The Novel 100: A Ranking of the Greatest Novels of All Time

Editorial Review: Millions of us ravenously devour novels every year. It's not surprising that we also wrestle with them, judge them, press them on our friends (often demanding them back), and quietly "misplace" the ones we can't warm up to. The unspoken word here is "ranking." Whenever we say "Pride and Prejudice is a better book than Sense and Sensibility"or Jane Eyre or Moby-Dick, we are evaluating and, in some way, ranking these old familiars. So what are the hundred best novels, anyway. And which comes first? eighth? ninety-eighth? It's anybody's right to say; no such list can be purely objective.