Apropos of nothing, I decided to put together a list of a book I’d recommend for every year of the 20th century. Because, why not! And also, I’m musing over doing A Century of Books again next year, and it’s good to throw out some suggestions now in case anybody fancies joining me. I tried not to repeat authors, but there were some years where I couldn’t manage without a bit of repetition. I’m grateful to Elizabeth von Arnim for the first decade of the century.
As I decided to do this, I had a vague memory of having done it before… and, yes, I compiled a list back in 2011. I’m going to make my new list without looking back at that one – and when I’m done, I’ll see how much crossover there is.
So, here are 100 books I think are great from 1900-1999! (I’m going by the dates in my LibraryThing catalogue, so if you spot any discrepancies, let me know and I’ll sub something else in.)
1900: Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K. Jerome
1901: The Benefactress by Elizabeth von Arnim
1902: The Red House by E. Nesbit
1903: Oxford by Edward Thomas
1904: The Canon in Residence by V.L. Whitechurch
1905: Lovers in London by A.A. Milne
1906: The Man of Property by John Galsworthy
1907: Fraulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther by Elizabeth von Arnim
1908: Crossriggs by Jane and Mary Findlater
1909: The Caravanners by Elizabeth von Arnim
1910: Howards End by E.M. Forster
1911: The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
1912: The Unbearable Bassington by Saki
1913: Old Friends and New Fancies by Sybil G. Brinton
1914: The Three Sisters by May Sinclair
1915: Sally on the Rocks by Winifred Boggs
1916: Further Foolishness by Stephen Leacock
1917: Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley
1918: Patricia Brent, Spinster by Herbert Jenkins
1919: Poor Relations by Compton Mackenzie
1920: Tension by E.M. Delafield
1921: Dangerous Ages by Rose Macaulay
1922: The Heir by Vita Sackville-West
1923: A Lost Lady by Willa Cather
1924: The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
1925: Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
1926: Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner
1927: The Love-Child by Edith Olivier
1928: War Among Ladies by Eleanor Scott
1929: Ex-Wife by Ursula Parrott
1930: Miss Mole by E.H. Young
1931: The Brontes Went to Woolworths by Rachel Ferguson
1932: Economy Must Be Our Watchword by Joyce Dennys
1933: Hostages to Fortune by Elizabeth Cambridge
1934: A Pin To See The Peepshow by F. Tennyson Jesse
1935: Mr Pim Passes By by A.A. Milne
1936: Greengates by R.C. Sherriff
1937: They Came Like Swallows by William Maxwell
1938: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
1939: And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
1940: Miss Hargreaves by Frank Baker
1941: The Empty Room by Charles Morgan
1942: One Year’s Time by Angela Milne
1943: O, The Brave Music by Dorothy Evelyn Smith
1944: Cluny Brown by Margery Sharp
1945: Lady Living Alone by Norah Lofts
1946: Miss Ranskill Comes Home by Barbara Euphan Todd
1947: One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes
1948: The Foolish Gentlewoman by Margery Sharp
1949: Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
1950: Murder Included by Joanna Cannan
1951: Merry Hall by Beverley Nichols
1952: The Equations of Love by Ethel Wilson
1953: Guard Your Daughters by Diana Tutton
1954: Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead by Barbara Comyns
1955: Mother and Son by Ivy Compton-Burnett
1956: Tea at Four O’Clock by Janet McNeill
1957: A House in the Country by Ruth Adam
1958: The Lost Europeans by Emanuel Litvinoff
1959: The Unspeakable Skipton by Pamela Hansford Johnson
1960: The L-Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks
1961: Told in Winter by Jon Godden
1962: We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
1963: A Day in Summer by J.L. Carr
1964: The Soul of Kindness by Elizabeth Taylor
1965: The Millstone by Margaret Drabble
1966: A Jest of God by Margaret Laurence
1967: At The Jerusalem by Paul Bailey
1968: A Compass Error by Sybille Bedford
1969: Travels With My Aunt by Graham Greene
1970: 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
1971: The Home by Penelope Mortimer
1972: The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty
1973: In the Springtime of the Year by Susan Hill
1974: The Enchanted Places by Christopher Milne
1975: Turtle Diary by Russell Hoban
1976: The Doctor’s Wife by Brian Moore
1977: The House By The Sea by May Sarton
1978: The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald
1979: The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera
1980: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
1981: Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession by Janet Malcolm
1982: The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson
1983: Heartburn by Nora Ephron
1984: The Only Problem by Muriel Spark
1985: The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat by Oliver Sacks
1986: Family Skeletons by Henrietta Garnett
1987: Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively
1988: Sheep’s Clothing by Celia Dale
1989: The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
1990: Temples of Delight by Barbara Trapido
1991: Wise Children by Angela Carter
1992: The Devil’s Candy by Julie Salamon
1993: Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver
1994: Follow Your Heart by Susanna Tamaro
1995: Flesh and Blood by Michael Cunningham
1996: Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding
1997: The Year of Reading Proust by Phyllis Rose
1998: Amsterdam by Ian McEwan
1999: Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
Now that my list is complete, how many overlaps did I have with my list from 15 years ago? By a rough count, I make it 21 (including Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead, which I attributed to the wrong year last time). I think that is still a good list, but I’m more pleased with this one – it doesn’t rely so heavily in the later century on books about the earlier century!
How many of my hundred have you read?
Where is Anthony Powell?–could be 12 books.
If you start listing the books I haven’t included, I can confirm there are rather more than 100!
I have read 24 and many more are not only on my TBR but will shortly be joining my TBR as I always like your recommendations. I would never have found Margery Sharp had it not been for Tea Or Books. Eternally grateful
Ah what a lovely comment! I was so delighted to hear Cluny Brown chosen on Radio 4’s A Good Read recently.
I think 32, so a lot of catching up to do.
I think I’ve read around 40 of them. It did cross my mind though how different in tone ‘1984’ is to many of the other choices on your list! I just recently read ‘Turtle Diary’ and loved it; I couldn’t believe how different it was from ‘Riddley Walker’, which is the only other book by him I’ve read!
24 – which is better than I thought I’d do at first (most fall in the second half of the century!). There’s so many books I have been intrigued by or planned to read that I could probably reach 50 if we made it how many books exist on your internal reading map of the universe, hah. I will make a note of this list – it’s full of good stuff and I’m very impressed. I don’t think I could do this – all my reading would end up in clumps!