0002: The 12 Greatest Pre-20th Century Novelists
- Francois Rabelais (Pantagruel and Gargantua, Thomas Urquhart and Pierre Motteux)
- Jonathan Swift (Gulliver' Travels)
- Voltaire (Candide)
- Jane Austen (Sense and Sensibility)
- Stendhal (The Red and the Black, Margaret Shaw [Sometimes titled Scarlet and Black])
- Honore de Balzac (Old Goriot)
- Nikolay Gogol (Dead Souls)
- Charles Dickens (Great Expectations)
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Crime and Punishment)
- Gustave Flaubert (Madame Bovary, Francis Steegmuller)
- Leo Tolstoy (War and Peace)
- Henry James (The Portrait of a Lady)
I've tried to put these into order by birth date. Some people, in between arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of the pin, may well wish to remind me that Candide and a few other works alluded to above are not technically novels. Don't bother. I consider them novels, and this is my list. :)
I've included a novel with each author, followed by my favorite translation (when I can remember; I'm at work and will have to check on a few later at home). The novel suggested is not necessarily my favorite, but the one I think it would be best to start with. (For example, my favorite James novel is probably The Golden Bowl, but the suggested novel is also excellent and much more accessible.).
I may do a follow-up list soon with some runner ups.
lbangs, maybe this would be too difficult to do, but if you had to recommend one novel by each author, what would it be?
excellent question, buber. i am also curious about that. please satisfy our curiosity, mr.bangs. thanks!
I was thinking the guy who wrote Tom Jones Was that Henry James? Also, it's good to see Tolstoy on here. Could be the greatest author ever.
Henry Fielding wrote Tome Jones, and Mr. Fielding will likely be on my runner-ups list, whenever I get around to that...
Tolstoy is incredible.
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
Thanks, all. I'll think about which novels to recommend, and hopefully, I'll post these some time before Tuesday (this will require a little thought!).
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
I think Sterne, on the basis of Tristram Shandy, one of the most hilarious proto-post-modern (is that a term?) novels written, should be included. What thinks you, lbangs?
And I may be entering hair-splitting territory, but in light of someone like Rabelais, whose works came along several hundred years before the novel was considered a Western genre, what criteria do you use in determining whether a fictional prose work is a novel or something else (romance, satire, etc.)?
Johnny Waco
I can't deny his creativity or his style, but I had trouble putting any author up here whose best book I can only really enjoy in bits and pieces. In fact, I still haven't made it all the way through Shandy yet; I keep skipping around to all the good parts.
Good suggestion, though. Maybe when I actually read the entire thing one day, I will change my mind.
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
Hey, you need to answer my criteria question! Very relevant to this list, I think...
I was getting to it as you wrote! :) See below.
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
As to your question concerning my definition of a novel, I'm rather liberal. Basically, any lengthy, fictional prose work tends to pass over my bar. Sloppy, I know, but I truly don't see a great deal of use in segregating works such as Rabelais' or DeFoe's from those of later novels, as many do. DeFoe's Robinson Crusoe doesn't strike me as any less of a novel than Richardson's Clarissa does, and yet most academics sift the two into different bins.
It's a personal thing, no doubt.
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
I certainly don't have problem with that kind of inclusive definition; for many purposes it frees discussions and keeps them from focusing on details instead of "the big picture." However, in other contexts (understanding the history of lit, influence studies, etc) I think narrower definitions are justified. Basically, I was just curious as to what your own personal criteria were once you asked people not to bother nitpicking. Later...
Johnny Waco
I certainly can understand the usefulness of various division when investigating or studying the history of literature or tracing influences by racking the development of genre, for example. This benefits, however, usually cease when I simply sit down to enjoy the literature, and that's the main reason I ignored them for this list, which I certainly wished to be rather inclusive. Perhaps I should have noted that my above comment was mostly in the context of this particular list (and my personal reading).
Thanks for the comments.
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
Have you ever read Thackeray? I haven't read beyond Vanity Fair yet, but that novel is excellent.
Also did you consider George Eliot? I'm just beginning to read her, Middlemarch, but judging by this book, she was an amazing creator of characters and had a great deal of ability as a satirist.
I considered both. George Eliot will surely make my runner-up list. I'm not sure about Thackeray; Vanity Fair certainly makes a good case for the author, but I'm not sure that the rest of his work supports his appearance here.
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs