TOP TEN WORKS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
- Ulysses by James Joyce
- Dubliners by James Joyce
- One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
- The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
- To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
- The stories of Flannery O’Connor
- Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
TOP TEN WORKS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
- Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
- The stories of Anton Chekhov
- Middlemarch by George Eliot
- Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
- Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Emma by Jane Austen
TOP TEN WORKS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
- Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne
- Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
- Clarissa by Samuel Richardson
- Candide by Voltaire
- Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
- Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
- Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding
- The Story of the Stone by Cao Xueqin
- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
TOP TEN WORKS OF THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES
- Hamlet by William Shakespeare
- Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
- King Lear by William Shakespeare
- Macbeth by William Shakespeare
- Paradise Lost by John Milton
- The Tempest by William Shakespeare
- Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
- Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare
- The plays of Molière
- Henry V and Othello, The Moor of Venice by William Shakespeare
TOP TEN WORKS OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY AND EARLIER
- The Odyssey by Homer
- The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
- The Bible
- The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
- The Oresteia by Aeschylus
- The Aeneid by Virgil
- The Iliad by Homer
- The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
- The Arabian Nights: Tales from a Thousand and One Nights
- Oedipus the King by Sophocles
TOP TEN AUTHORS BY NUMBER OF WORKS SELECTED
- William Shakespeare—11
- William Faulkner—6
- Henry James—6
- Jane Austen—5
- Charles Dickens—5
- Fyodor Dostoevsky—5
- Ernest Hemingway—5
- Franz Kafka—5
(tie) James Joyce, Thomas Mann, Vladimir Nabokov, Mark Twain, Virginia Woolf—4
TOP TEN AUTHORS BY POINTS EARNED
- Leo Tolstoy—327
- William Shakespeare—293
- James Joyce—194
- Vladimir Nabokov—190
- Fyodor Dostoevsky—177
- William Faulkner—173
- Charles Dickens—168
- Anton Chekhov—165
- Gustave Flaubert—163
- Jane Austen—161
TOP TEN WORKS BY AMERICAN AUTHORS
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
- The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
- The stories of Flannery O’Connor
- Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
- Beloved by Toni Morrison
- The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
TOP TEN WORKS BY BRITISH AUTHORS
- Hamlet by William Shakespeare
- Middlemarch by George Eliot
- Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
- Ulysses by James Joyce
- King Lear by William Shakespeare
- Emma by Jane Austen
- Dubliners by James Joyce
- To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
- Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
TOP TEN WORKS BY RUSSIAN AUTHORS
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
- The stories of Anton Chekhov
- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
- Red Cavalry by Isaac Babel
- Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
- The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
TOP TEN WORKS BY FRENCH AUTHORS
- Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
- In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
- The Stranger by Albert Camus
- Candide by Voltaire
- Germinal by Émile Zola
- L’Assommoir (The Dram Shop) by Émile Zola
- Nana by Émile Zola
- Cousin Bette by Honoré de Balzac
- The Diary of a Country Priest by Georges Bernanos
- The Fall by Albert Camus
TOP TEN WORKS BY LIVING WRITERS
- One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- Beloved by Toni Morrison
- The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
- Rabbit Angstrom by John Updike
- Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
- Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
- The Stand by Stephen King
- The stories of Alice Munro
- The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
TOP TEN COMIC WORKS
- Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
- Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne
- Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding
- Norwood by Charles Portis
- The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
- A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare
- The Ponder Heart by Eudora Welty
- Blithe Spirit by Noël Coward
- Right Ho, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse
TOP TEN WORKS OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION
- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
- The Stand by Stephen King
- Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
- The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
- The Voyage of the ‘Dawn Treader’ by C. S. Lewis
- Fiskadoro by Denis Johnson
- The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
- The War with the Newts by Karel Čapek
- His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
- Dune by Frank Herbert
TOP TEN MYSTERIES AND THRILLERS
- The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
- The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson
- Red Dragon by Thomas Harris
- The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
- Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carré
- The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain
- The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
- Mildred Pierce by James M. Cain
- The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
- Everybody Pays by Andrew Vachss
ONE-HIT WONDERS: TWENTY-THREE WORKS THAT EARNED A TOP SLOT BUT NO OTHER
Answered Prayers by Truman Capote (DC)
Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare (MD) The Awakening by Kate Chopin (SMK)
Bhagavadgita (CD)
The Birthday Party and The Homecoming by Harold Pinter (AMH) The Book of Leviathan by Peter Blegvad (MSB)
Casa Guidi Windows by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (AT) The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade by Herman Melville (ALK) Embers by Sándor Márai (RW)
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn (JW)
I, Claudius by Robert Graves (AGold)
Ill Seen, Ill Said by Samuel Beckett (JB)
JR by William Gaddis (LMill)
The Golden Argosy edited by Van H. Cartmell and Charles Grayson (SK)
L’Assommoir (The Dram Shop) by Émile Zola (TW)
Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich (TCB)
Nana by Émile Zola (TW)
The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis (DFW)
Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T. E. Lawrence (AF) The Outward Room by Millen Brand (PCam)
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (JC)
The Time of the Doves by Mercè Rodoreda (SC) The Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe (KHarr)