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Modern Library's 100 Best Novels is a list of the best English-language novels of the 20th century as selected by the
Modern Library. In the spring of 1998 the Modern Library polled its editorial board to find the best 100 novels of
the 20th century. The board 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.
Ulysses by James Joyce topped the list, followed by The Great Gatsby and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
The most recent novel in the list is Ironweed (1983) by William Kennedy, and the oldest are Sister Carrie (1900) by
Theodore Dreiser and Lord Jim (1900) by Joseph Conrad.
The list purports to contain only English-language novels (in fact, Darkness at Noon is a translation from German).
A separate list of the 100 best non-fiction books of the 20th century was created the same year. A list of reader
choices was published separately by Modern Library in 1999.
Criticism of the list includes that it did not include enough novels by women, and not enough novels from outside
North America and Europe.[1] In addition, some contend it was a "sales gimmick", since most of the titles in the list
are also sold by Modern Library.[2]
The List
Editors' list
Readers' list
The following year the Modern Library compiled a list based on online voting. Seven of the top ten novels are
works by Ayn Rand (the creator of Objectivism) and L. Ron Hubbard (the founder of Scientology).