Greatest Work of British Literature (novel)

[saxitoxin]

1984 (George Orwell)
7
27%

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll)
1
4%

Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
1
4%

Brideshead Revisited (Evelyn Waugh)
0
No votes

Clockwork Orange, A (Anthony Burgess)
2
8%

Frankenstein (Mary Shelley)
2
8%

Great Expectations (Charles Dickens)
2
8%

Gulliver's Travels (Jonathan Swift)
1
4%

Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë)
0
No votes

Kidnapped (Robert Louis Stevenson)
0
No votes

Kim (Rudyard Kipling)
0
No votes

Lord of the Flies (William Golding)
3
12%

Middlemarch (George Eliot)
0
No votes

Rainbow, The (D.H. Lawrence)
0
No votes

Robinson Crusoe (Daniel Defoe)
3
12%

Sign of Four, The (Arthur Conan Doyle)
0
No votes

Other (write-in)
4
15%

[saxitoxin]

everything with less than 2 votes has been eliminated - vote again

[WingCmdr Ginkapo]

Too late to add Hitchhikers Guide then?

[jonesthecurl]

No Chaucer? No Wodehouse? No Wyndam? No Austen? No Fielding? etc etc etc

[PLAYER57832]

No Chaucer? No Wodehouse? No Wyndam? No Austen? No Fielding? etc etc etc

Chaucer was not a novel, and was not written in English.. not as we know it. Wan the Avril.....

Per the rest.. There were at least 2 nominations for Tolkien that were ignored, so not surprising othe.

[Dukasaur]

No Chaucer? No Wodehouse? No Wyndam? No Austen? No Fielding? etc etc etc

Chaucer was not a novel, and was not written in English.. not as we know it. Wan the Avril.....

Per the rest.. There were at least 2 nominations for Tolkien that were ignored, so not surprising othe.

I disagree.

First, about not being a novel: Canterbury Tales would qualify as a novel by the modern definition. (an extended fictional work in prose; usually in the form of a story). It's a frame-tale, which perhaps would not satisfy the stricter 19th century definition of a novel, which is all one plot, but the looser modern definition allows multiple plots.

Second, about being English. Well, Chaucer used Middle English, not Modern English, that is technically true. Still, it was a relatively late form of Middle English, and much closer to Modern English than to Old English. We did read part of the Canterbury Tales in high school (in the original) and it is possible (albeit difficult) for a speaker of Modern English to read.

Overall, it's a fun group of stories.

[Symmetry]

No Chaucer? No Wodehouse? No Wyndam? No Austen? No Fielding? etc etc etc

Chaucer was not a novel, and was not written in English.. not as we know it. Wan the Avril.....

Per the rest.. There were at least 2 nominations for Tolkien that were ignored, so not surprising othe.

I disagree.

First, about not being a novel: Canterbury Tales would qualify as a novel by the modern definition. (an extended fictional work in prose; usually in the form of a story). It's a frame-tale, which perhaps would not satisfy the stricter 19th century definition of a novel, which is all one plot, but the looser modern definition allows multiple plots.

Second, about being English. Well, Chaucer used Middle English, not Modern English, that is technically true. Still, it was a relatively late form of Middle English, and much closer to Modern English than to Old English. We did read part of the Canterbury Tales in high school (in the original) and it is possible (albeit difficult) for a speaker of Modern English to read.

Overall, it's a fun group of stories.

I understand what you're getting at with this, but the Canterbury Tales are not in prose, they're poetry.

[WingCmdr Ginkapo]

Is that also why no Shakespear appears?

[Symmetry]

Is that also why no Shakespear appears?

By any spelling of his name, yes, though part of his work in his dramas is in prose. Not novels though.

It's difficult to pick out what defines a novel though, which I think is what Duk was going for. It being in prose, rather than poetry is key though. It's what distinguishes the form from some of its predecessors.

Picking out the first proper novel gets tough though. I've heard 'Le princesse du Cleve"( if I got the French right) ,"Don't Quixote", and "Tristram Shandy" all given first novel shouts, but it really depends on what you mean vs what went before.

I like "Beware the Cat", but I'm odd.

[PLAYER57832]

We did read part of the Canterbury Tales in high school (in the original) and it is possible (albeit difficult) for a speaker of Modern English to read.

I not only read it, we had to memorize part of it (though it has long since fled my brain, other than that first bit). Anyway, I would not say it is understandable, at all.

Wan the avril.. not exactly modern English.

Also, Canterbury tales is poetry.