Best English novelist?

Vote for the G.O.A.T English novelist

A parasitic post today. Henry Oliver is running a competition on his Substack, the Common Reader, in which readers make the case for and vote for England’s best ever novelist. Henry paywalls most of his posts and I have not paid him anything, but he has encouraged us all to discuss in our own Notes and Substacks.

So the competition is to decide who is the Greatest Of All Time - UK novelists only and who is in fact the best novelist overall, rather than your favourite. So Henry plans to be debating with his highly literate mates about technique, influence, range, status and so on, as well as personal taste. That may not happen much here at the Goat but I hope we can get some airing of views and opinions.

Here’s Henry’s long list and his comments in italics, and mine in bold.

1.      Jonathan Swift. No point arguing about whether Gulliver’s Travels is a novel or not. Not including him would be silly. Too old for me to read with enjoyment

2.      Laurence Stern. Astonishingly modern innovations and so many of them. Rambling, almost impossible to read

3.      Samuel Richardson. An obvious choice apart from the fact he seems quite unread. (I have only read Pamela and a small part of Sir Charles… maybe Clarissa should be our next book club topic.) Haven’t tried, assume from what I have heard it would be a desperately tedious exercise

4.      Daniel Defoe. Personally I find Robinson Crusoe unbearably dull, but he’s an undeniable contender. Read as a boy, very dull

5.      Henry Fielding. Inventive, fun, persuasive. Tom Jones alone would be enough to get on the list. Tried it, terrible

6.      Jane Austen. Duh. Call off the chase. She invented the modern novel. Love Jane Austen, big contender IMO. I agree with Henry’s comment. The oldest novels that you can still read with enjoyment today - amazing that Sense and Sensibility was published 213 years ago

7.      Walter Scott. Like, no-one reads him now but he invented historical fiction and Ivanhoe is insanely good. Ivanhoe is on my list

8.      Charlotte Bronte. Shirley is awful stuff but Jane Eyre is sublime. Agree on Jane Eyre, terrific book

9.      Emily Bronte. She could be on a list of poets too. Wuthering Heights is a magical, powerful book. Not sure she did anything else though

10.  William Thackeray. I never finished Vanity Fair. (It’s too long to sustain itself!) Does anyone read the others? Loved Vanity Fair when I was young but tried to re-read recently and had to give up. Maybe a sign of how we are all more impatient these days (or maybe it’s just me)

11.  Wilkie Collins. I found it too dull to read but I hear others worship at the shrine. I enjoyed Moonstone and Woman in White when I read them a few years ago, but he should be nowhere near this list

12.  Charles Dickens. Second only to Shakespeare for inventiveness? Bleak House is worth whole shelves of other writers. He’s obviously a contender but I hate his books - dull, overblown, predictable, patronising, unfunny

13.  George Eliot. Has anyone ever equalled her ability to write about ideas? And oh my god that prose. Middlemarch is superb, gave up on Daniel Deronda

14.  Anthony Trollope. The weakest contender? (Though I always want to read more...) Loved The Way we live now but have never kicked back with a bit of Barchester

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15.  Henry James. Maybe he’s too niche but The Golden Bowl and some of the short fiction would on their own be a pillar of English literature. (I could do with patching up here.) Pompous, overwritten, dull

16.  Thomas Hardy. I can’t read Tess again, but that’s a sign of his power. Surely a top contender. Definitely a contender, though as Henry says, you can’t read them again. Very depressing.

17.  James Joyce. Yes, I know he’s Irish, but he wrote Ulysses while Ireland was part of the UK, so I’ll take it. Tried to read Ulysses five times and have now given up - I am not clever enough. Dubliners meh

18.  Joseph Conrad. Also somewhat unread beyond Heart of Darkness. But informed opinion ranks him very highly. Very atmospheric books, Heart of Darkness is great. Battled through Nostromo and Lord Jim - admired rather than enjoyed. Incredible that English was not his native language (so too Nabokov)

19.  Virginia Woolf. Yes, she’s irritating sometimes. Yes, the more experimental books aren’t much fun. But Orlando and Mrs Dalloway are lively, vivid, intelligent books that have made a lasting mark. Enjoyed the first quarter of Mrs Dalloway then realised how little Woolf actually had to offer. To the Lighthouse was dismal and I gave up. Should not be on this list

20.  D.H. Lawrence. I only know the stories but they get their own special place. Only read Lady Chatterley’s Lover as a teenager and then only parts of it. His poetry is good

21.  Evelyn Waugh. A dark horse pick, but he has great range. Overrated in my view. Not as funny as people claim. Not sure about that great range comment

22.  J.R.R. Tolkien. An obvious contender. If you don’t think so, read Tom Shippey. LOTR obviously a masterpiece, but wrote nothing else of merit

23.  V.S. Naipual. A clear genius. I haven’t read many, but Mrs Biswas, In A Free State and A Bend in the River are all exceptional. (Oxford educated, talked passionately about how the UK, and London, was the only place in the world he could have become a writer.) Someone I need to read

24.  Iris Murdoch. Unlikely to win, but few writers of the twentieth century show her intelligence and feeling. Have tried and failed a couple of times, need to try again she’s clearly a genius

25.  Kazuo Ishiguro. Contender for The Remains of the Day alone. We’ll overlook The Buried Giant… Love him. Remains of the Day probably my favourite book. Buried Giant not so bad either, Henry

So who did he miss out? Well, he’s a traditionalist with no great love of more modern novelists. I assume we are excluding commercial novelists like Agatha Christie, John Le Carre, Len Deighton, Ruth Rendell, all masters of their craft. But I think Graham Greene should be on the list. Thrilling plots and marvellous sense of place. The obsession with faith became tiresome after a time. George Orwell? Two late masterpieces and some fascinating early works. More recent contenders could include Salman Rushdie (not for me though), Martin Amis (adored Money) Ian McEwan (preferred his earlier stuff), Penelope Fitzgerald (who started writing at 58, the Beginning of Spring is a masterpiece) or Anthony Burgess (not for me either).

Please do comment I’d love to hear your views, and please do mention other contenders (UK only remember) or defend anyone I have fatuously dismissed in my comments. We won’t have debates and zooms like Henry, but of course you can sign up to his substack for a more heavyweight intellectual experience. But assuming we get some engagement then I will do a follow-up piece in a couple of weeks.