Critics, Academics, Public Votes, Two Editors In A Room And One Algorithm Crawling 116 Other Lists: Here Is Exactly How The Guardian, TIME, The Modern Library, The BBC And Goodreads Decided What The Greatest Novels Of All Time Actually Are
Every few years, a major publication or institution publishes a list of the greatest novels of all time. The world argues about it for a week. Then another list arrives. What almost nobody discusses is how these lists are actually made; who decides, what they decided to count, and whether the methodology itself is the most interesting story the list is telling.
Five of the most credible and widely referenced 100-novel lists ever published each approached the question in a fundamentally different way. Understanding those differences changes how you read every ranking on all of them.
The Guardian — 100 Best Novels Of All Time (2026)
The Guardian asked authors, critics and academics to help compile its 100 novels selection, revealing the list in stages and crucially, each entry carries the names of the people who voted for it. Selecting a book shows who voted for it, and clicking on a voter’s name reveals their other choices, turning the list from a simple countdown into a map of literary taste showing where the panel overlaps and where it splits.
This transparency is what makes the Guardian’s 2026 list genuinely distinctive. It is not simply a ranking. It is a record of institutional taste at a specific moment. Readers can trace which critic backed which novel and follow that voter’s full reading map, producing something closer to a network of influence than a single authoritative verdict.
The list is not ranked in the traditional numerical sense; it is organized by the weight of expert endorsement, which means a book that five critics named appears above a book that only one did. The Guardian explicitly chose not to frame this as a single editorial judgement but as an aggregated critical consensus, which makes it simultaneously more democratic and more revealing about the biases of the literary establishment it drew from.
2. TIME Magazine — All-TIME 100 Best Novels (2005)
Time’s List of the 100 Best Novels is an unranked compilation of 100 English-language novels published since 1923, selected by TIME magazine critics Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo, released on October 16, 2005. The selection process, described by the critics as a “massive, anguished, exalted undertaking,” emphasized English-language novels published anywhere in the world, prioritizing those that demonstrated literary innovation, cultural impact and lasting significance.
The methodology was direct: Grossman and Lacayo each began by drawing up inventories of their nominees independently. Once they traded notes, it turned out that more than 80 of their separately chosen titles matched. They decided then that they would divide the remaining slots between them, allowing each to include books the other might not have chosen — and extending the list into places where mere agreement would not take it.
The list includes only English-language novels published between 1923, when TIME was first published, and 2005. As a result, some notable twentieth-century novels such as Ulysses by James Joyce, published in 1922 were ineligible for inclusion.
What is most honest about TIME’s approach is also what makes it most debated. Two people decided. Just two. No panel, no public vote, no algorithm. Grossman and Lacayo debated specific inclusions and exclusions, emphasising subjective literary merit over consensus awards such as the Pulitzer or Nobel.
The list famously includes Watchmen Alan Moore’s graphic novel, which either expands the definition of what a novel is or breaks it, depending on your position. The TIME list is the most personal of all five and arguably the most defensible for that reason. It does not pretend to be consensus. It says: two expert readers made choices. Here they are.
3. The Modern Library — 100 Best Novels (1998)
Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels is a 1998 list of the best English-language novels published during the 20th century, selected from among 400 novels published by Random House, which owns Modern Library. The board of review consisted of Daniel J. Boorstin, A.S. Byatt, Christopher Cerf, Shelby Foote, Vartan Gregorian, Edmund Morris, John Richardson, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., William Styron and Gore Vidal.
The editors of The Modern Library had the assistance of a distinguished Board made up of celebrated authors, historians, critics and publishing luminaries, who voted on the 100 Best Novels. The result is one of the most academically weighted lists in existence.
Ulysses ranked first, followed by The Great Gatsby and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The emphasis falls heavily on literary modernism, on technique, on formal innovation. Critics noted that the Board’s list featured only eight female authors and minimal representation of writers from outside the Western literary tradition.
Modern Library also produced a separate Reader’s List compiled through a democratic, public participation process, an open online poll that differed markedly from the Board’s expert-curated selection, and it produced dramatically different results.
The Reader’s List told you more about who was on the internet in 1998 than anything else: Ayn Rand, Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, Robert Heinlein and Stephen King dominated, reflecting ideological enthusiasms and genre loyalties that the Board’s list entirely excluded.
The Modern Library’s dual-list approach inadvertently produced the most revealing insight of all five sources: when you ask experts, you get one canon. When you ask everyone, you get a completely different one. Both are authentic. Neither is complete.
4. The BBC — 100 Novels That Shaped Our World (2019)
On 5 November 2019, the BBC published a list of novels selected by a panel of six writers and critics, who had been asked to choose 100 English language novels that have had an impact on their lives. The resulting list was called “100 novels that shaped our world.”
The panel consisted of journalist and broadcaster Mariella Frostrup; bestselling author Juno Dawson; Bradford Festival Literary Director Syima Aslam; author Kit de Waal; journalist and BBC Radio 4 Front Row presenter Stig Abell; and author Alexander McCall Smith.
The BBC’s methodology differed from every other list in one critical way: the criterion was not literary greatness. It was personal impact. Juno Dawson stated: “I hope people look at the list and recognise how we have allowed the emotions behind a novel to factor into our choices not how many copies it’s sold, or if it’s considered a work of great literature.”
The result is a more diverse, more emotionally honest and more genre-inclusive list than either TIME or the Modern Library produced. Children’s books appear. Graphic novels appear. Popular genre fiction appears.
The Daily Telegraph dismissed the BBC selection as “a short-sighted list that will please nobody.” The Guardian noted surprising titles missing from the list, including Moby-Dick. Both reactions confirmed what the BBC already knew: a list that includes The Hunger Games alongside Middlemarch will always be contested.
What the BBC was arguing is that influence and emotional impact are legitimate literary criteria, not inferior ones. Not everyone agrees. The list is stronger for making that argument explicitly.
5. Goodreads — Best Books Ever (Ongoing)
The Goodreads Best Books Ever list is compiled by the general Goodreads community through open voting. Any Goodreads member can vote, and a book’s total score is based on multiple factors, including the number of people who have voted for it and how highly those voters ranked the book.
Goodreads does not pretend its list is curated by experts. TheGreatestBooks.org, which aggregates multiple lists including Goodreads, notes that its algorithm generates a master list based on how many “best of” lists a particular book appears on and that it generally trusts “best of all time” lists voted by authors and experts over user-generated lists.
The Goodreads community’s preferences reveal what readers actually love rather than what critics believe they should. Fantasy and young adult fiction rank far higher than they do on any expert list. Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings compete with Tolstoy for the top positions. Brandon Sanderson’s works appear in lists where Dostoevsky would be expected.
The criticism of Goodreads is the criticism of democracy itself: popularity does not equal quality, and the loudest enthusiasts do not represent the full reading public. The defence of Goodreads is equally straightforward: if seven million people rate a book, that data point is not nothing. It reflects something real about what literature actually does for the people who read it, which may ultimately be the only measure that matters.
What All Five Lists Tell Us Together
These five sources represent five distinct theories of literary value. The Guardian says: trust the credentialed many. TIME says: trust two brilliant readers. The Modern Library says: trust an academic board. The BBC says: trust emotional impact over prestige. Goodreads says: trust the crowd.
What they share is the conviction that the question is worth asking. No list answers it definitively. Every list changes how you see the answer. That is exactly the point of making them.
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