Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Novels/Assessment/Top-important

message: /Archive 1
Since discussion seems to have died on this some time ago, I've decided to archive and begin anew.  I'll start with a list of books currently in the category, alphabetical order by author.
#Fengshen Yanyi
#Journey to the West
#Lazarillo de Tormes
#Louisa May Alcott. Little Women
#Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice
#Honoré de Balzac. Le Père Goriot
#L. Frank Baum. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
#Charlotte Brontë. Jane Eyre
#Emily Brontë. Wuthering Heights
#Mikhail Bulgakov. The Master and Margarita
#Edgar Rice Burroughs. Tarzan of the Apes
#Albert Camus. The Fall
#Albert Camus. The Plague
#Albert Camus. The Stranger
#Cao Xueqin. Dream of the Red Chamber
#Lewis Carroll. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
#Miguel de Cervantes. Don Quixote
#Agatha Christie. And Then There Were None
#Joseph Conrad. Heart of Darkness
#Daniel Defoe. Robinson Crusoe
#Charles Dickens. Oliver Twist
#Charles Dickens. A Christmas Carol
#Charles Dickens. David Copperfield
#Charles Dickens. Bleak House
#Charles Dickens. A Tale of Two Cities
#Charles Dickens. Great Expectations
#Isak Dinesen. Out of Africa
#Fyodor Dostoevsky. Crime and Punishment
#Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Idiot
#Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Brothers Karamazov
#Arthur Conan Doyle. A Study in Scarlet
#Arthur Conan Doyle. The Hound of the Baskervilles
#Alexandre Dumas. The Three Musketeers
#Alexandre Dumas. The Count of Monte Cristo
#George Eliot. Middlemarch
#William Faulkner. The Sound and the Fury
#Henry Fielding.  The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
#Gustave Flaubert. Madame Bovary
#E. M. Forster. Howards End
#Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  One Hundred Years of Solitude
#William Gibson. Neuromancer
#Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The Sorrows of Young Werther
#William Golding.  Lord of the Flies
#Günter Grass. The Tin Drum
#Thomas Hardy. Tess of the d'Urbervilles
#Nathaniel Hawthorne. The Scarlet Letter
#Sadegh Hedayat. The Blind Owl
#Joseph Heller.  Catch-22
#Ernest Hemingway.  A Farewell to Arms
#Ernest Hemingway. The Old Man and the Sea
#Victor Hugo. The Hunchback of Notre Dame
#Victor Hugo. Les Misérables
#Aldous Huxley. Brave New World
#Henry James. The Portrait of a Lady
#Henry James. The Turn of the Screw
#James Joyce. Ulysses
#James Joyce. Finnegans Wake
#Franz Kafka. The Trial
#Pierre Choderlos de Laclos. Les Liaisons dangereuses
#D. H. Lawrence. Lady Chatterley's Lover
#Harper Lee. To Kill a Mockingbird
#Lu Xun. The True Story of Ah Q
#Luo Guanzhong. Romance of the Three Kingdoms
#Herman Melville.  Moby-Dick
#A. A. Milne. Winnie-the-Pooh
#Margaret Mitchell.  Gone with the Wind
#Murasaki Shikibu. The Tale of Genji
#Vladimir Nabokov.  Lolita
#George Orwell. Nineteen Eighty-Four
#Boris Pasternak.  Doctor Zhivago
#Marcel Proust.  In Search of Lost Time
#Thomas Pynchon.  Gravity's Rainbow
#Erich Maria Remarque. All Quiet on the Western Front
#Jean Jacques Rousseau.  Julie, or the New Heloise
#Salman Rushdie. Midnight's Children
#Salman Rushdie. The Satanic Verses
#J. D. Salinger. The Catcher in the Rye
#Mary Shelley. Frankenstein
#Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
#John Steinbeck. The Grapes of Wrath
#Stendhal. The Red and the Black
#Robert Louis Stevenson. Treasure Island
#Robert Louis Stevenson. Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
#Bram Stoker. Dracula
#Harriet Beecher Stowe. Uncle Tom's Cabin
#Jonathan Swift. Gulliver's Travels
#William Makepeace Thackeray. Vanity Fair
#Leo Tolstoy. War and Peace
#Leo Tolstoy. Anna Karenina
#Ivan Turgenev. Fathers and Sons
#Mark Twain. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
#Mark Twain. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
#Jules Verne. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
#H. G. Wells. The War of the Worlds
#Oscar Wilde. The Picture of Dorian Gray
#Virginia Woolf. To the Lighthouse
I move that we add the following at a blow:
#Chinua Achebe. Things Fall Apart
#Jane Austen. Sense and Sensibility
#Jane Austen. Mansfield Park
#Jane Austen. Emma
#Jane Austen. Persuasion
#Honoré de Balzac. Eugénie Grandet
#Honoré de Balzac. Illusions Perdues
#Honoré de Balzac. Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes
#Honoré de Balzac. La Rabouilleuse
#Honoré de Balzac. La Cousine Bette
#Raymond Chandler. The Big Sleep
#Wilkie Collins.  The Woman in White
#Wilkie Collins.  The Moonstone
#Joseph Conrad. Lord Jim
#Joseph Conrad. Nostromo
#Joseph Conrad. The Secret Agent
#Fyodor Dostoevsky. Notes from Underground
#George Eliot. Adam Bede
#George Eliot. The Mill on the Floss
#George Eliot. Silas Marner
#George Eliot. Daniel Deronda
#Ralph Ellison. Invisible Man
#William Faulkner. As I Lay Dying
#William Faulkner. Light in August
#William Faulkner. Absalom, Absalom!
#F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby
#Gustave Flaubert. Sentimental Education
#E. M. Forster.  A Passage to India
#Nikolai Gogol. Dead Souls
#Thomas Hardy. Far from the Madding Crowd
#Thomas Hardy. The Return of the Native
#Thomas Hardy. The Mayor of Casterbridge
#Thomas Hardy. Jude the Obscure
#Jaroslav Hasek. The Good Soldier Svejk
#Ernest Hemingway. The Sun Also Rises
#Henry James. Daisy Miller
#Henry James. Washington Square
#Henry James. The Wings of the Dove
#Henry James. The Ambassadors
#Henry James. The Golden Bowl
#James Joyce. Dubliners
#James Joyce. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
#D. H. Lawrence. Sons and Lovers
#Thomas Mann. Death in Venice
#Thomas Mann. The Magic Mountain
#Robert Musil. The Man Without Qualities
#Samuel Richardson. Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded
#Samuel Richardson. Clarissa
#Walter Scott. Waverley
#Stendhal. The Charterhouse of Parma
#Laurence Sterne. The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy, Gentleman
#Leo Tolstoy. The Death of Ivan Ilyich
#Anthony Trollope. Chronicles of Barsetshire (alternately, Barchester Towers and/or The Last Chronicle of Barset, individually)
#Anthony Trollope. Palliser novels
#Anthony Trollope. The Way We Live Now
#Virginia Woolf. Mrs Dalloway
#Émile Zola. L'Assommoir
#Émile Zola. Nana
#Émile Zola. Germinal
I further suggest that the following be moved down to high importance:
#Edgar Rice Burroughs. Tarzan of the Apes
#Agatha Christie. And Then There Were None
#Isak Dinesen. Out of Africa
#Arthur Conan Doyle. A Study in Scarlet
#William Gibson. Neuromancer
#Sadegh Hedayat. The Blind Owl
Thoughts?  My propositions are admittedly centered on anglophone literature, and particularly focused on the 19th and early 20th century.  Still, I think the importance of most of the works I suggest adding is fairly obvious, and the removals are also fairly clearly out of place in the current list.  There are probably others that ought to be added, though, but I think this would be a decent start.  It would give us about 150 top importance novels.  I'd suggest that with 50 or 100 more than that, we'd have a fairly good sample to more or less set the "top" importance novels.  john k (talk) 19:27, 20 August 2008 (UTC)