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The work that set the pattern for all subsequent multi-generational family sagas in English, John  Galsworthy’s The Forsyte Saga, comprising three novels and two short interludes, covers a period from the late Victorian to the late Edwardian age in Britain, beginning in 1886 and ending in 1920 when the last surviving member of the older generation has… Continue reading John Galsworthy’s “The Forsyte Saga”

John Fowles was an acclaimed author whose novels, particularly the first three—The Collector (1963), The Magus (1965) and The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969)—have been widely admired international best-sellers. In 2008, The Times named Fowles as number 30 in its list of the top 50 greatest British writers since 1945. The French Lieutenant’s Woman was ranked number 31 on Time magazine’s list of the 100 greatest… Continue reading John Fowles’ “The Magus”

E.M. Forster is chiefly remembered today as one of the premier novelists of the Edwardian period in the early twentieth century, though in fact he published only five novels in his lifetime (his long-suppressed homoerotic novel Maurice was not published until after his death). Of these, three are recognized classics: A Room With a View (1908), a romance as… Continue reading E.M. Forster’s “A Passage to India”

Ford Madox Ford was a hugely prolific novelist, essayist and literary critic in the first half of the twentieth century whom few contemporary American readers are likely to have heard of and even fewer to have read. Yet two of his myriad publications are so highly admired that they regularly appear on “Greatest Novel” lists.… Continue reading Ford Madox Ford’s “Parade’s End”

Gatsby is indeed another no-brainer for sure. It’s hard to imagine a list of the 100 best novels in English that does not include Fitzgerald’s magnum opus. As many readers will remember, it came in as number one on Time magazine’s famous list of the 100 best English-language novels since 1923 (the year Time premiered). And it was #2 on the Modern Library… Continue reading F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”

Seldom does one reach the end of a 900-page novel and wish it had been longer, but that was my experience on first reading Henry Fielding’s classic from the early days of the novel, officially entitled The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, though generally known simply as Tom Jones. The book, originally published in 1749, was what… Continue reading Henry Fielding’s “Tom Jones”

The titanic figure of William Faulkner looms above American modernism like his contemporary Babe Ruth towered over the ballplayers of his era. There is no question that Faulkner must appear on any list of the best books in English, even though, truth be told, it wasn’t until his Nobel Prize in 1949 that he began… Continue reading William Faulkner’s “Light in August”

One of the most important writers of what’s generally considered the “second wave” of the Native American Renaissance, Louise Erdrich has been one of my favorite writers for nearly forty years. Her first novel, Love Medicine, was an instant classic, winning the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1984—the only first novel ever to win that award.… Continue reading Louise Erdrich’s “The Night Watchman”

One of the most significant novels of the 20th century, among the first widely read novels by a Black American author, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, seemed too important a book not to consider for my list of the “100 Most Lovable Novels in the English Language.” The book has an impressive pedigree: It won the National… Continue reading Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man”

It seems that the reputation of Mary Ann Evans, aka George Eliot (since what Victorian publisher would accept a novel by someone with a woman’s name?), just keeps growing stronger and stronger as time goes by. Already a major novelist in her own time, with acclaimed novels like Silas Marner (1861), Daniel Deronda (1876), Adam Bede (1859), and The Mill on the Floss (1860),… Continue reading George Eliot’s “Middlemarch”