Greatest novel ever written

[JoonT]

What would be your contender for greatest novel ever written? And why? I don't mean your favourite novel. And I don't mean the novel that cheers you up or comforts you, etc. I mean the novel you consider the best.

There are so many classics I've never read it's embarrassing. For example, I've never read Wuthering Heights, Bleak House, Middlemarch, Emma, Robinson Crusoe, Mrs Dalloway, 1984, Brideshead Revisited, Moby Dick, Catch 22, Madame Bovary, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, (I could go on and on). But based on the novels I have read, my vote would go to Dickens' David Copperfield. Pride and Prejudice, Kipling's Kim, Sons and Lovers, The Great Gatsby, etc, would fight it out for second place.

Plenty of novels have given me as much pleasure (Wodehouse's Right Ho Jeeves, for example), but nothing else seems so universal. D.H. Lawrence described the novel as "the bright book of life," and that's a perfect description of David Copperfield. Everything is there, the whole range of human experience. It opens with a beautiful description of childhood, and the way it becomes a lost paradise, and then covers pretty much every human experience, from the death of a parent to the infatuation of sexual love (and the disillusion that follows).

It also contains more characters than any novel I have ever read. And they are so vivid and real. I doubt there is any novel out there (with the possible exceptions of War and Peace and Proust's A La Recherche, neither of which I have read) with so many people and so many voices: Uriah Heep, Mr Micawber, Aunt Betsy, Mr Dick, Steerforth, Peggotty. Amazing. Most novelists can't create one memorable character. Dickens creates at least six in this novel alone.

I also admire the heart of the novel. Dickens rejects moral relativism, and re-affirms what we all, deep down, know is true – that kindness, loyalty, love, courage, dignity, etc, are good, and cruelty, bullying, sadism, betrayal, cowardice, etc, are bad.

[HelloWorldMessage]

I am also a huge fan of Charles Dickens. His characterisation is wonderful. I've read Great Expectations numerous times and watched the various films over the years too.

Greatest novel ever is very difficult to answer. What immediately springs to mind for me is, "The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists" and "Animal Farm" due to their thought provoking social commentary.

As an educator I'm interested in learning and intelligence and have have enjoyed re-reading Flowers for Algernon over the years.

I read "Five People You Meet In Heaven" one evening (well into the early hours!) as it had me completely gripped. A really interesting look at how our lives impact on others.

[Allthegoodnamesarechosen]

I’m not sure this is a race with a winner. ‘Greatest’ …but in what way?
To whittle down to ten would be hard….. but in no particular order
Pride and Prejudice
Little Dorritt
The Left Hand of Darkness
Tale of Two Cities
I Claudius / Claudius the God. ( because this is really one story)
The Last of the Wine
Mansfield Park
Nana
Our Mutual Friend

but the tenth place goes to all the not ‘ great’ novels which are sources of comfort and inspiration, and intrigue , and excitement : the glorious works of imagination

So thank you Terry Pratchett, Norah Lofts , Bernard Cornwall, AgathaChristie, Mary Gaskell, Penelope Fitzgerald, Margaret Drabble, Tolkien, Lewis….

and I know what you mean about Kim, Op. Time to read that again.

[JaneyGee]

Interesting question. Obviously it's impossible to say – literally impossible. But it's fun to try.

I'd go for Middlemarch, with D H Lawrence's Women in Love in second place and Pride and Prejudice in third. Howard Jacobson thinks Women in Love and Ulysses are the best novels of the 20th-century (in English). Nabokov would have gone for Kafka's Trial or Proust's A La Recherche. He also thought Dickens' Bleak House was up there.

Those are not my favourite novels, btw. If I was choosing the books that have given me most joy and pleasure, it would be P G Wodehouse's Jeeves novels, Brideshead Revisited, Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, etc. But to be the greatest, you need a certain breadth and depth that they lack. Actually, Anthony Burgess' Earthly Powers and Aldous Huxley's Point Counter Point are also novels with enormous range and depth. But greatest ever...no, I don't think so. Powell's Dance to the Music of Time (if you think of it as one novel)? Maybe. Hmmm...no, I'll stick with Middlemarch. To be greatest ever, you need to combine three things: beautiful prose, a vast range of characters, and a profound comment on what it means to be alive. George Eliot achieves all of that.

Of course, I don't read any other languages. A Frenchman would go for Proust and a Russian would choose War and Peace.

[Highdaysandholidays1]

I would probably go with Middlemarch in the absence of anything else, it's epic and less flawed than most!

[CriticalAlert]

I'd say the greatest novel ever written is Ulysses, it's just so damned clever....but inaccessible. I studied it at university so had help.

[JaneyGee]

@CriticalAlert

I'd say the greatest novel ever written is Ulysses, it's just so damned clever....but inaccessible. I studied it at university so had help.

Maybe. But there is a strange lack of heart or warmth to Ulysses. Joyce writes superbly, of course, and the novel is tender and humane and life-affirming...but, somehow, cold. With Dickens, George Eliot, Henry Fielding, etc, you feel the author is in on the novel, crying and laughing and celebrating alongside the characters.

[Time40]

1984 - because the subject matter is so profoundly important.

[LuckOfTheDrawer]

I also think 1984.

[CurlewKate]

Sense and Sensibility
The Mask of Apollo.
Maybe Madame Bovary?

[Aaron95]

@Time40

1984 - because the subject matter is so profoundly important.

1984 is probably the most influential novel. Many of the ideas and phrases have become everyday parlance. But I would struggle to say it's the greatest. It's quite boring in places.

[Redebs]

I love Orwell, but I think Dostoevsky's Crimeand Punishment is a Great

[Time40]

Crime and Punishment is truly great novel.

[AnuSTart]

Oh Crime and Punishment is a great call. One of the books where my feelings of dread were really physical while reading.

I have to say Ulysses. When I finally read it, I then read it annually for a few years.
That said I do understand the comment that it is cold though is never really seen that until I just read it here!

There are just too many amazing and life changing beautiful books to even refine a list!

[HappydaysArehere]

When I was at school I asked this question of our English Lit teacher. She responded and said this was a difficult question but said if pushed she would have to say War and Peace. I asked my father if I could have this for a Christmas present. The edition is (I still have it) in three volumes and therefore easy to read as around 250 plus pages per book. I was 13 at the time and read it throughout the Christmas school holiday. I loved it and since then I have reread it several times through the years.I am in my eighties now and would still recommend it as a wonderful book. After my first reading being 13 and a typical teenager I thought that as it was the greatest book in the world I was only going to be disappointed with future books. Thank goodness for another book I received that Christmas - Gone With The Wind- Loved that as well.

[Gagagagagaga]

Jane Eyre and David Copperfield

[Midnightrunners]

Three men in a Boat, no question.

[TrtseHkpr]

@Midnightrunners

Three men in a Boat, no question.

Definitely!

[KohlaParasaurus]

The Brothers Karamazov, with Les Misérables and The Daisy Chain as runners-up. All extensive, dense novels with multiple threads and multiple well-drawn characters that left me feeling sad when they came to a close because I wanted to keep reading.

[Charlingspont]

Watership Down.

[coastalhawk]

The colour purple

[PermanentTemporary]

When I finally read War and Peace it was an extraordinary experience. Like living in a film.

I also love Bleak House. The depth and warmth of it.

[FestiveAuntFanny]

In no particular order...

Ulysses
Middlemarch
Anna Karenina (just pipping War and Peace)
Clarissa

All the big ones! All re-readable a thousand times.

I think I probably have about a hundred great-but-not-greatest books but that's a different list!

[CorneliaStreet]

Middlemarch, closely followed by Great Expectations. The scope and characterisation of Middlemarch is so brilliant it’s almost unbelievable.

[Chrysanthemum5]

To kill a mockingbird. I read it as an 11 year old and I can still remember the realisation that not everyone's life was like my own. That not everyone was growing up in a working class family in Scotland in the 1970s.

It was the book that showed me the power of brilliant writing to give you an entry to another world