The Modern Library's 100 Best Novels - The Board's List (1998)
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| Rank | Title | Author | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ulysses | James Joyce | 1922 |
| 2 | The Great Gatsby | F. Scott Fitzgerald | 1925 |
| 3 | A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man | James Joyce | 1916 |
| 4 | Lolita | Vladimir Nabokov | 1955 |
| 5 | Brave New World | Aldous Huxley | 1932 |
| 6 | The Sound and the Fury | William Faulkner | 1929 |
| 7 | Catch-22 | Joseph Heller | 1961 |
| 8 | Darkness at Noon | Arthur Koestler | 1940 |
| 9 | Sons and Lovers | D. H. Lawrence | 1913 |
| 10 | The Grapes of Wrath | John Steinbeck | 1939 |
| 11 | Under the Volcano | Malcolm Lowry | 1947 |
| 12 | The Way of All Flesh | Samuel Butler | 1903 |
| 13 | Nineteen Eighty-Four | George Orwell | 1949 |
| 14 | I, Claudius | Robert Graves | 1934 |
| 15 | To the Lighthouse | Virginia Woolf | 1927 |
| 16 | An American Tragedy | Theodore Dreiser | 1925 |
| 17 | The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter | Carson McCullers | 1940 |
| 18 | Slaughterhouse-Five | Kurt Vonnegut | 1969 |
| 19 | Invisible Man | Ralph Ellison | 1952 |
| 20 | Native Son | Richard Wright | 1940 |
| 21 | Henderson the Rain King | Saul Bellow | 1959 |
| 22 | Appointment in Samarra | John O'Hara | 1934 |
| 23 | U.S.A. Trilogy | 1938 | |
| The 42nd Parallel | John Dos Passos | 1930 | |
| 1919 | John Dos Passos | 1932 | |
| The Big Money | John Dos Passos | 1936 | |
| 24 | Winesburg, Ohio | Sherwood Anderson | 1919 |
| 25 | A Passage to India | E.M. Forster | 1924 |
| 26 | The Wings of the Dove | Henry James | 1902 |
| 27 | The Ambassadors | Henry James | 1903 |
| 28 | Tender Is the Night | F. Scott Fitzgerald | 1934 |
| 29 | The Studs Lonigan Trilogy | ||
| Young Lonigan | James T. Farrell | 1932 | |
| The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan | James T. Farrell | 1934 | |
| Judgment Day | James T. Farrell | 1935 | |
| 30 | The Good Soldier | Ford Madox Ford | 1915 |
| 31 | Animal Farm | George Orwell | 1945 |
| 32 | The Golden Bowl | Henry James | 1904 |
| 33 | Sister Carrie | Theodore Dreiser | 1900 |
| 34 | A Handful of Dust | Evelyn Waugh | 1934 |
| 35 | As I Lay Dying | William Faulkner | 1930 |
| 36 | All the King's Men | Robert Penn Warren | 1946 |
| 37 | The Bridge of San Luis Rey | Thornton Wilder | 1927 |
| 38 | Howards End | E.M. Forster | 1910 |
| 39 | Go Tell It on the Mountain | James Baldwin | 1953 |
| 40 | The Heart of the Matter | Graham Greene | 1948 |
| 41 | Lord of the Flies | William Golding | 1954 |
| 42 | Deliverance | James Dickey | 1970 |
| 43 | A Dance to the Music of Time | ||
| A Question of Upbringing | Anthony Powell | 1951 | |
| A Buyer's Market | Anthony Powell | 1952 | |
| The Acceptance World | Anthony Powell | 1955 | |
| At Lady Molly's | Anthony Powell | 1957 | |
| Casanova's Chinese Restaurant | Anthony Powell | 1960 | |
| The Kindly Ones | Anthony Powell | 1962 | |
| The Valley of Bones | Anthony Powell | 1964 | |
| The Soldier's Art | Anthony Powell | 1966 | |
| The Military Philosophers | Anthony Powell | 1968 | |
| Books Do Furnish a Room | Anthony Powell | 1971 | |
| Temporary Kings | Anthony Powell | 1973 | |
| Hearing Secret Harmonies | Anthony Powell | 1975 | |
| 44 | Point Counter Point | Aldous Huxley | 1928 |
| 45 | The Sun Also Rises | Ernest Hemingway | 1926 |
| 46 | The Secret Agent | Joseph Conrad | 1907 |
| 47 | Nostromo | Joseph Conrad | 1904 |
| 48 | The Rainbow | D. H. Lawrence | 1915 |
| 49 | Women in Love | D. H. Lawrence | 1920 |
| 50 | Tropic of Cancer | Henry Miller | 1934 |
| 51 | The Naked and the Dead | Norman Mailer | 1948 |
| 52 | Portnoy's Complaint | Philip Roth | 1969 |
| 53 | Pale Fire | Vladimir Nabokov | 1962 |
| 54 | Light in August | William Faulkner | 1932 |
| 55 | On the Road | Jack Kerouac | 1957 |
| 56 | The Maltese Falcon | Dashiell Hammett | 1930 |
| 57 | Parade's End | ||
| Some Do Not... | Ford Madox Ford | 1924 | |
| No More Parades | Ford Madox Ford | 1925 | |
| A Man Could Stand Up | Ford Madox Ford | 1926 | |
| The Last Post | Ford Madox Ford | 1928 | |
| 58 | The Age of Innocence | Edith Wharton | 1920 |
| 59 | Zuleika Dobson | Max Beerbohm | 1911 |
| 60 | The Moviegoer | Walker Percy | 1961 |
| 61 | Death Comes for the Archbishop | Willa Cather | 1927 |
| 62 | From Here to Eternity | James Jones | 1951 |
| 63 | The Wapshot Chronicle | John Cheever | 1957 |
| 64 | The Catcher in the Rye | J.D. Salinger | 1951 |
| 65 | A Clockwork Orange | Anthony Burgess | 1962 |
| 66 | Of Human Bondage | William Somerset Maugham | 1915 |
| 67 | Heart of Darkness | Joseph Conrad | 1899 |
| 68 | Main Street | Sinclair Lewis | 1920 |
| 69 | The House of Mirth | Edith Wharton | 1905 |
| 70 | The Alexandria Quartet | ||
| Justine | Lawrence Durrell | 1957 | |
| Balthazar | Lawrence Durrell | 1958 | |
| Mountolive | Lawrence Durrell | 1958 | |
| Clea | Lawrence Durrell | 1960 | |
| 71 | A High Wind in Jamaica | Richard Hughes | 1929 |
| 72 | A House for Mr. Biswas | V. S. Naipaul | 1961 |
| 73 | The Day of the Locust | Nathanael West | 1939 |
| 74 | A Farewell to Arms | Ernest Hemingway | 1929 |
| 75 | Scoop | Evelyn Waugh | 1938 |
| 76 | The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie | Muriel Spark | 1961 |
| 77 | Finnegans Wake | James Joyce | 1939 |
| 78 | Kim | Rudyard Kipling | 1901 |
| 79 | A Room with a View | E.M. Forster | 1908 |
| 80 | Brideshead Revisited | Evelyn Waugh | 1945 |
| 81 | The Adventures of Augie March | Saul Bellow | 1953 |
| 82 | Angle of Repose | Wallace Stegner | 1971 |
| 83 | A Bend in the River | V. S. Naipaul | 1979 |
| 84 | The Death of the Heart | Elizabeth Bowen | 1939 |
| 85 | Lord Jim | Joseph Conrad | 1900 |
| 86 | Ragtime | E. L. Doctorow | 1975 |
| 87 | The Old Wives' Tale | Arnold Bennett | 1908 |
| 88 | The Call of the Wild | Jack London | 1903 |
| 89 | Loving | Henry Green | 1945 |
| 90 | Midnight's Children | Salman Rushdie | 1981 |
| 91 | Tobacco Road | Erskine Caldwell | 1932 |
| 92 | Ironweed | William Kennedy | 1983 |
| 93 | The Magus | John Fowles | 1966 |
| 94 | Wide Sargasso Sea | Jean Rhys | 1966 |
| 95 | Under the Net | Iris Murdoch | 1954 |
| 96 | Sophie's Choice | William Styron | 1979 |
| 97 | The Sheltering Sky | Paul Bowles | 1949 |
| 98 | The Postman Always Rings Twice | James M. Cain | 1934 |
| 99 | The Ginger Man | J. P. Donleavy | 1955 |
| 100 | The Magnificent Ambersons | Booth Tarkington | 1918 |
