Whose the most horrible character in any book you've read?

Another one for Angel St Clare. Wanker.

Didn't really like anyone from 'Wuthering Heights' either.

All of the men in a Marilyn French novel. So one dimensional and stereotyped.

Product of her time I guess but so depressing now. I devoured The Woman's Room and Her Mother's Daughter when I was in my early twenties now I just toss it aside and think yah da yah been done to death.

Though I guess she was one of the first to write about motherhood etc etc now it seems dated and tired...............not all men are bastards.

Lots that others have said but also Jonas Chuzzlewit in Martin Chuzzlewitt I think is very evil.

Pennywise the clown from IT by Stephen King

Horrors

Another vote for Alec D'Urberville. Poor Tess.

Lavinia and Miss Minchin from "A Little Princess". Spiteful pair.

The psycho boyfriend in "Into the Darkest Corner".

I was sympathetic to some of the characters in The Slap the second time I read it. But I also hated some of them even more than I did the first time.

Cyb - I agree about The Slap. Pretty much all the male characters and some of the female ones are awful - put me right off the book, in fact!

The baddy in Tiger Hills who kills the squirrel.

Harry in the slap
thingy's husband in middlemarch
and marina husband in emily (the 70s jilly cooper romance)

btw had a mammoth crush on holden caulfield when i first read the book, see if he came to see me after the end of his new york w/e i would listen, understand and make him laugh, we would then snuggle in bed together reading milton (was a very very nerdy 13 year old)

Golyadkin in Dostoyevsky's 'The Double' - constantly wanted to kick his ass

at God from Genesis

Cathy Bates from Misery by Stephen King.

Lisbeth's rapist guardian in the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
Angel Clare, Dolores Umbrage and Bill Sykes.
Can I nominate God from Genesis?

Tom Tulliver and the GLEGGS!
If we're talking Jane Eyre, there are loads more - Miss Scathcherd, that man who comes to talk to her at Gateshead and then turns up at Lowood... Brocklehurst!

Becky Sharp is fantastic. Sly and manipulative but real - bridling at the injustive of the limitations of her birth and sex. Amelia Sedley, however, was a complete drip.

Lequeen Mr Rochester could have buried his wife in a victorian lunatic asylum (she was mad rather than just colourful or over-excited or exotic, although the brilliant Wide Sargasso Sea is more sympathetic) rather than lock her in her well appointed tower with Grace Poole. And how can you say Jane Eyre is "muted, demure and prissy"? She burns with desire and intelligence and strength. The bit in the book where she considers going to live with him in his villa by the sea. It's thick with sexual tension. You just know that Jane, for all her drab, quiet appearance, was all fire. I'd bet Rochesters riding breeches that they had some mind-blowing sex!

Oh and Tom Tulliver gets my vote too. I wanted to both burn the book and smash his face in.

I thought Mrs Danvers was evil. I don't think Lydia from P & P was that bad. Never liked Mr Rochester. That inspector from Harry Potter. She was funny but horrible. Can't remember her name.

I forgot, Andy the robot from Stephen King's Wolves of the Calla. If robots can be evil, this one is.

I agree with Rochester - a hideous character dressed up as a brooding romantic hero.

Mrs Coulter is a brilliantly wicked character, but so well written because of her ambiguous love for Lyra, and does she redeem herself in the end?

I like the fact that the main villain in those books is God aka The Authority.

Mr Collins and Lydia are not wicked, just funny. And Becky Sharp is a heroine in my eyes.

I have to disagree with the OP - think Hilly was the most one dimensional character in a very poor book in general. The author had a really good idea but lost it imo. Contrived crap.

And I know Patrick Bateman is the obvious one of Bret Easton Ellis's characters but what about Rip (I think) from Less Than Zero? Didn't he drug an eleven year old girl and tie her to a bed for his friends to rape while he dealt drugs in the other room?

Frederick Clegg in John Fowles The Collector. Pure Evil in such a quiet way. I love that book.

Patrick Hockstetter in IT by Stephen King. Murderer and animal torturer/killer, the scene at the dump makes me feel ill and makes me cry every time I read it.

William and Regan Hamleigh in The Pillars of the Earth and then the other one, Ralph in the follow up Worlds Without End.

Some characters, serial killers etc, are obviously dislikable but I think sometimes it's the quiet, sneaky ones that really leave me cold.

I really liked Eva in Kevin but I hated her husband and was actually quite glad when Kevin did for him.

I was gonna say patrick bateman too. That book is awesome but my brain will be scarred for life. Lol.

Abbot Enomoto in tHe thousand Autumns of Jacob de Moet - bastard

Bryony in Atonement is "the most horrible character in any book you've read"?

I take it you have never read books about serial killers