List :: 100 Greatest Novels of All Time by The Guardian

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  #11

  Nightmare Abbey

  by Thomas Love Peacock

  (4 Reviews)

  Overall Rank: 227

  90 points

  "Nightmare Abbey, a venerable family-mansion, in a highly picturesque state of semi-dilapidation, pleasantly situated on a strip of dry land between the sea and the fens, at the verge of the county..."

  

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  #12

  The Black Sheep

  by Honoré de Balzac

  (2 Reviews)

  Overall Rank: 232

  89 points

  "In the year 1792 the townsfolk of Issoudun were fortunate enough to have a doctor of the name of Rouget, who had the reputation of being an extremely wily man."

  

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  #13

  The Charterhouse of Parma

  by Stendhal

  (2 Reviews)

  Overall Rank: 237

  88 points

  "Le 15 mai 1796, le général Bonaparte fit son entrée dans Milan à la tête de cette jeune armée qui venait de passer le pont de Lodi, et d'apprendre au monde qu'après tant de siècles César et..."

  

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  #14

  The Count of Monte Cristo

  by Alexandre Dumas

  (15 Reviews)

  Overall Rank: 107

  180 points

  "On February 24, 1815, the watchtower at Marseilles signaled the arrival of the three-master Pharaon, coming from Smyrna, Trieste and Naples."

  

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  #15

  Sybil

  by Benjamin Disraeli

  (2 Reviews)

  Overall Rank: 245

  86 points

  "'I'll take the odds against Caravan.'"

  

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  #16

  David Copperfield

  by Charles Dickens

  (14 Reviews)

  Overall Rank: 55

  309 points

  "Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I..."

  

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  #17

  Wuthering Heights

  by Emily Brontë

  (32 Reviews)

  Overall Rank: 26

  417 points

  

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  #18

  Jane Eyre

  by Charlotte Brontë

  (35 Reviews)

  Overall Rank: 17

  562 points

  "There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined..."

  

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  #19

  Vanity Fair

  by William Makepeace Thackeray

  (8 Reviews)

  Overall Rank: 105

  181 points

  "While the present century was in its teens, and on one sun-shiny morning in June, there drove up to the great iron gate of Miss Pinkerton's academy for young ladies, on Chiswick Mall, a large..."

  

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  #20

  The Scarlet Letter

  by Nathaniel Hawthorne

  (19 Reviews)

  Overall Rank: 100

  187 points

  "A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments and gray, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods, and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the..."

  

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