Wordsworth does not develop this point in detail, perhaps for reasons of space. The point was later elaborated by Coleridge in his Biographia Literaria.

Further, Wordsworth justifies the use of metre by referring to the process of poetic creation. We get his famous definition of poetry as, “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” and that, “it has its origin in emotions recollected in tranquility.” The earlier emotions are recollected and revived in moments of tranquility, but they are now purged of much that was accidental, temporary and disgusting. Thus the particular emotion is universalized. Such is the process of poetic creation, and it gives joy to the poet. When he communicates, he wants to convey his own joy to his readers, and metre helps him in this respect. The pathetic and painful emotions are tempered by the use of metre and the lighter emotions acquire an added ease and gracefulness. The use of metre gives the readers a sense of the skill of the poet in overcoming artistic difficulties and this in itself gives pleasure. Further, metre makes even ordinary, commonplace language of real life look different and unusual, and the contrast produces a feeling of delight.

It is for all these reasons that most people prefer verse to prose.

03/09/2020

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09/08/2020

Characteristics of modern novel🌎

1. Modern novel is remarkable for its popularity, variety and complexity.
2. Novels are being written practically on all possible themes and subjects.
3. A number of different trends are to be noticed.
4. The modern novel is realistic. It deals with all the facts of contemporary life, the pleasant as well as the unpleasant, the beautiful as well as the ugly, and does not present merely a one sided view of life. Life is presented with detached accurate, regardless of morals or ideological considerations. The sufferings of the poor, their misery and wretchedness, as well as good in them, their sense of social solidarity, their follow felling and sympathy, are realistically presented.
5 .The modern age is an era of disintegration and interrogation.
6. Old values have been discarded and they have not been replaced by new ones. Man is today caught between “two worlds, the one dying, the other seeking to be born”. The choice between capitalism and communism, science and religion. God and the Atom Bomb is a difficult one, and the result is that man is baffled and confused.
7. The modern novel presents realistically the doubts, and conflicts and frustrations of the modern worlds.
8. It is therefore, pessimistic in tone.
9. There is large scale criticism. Even condemnation of contemporary values and civilization, E.M. Forster is undisguised in his attack on the business mind, the worship of bigness in industrialized England of the post-war generations. Aldous Huxley analyses the disease of modern civilization and searches for a cure, and Conrad’s novel are all pessimistic and tragic.
10. The realism of the modern novel is nowhere seen to better advantage than in the treatment of s*x. The novel has entirely broken free from the Victorian inhibition of s*x.
There is a frank and free treatment of the problems of love, s*x and marriage.
11. The modern novel is neither merely an entertainment nor merely light story meant for after dinner reading. It has evolved as a serious art form.
It is very well constructed having nothing loose or rambling about it. As E. Albert points out, “Henry James Conard evolved techniques which revolutionized the form of the novel. Edwin Mure is right in pointing out that plot seems to have died out of the 20th century “Stream of consciousness novel”.
“The great modern novels like Ulysses are still stories but they are stories, without an ending and the characteristic modern novel is a story without an ending”.
12. The modern novel is like an incomplete sentence and “its incompleteness is a reflection of the incompleteness of a whole region of thought and belief”.
Under the influence of new psychological theories, life is not regarded as a continuous flow, but as a series of separate and successive moments.
The modern novel is predominantly psychological. Novelists like Henry James, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, have made the English novel extremely psychological in nature.
13. They revealed that human consciousness has very deep layers, and buried under the conscious, are the sub-conscious and the unconscious.

30/05/2020

100 Novels
for those who have Literature in their blood and Language in their brains.

1. The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan (1678)

A story of a man in search of truth told with the simple clarity and beauty of Bunyan’s prose make this the ultimate English classic.

2. Robinson Crusoeby Daniel Defoe (1719)

By the end of the 19th century, no book in English literary history had enjoyed more editions, spin-offs and translations. Crusoe’s world-famous novel is a complex literary work and it’s irresistible.

3. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift (1726)

A satirical masterpiece that’s never been out of print, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels comes third in our list of the best novels written in English

4. Clarissa by Samuel Richardson (1748)

Clarissa is a tragic heroine, pressured by her unscrupulous nouveau-riche family to marry a wealthy man she detests, in the book that Samuel Johnson described as “the first book in the world for the knowledge it displays of the human heart.”

5. Tom Jones by Henry Fielding (1749)

Tom Jones is a classic English novel that captures the spirit of its age and whose famous characters have come to represent Augustan society in all its loquacious, turbulent, comic variety.

6. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentlemanby Laurence Sterne (1759)

Laurence Sterne’s vivid novel caused delight and consternation when it first appeared and has lost little of its original bite.

7. Emma by Jane Austen (1816)

Jane Austen’s Emma is her masterpiece, mixing the sparkle of her early books with a deep sensibility.

8. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818)

Mary Shelley’s first novel has been hailed as a masterpiece of horror and the macabre.

9. Nightmare Abbeyby Thomas Love Peacock (1818)

The great pleasure of Nightmare Abbey, which was inspired by Thomas Love Peacock’s friendship with Shelley, lies in the delight the author takes in poking fun at the romantic movement.

10. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe (1838)

Edgar Allan Poe’s only novel – a classic adventure story with supernatural elements – has fascinated and influenced generations of writers.

11. Sybil by Benjamin Disraeli (1845)

The future prime minister displayed flashes of brilliance that equalled the greatest Victorian novelists.

A whirlwind success … Jane Eyre.

12. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (1847)

Charlotte Brontë’s erotic, gothic masterpiece became the sensation of Victorian England. Its great breakthrough was its intimate dialogue with the reader.

13. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (1847)

Emily Brontë’s windswept masterpiece is notable not just for its wild beauty but for its daring reinvention of the novel form itself.

14. Vanity Fair by William Thackeray (1848)

William Thackeray’s masterpiece, set in Regency England, is a bravura performance by a writer at the top of his game.

15. David Copperfieldby Charles Dickens (1850)

David Copperfield marked the point at which Dickens became the great entertainer and also laid the foundations for his later, darker masterpieces.

16. The Scarlet Letterby Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850)

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s astounding book is full of intense symbolism and as haunting as anything by Edgar Allan Poe.

17. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (1851)

Wise, funny and gripping, Melville’s epic work continues to cast a long shadow over American literature.

18. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1865)

Lewis Carroll’s brilliant nonsense tale is one of the most influential and best loved in the English canon.

19. The Moonstoneby Wilkie Collins (1868)

Wilkie Collins’s masterpiece, hailed by many as the greatest English detective novel, is a brilliant marriage of the sensational and the realistic.

20. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (1868-9)

Louisa May Alcott’s highly original tale aimed at a young female market has iconic status in America and never been out of print.

21. Middlemarch by George Eliot (1871-2)

This cathedral of words stands today as perhaps the greatest of the great Victorian fictions.

22. The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope (1875)

Inspired by the author’s fury at the corrupt state of England, and dismissed by critics at the time, The Way We Live Now is recognised as Trollope’s masterpiece.

23. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finnby Mark Twain (1884/5)

Mark Twain’s tale of a rebel boy and a runaway slave seeking liberation upon the waters of the Mississippi remains a defining classic of American literature.

24. Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)

A thrilling adventure story, gripping history and fascinating study of the Scottish character, Kidnapped has lost none of its power.

25. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome (1889)

Jerome K Jerome’s accidental classic about messing about on the Thames remains a comic gem.

26. The Sign of Fourby Arthur Conan Doyle (1890)

Sherlock Holmes’s second outing sees Conan Doyle’s brilliant sleuth – and his bluff sidekick Watson – come into their own.

Helmut Berger and Richard Todd in the 1970 adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray.

27. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1891)

Wilde’s brilliantly allusive moral tale of youth, beauty and corruption was greeted with howls of protest on publication.

28. New Grub Streetby George Gissing (1891)

George Gissing’s portrayal of the hard facts of a literary life remains as relevant today as it was in the late 19th century.

29. Jude the Obscureby Thomas Hardy (1895)

Hardy exposed his deepest feelings in this bleak, angry novel and, stung by the hostile response, he never wrote another.

30. The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane (1895)

Stephen Crane’s account of a young man’s passage to manhood through soldiery is a blueprint for the great American war novel.

31. Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897)

Bram Stoker’s classic vampire story was very much of its time but still resonates more than a century later.

32. Heart of Darknessby Joseph Conrad (1899)

Joseph Conrad’s masterpiece about a life-changing journey in search of Mr Kurtz has the simplicity of great myth.

33. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser (1900)

Theodore Dreiser was no stylist, but there’s a terrific momentum to his unflinching novel about a country girl’s American dream.

34. Kim by Rudyard Kipling (1901)

In Kipling’s classic boy’s own spy story, an orphan in British India must make a choice between east and west.

35. The Call of the Wild by Jack London (1903)

Jack London’s vivid adventures of a pet dog that goes back to nature reveal an extraordinary style and consummate storytelling.

36. The Golden Bowlby Henry James (1904)

American literature contains nothing else quite like Henry James’s amazing, labyrinthine and claustrophobic novel.

37. Hadrian the Seventh by Frederick Rolfe (1904)

This entertaining if contrived story of a hack writer and priest who becomes pope sheds vivid light on its eccentric author – described by DH Lawrence as a “man-demon”.

38. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (1908)

The evergreen tale from the riverbank and a powerful contribution to the mythology of Edwardian England.

39. The History of Mr Polly by HG Wells (1910)

The choice is great, but Wells’s ironic portrait of a man very like himself is the novel that stands out.

40. Zuleika Dobsonby Max Beerbohm (1911)

The passage of time has conferred a dark power upon Beerbohm’s ostensibly light and witty Edwardian satire.

41. The Good Soldierby Ford Madox Ford (1915)

Ford’s masterpiece is a searing study of moral dissolution behind the facade of an English gentleman – and its stylistic influence lingers to this day.

42. The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan (1915)

John Buchan’s espionage thriller, with its sparse, contemporary prose, is hard to put down.

43. The Rainbow by DH Lawrence (1915)

The Rainbow is perhaps DH Lawrence’s finest work, showing him for the radical, protean, thoroughly modern writer he was.

44. Of Human Bo***ge by W Somerset Maugham (1915)

Somerset Maugham’s semi-autobiographical novel shows the author’s savage honesty and gift for storytelling at their best.

45. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (1920)

The story of a blighted New York marriage stands as a fierce indictment of a society estranged from culture.

46. Ulysses by James Joyce (1922)

This portrait of a day in the lives of three Dubliners remains a towering work, in its word play surpassing even Shakespeare.

47. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis (1922)

What it lacks in structure and guile, this enthralling take on 20s America makes up for in vivid satire and characterisation.

48. A Passage to Indiaby EM Forster (1924)

EM Forster’s most successful work is eerily prescient on the subject of empire.

49. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos (1925)

A guilty pleasure it may be, but it is impossible to overlook the enduring influence of a tale that helped to define the jazz age.

50. Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (1925)

Woolf’s great novel makes a day of party preparations the canvas for themes of lost love, life choices and mental illness.

Carey Mulligan and Leonardo DiCaprio in The Great Gatsby’s film adaptation by Baz Luhrmann.

51. The Great Gatsbyby F Scott Fitzgerald (1925)

Fitzgerald’s jazz age masterpiece has become a tantalising metaphor for the eternal mystery of art.

52. Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner (1926)

A young woman escapes convention by becoming a witch in this original satire about England after the first world war.

53. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (1926)

Hemingway’s first and best novel makes an escape to 1920s Spain to explore courage, cowardice and manly authenticity.

54. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett (1929)

Dashiell Hammett’s crime thriller and its hard-boiled hero Sam Spade influenced everyone from Chandler to Le Carré.

55. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner (1930)

The influence of William Faulkner’s immersive tale of raw Mississippi rural life can be felt to this day.

56. Brave New Worldby Aldous Huxley (1932)

Aldous Huxley’s vision of a future human race controlled by global capitalism is every bit as prescient as Orwell’s more famous dystopia.

57. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (1932)

The book for which Gibbons is best remembered was a satire of late-Victorian pastoral fiction but went on to influence many subsequent generations.

58. Nineteen Nineteen by John Dos Passos (1932)

The middle volume of John Dos Passos’s USA trilogy is revolutionary in its intent, techniques and lasting impact.

59. Tropic of Cancerby Henry Miller (1934)

The US novelist’s debut revelled in a Paris underworld of seedy s*x and changed the course of the novel – though not without a fight with the censors.

60. Scoop by Evelyn Waugh (1938)

Evelyn Waugh’s Fleet Street satire remains sharp, pertinent and memorable.

61. Murphy by Samuel Beckett (1938)

Samuel Beckett’s first published novel is an absurdist masterpiece, a showcase for his uniquely comic voice.

Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall in The Big Sleep.

62. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler (1939)

Raymond Chandler’s hardboiled debut brings to life the seedy LA underworld – and Philip Marlowe, the archetypal fictional detective.

63. Party Going by Henry Green (1939)

Set on the eve of war, this neglected modernist masterpiece centres on a group of bright young revellers delayed by fog.

64. At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’Brien (1939)

Labyrinthine and multilayered, Flann O’Brien’s humorous debut is both a reflection on, and an exemplar of, the Irish novel.

65. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1939)

One of the greatest of great American novels, this study of a family torn apart by poverty and desperation in the Great Depression shocked US society.

66. Joy in the Morning by PG Wodehouse (1946)

PG Wodehouse’s elegiac Jeeves novel, written during his disastrous years in wartime Germany, remains his masterpiece.

67. All the King’s Menby Robert Penn Warren (1946)

A compelling story of personal and political corruption, set in the 1930s in the American south.

68. Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry (1947)

Malcolm Lowry’s masterpiece about the last hours of an alcoholic ex-diplomat in Mexico is set to the drumbeat of coming conflict.

69. The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen (1948)

Elizabeth Bowen’s 1948 novel perfectly captures the atmosphere of London during the blitz while providing brilliant insights into the human heart.

Richard Burton and John Hurt in Nineteen Eighty-four.

70. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (1949)

George Orwell’s dystopian classic cost its author dear but is arguably the best-known novel in English of the 20th century.

71. The End of the Affair by Graham Greene (1951)

Graham Greene’s moving tale of adultery and its aftermath ties together several vital strands in his work.

72. The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger (1951)

JD Salinger’s study of teenage rebellion remains one of the most controversial and best-loved American novels of the 20th century.

73. The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow (1953)

In the long-running hunt to identify thegreat American novel, Saul Bellow’s picaresque third book frequently hits the mark.

74. Lord of the Fliesby William Golding (1954)

Dismissed at first as “rubbish & dull”, Golding’s brilliantly observed dystopian desert island tale has since become a classic.

75. Lo**ta by Vladimir Nabokov (1955)

Nabokov’s tragicomic tour de force crosses the boundaries of good taste with glee.

76. On the Road by Jack Kerouac (1957)

The creative history of Kerouac’s beat-generation classic, fuelled by pea soup and benzedrine, has become as famous as the novel itself.

77. Voss by Patrick White (1957)

A love story set against the disappearance of an explorer in the outback, Voss paved the way for a generation of Australian writers to shrug off the colonial past.

78. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960)

Her second novel finally arrived this summer, but Harper Lee’s first did enough alone to secure her lasting fame, and remains a truly popular classic.

79. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (1960)

Short and bittersweet, Muriel Spark’s tale of the downfall of a Scottish schoolmistress is a masterpiece of narrative fiction.

80. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961)

This acerbic anti-war novel was slow to fire the public imagination, but is rightly regarded as a groundbreaking critique of military madness.

81. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing (1962)

Hailed as one of the key texts of the women’s movement of the 1960s, this study of a divorced single mother’s search for personal and political identity remains a defiant, ambitious tour de force.

Malcolm Macdowell in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange film.

82. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (1962)

Anthony Burgess’s dystopian classic still continues to startle and provoke, refusing to be outshone by Stanley Kubrick’s brilliant film adaptation.

83. A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood (1964)

Christopher Isherwood’s story of a gay Englishman struggling with bereavement in LA is a work of compressed brilliance.

84. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (1966)

Truman Capote’s non-fiction novel, a true story of bloody murder in rural Kansas, opens a window on the dark underbelly of postwar America.

85. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (1966)

Sylvia Plath’s painfully graphic roman à clef, in which a woman struggles with her identity in the face of social pressure, is a key text of Anglo-American feminism.

86. Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth (1969)

This wickedly funny novel about a young Jewish American’s obsession with ma********on caused outrage on publication, but remains his most dazzling work.

87. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor (1971)

Elizabeth Taylor’s exquisitely drawn character study of eccentricity in old age is a sharp and witty portrait of genteel postwar English life facing the changes taking shape in the 60s.

88. Rabbit Redux by John Updike (1971)

Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, Updike’s lovably mediocre alter ego, is one of America’s great literary protoganists, up there with Huck Finn and Jay Gatsby.

89. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison (1977)

The novel with which the Nobel prize-winning author established her name is a kaleidoscopic evocation of the African-American experience in the 20th century.

90. A Bend in the River by VS Naipaul (1979)

VS Naipaul’s hellish vision of an African nation’s path to independence saw him accused of racism, but remains his masterpiece.

91. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie (1981)

The personal and the historical merge in Salman Rushdie’s dazzling, game-changing Indian English novel of a young man born at the very moment of Indian independence.

92. Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson (1981)

Marilynne Robinson’s tale of orphaned sisters and their oddball aunt in a remote Idaho town is admired by everyone from Barack Obama to Bret Easton Ellis.

Nick Frost as John Self Martin Amis’s Money.

93. Money: A Su***de Note by Martin Amis (1984)

Martin Amis’s era-defining ode to excess unleashed one of literature’s greatest modern monsters in self-destructive antihero John Self.

94. An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro (1986)

Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel about a retired artist in postwar Japan, reflecting on his career during the country’s dark years, is a tour de force of unreliable narration.

95. The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald (1988)

Fitzgerald’s story, set in Russia just before the Bolshevik revolution, is her masterpiece: a brilliant miniature whose peculiar magic almost defies analysis.

96. Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler (1988)

Anne Tyler’s portrayal of a middle-aged, mid-American marriage displays her narrative clarity, comic timing and ear for American speech to perfection.

97. Amongst Womenby John McGahern (1990)

This modern Irish masterpiece is both a study of the fault of Irish patriarchy and an elegy for a lost world.

98. Underworld by Don DeLillo (1997)

A writer of “frightening perception”, Don DeLillo guides the reader in an epic journey through America’s history and popular culture.

99. Disgrace by JM Coetzee (1999)

In his Booker-winning masterpiece, Coetzee’s intensely human vision infuses a fictional world that both invites and confounds political interpretation.

100. True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey (2000)