BBC's Big Read Top 100

Alphabetical Listing

The nation has spoken! And what we have said is that we love our classics, we love the books that stay with us from childhood and we love a gripping saga too. We might buy crime novels by the million, but when it came to voting not a single one made the British public's list of best-loved books. Science fiction is represented, though, with great writing from authors such as Frank Herbert and Raymon E Feist. The big nineteenth century names such as Austen, Dickens and the Brontes feature heavily, alongside modern classics from the last two decades such as Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha and Patrick Suskind's Perfume. The big winner in the BBC Big Read Top 100 has to be children's fiction, which has 30 books on the list. Classics like Alice in Wonderland, The Wind in the Willows and Winnie the Pooh rub shoulders with the best in modern children's writing by authors including Jacqueline Wilson, J K Rowling and Philip Pullman.

The full list of the Top 100 best-loved novels is:

1. Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
2. Richard Adams Watership Down
3. Louisa May Alcott Little Women
4. Jeffery Archer Kane and Abel
5. Jean M Auel The Clan of the Cave Bear
6. Jane Austen Emma
7. Jane Austen Persuasion
8. Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice
9. Malorie Blackman Noughts and Crosses
10. Enid Blyton The Magic Faraway Tree
11. Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre
12. Emily Bronte Wuthering Heights
13. Frances Hodgson Burnett The Secret Garden
14. Meg Cabot The Princess Diaries
15. Lewis Carroll Alice in Wonderland
16. Paulo Coelho The Alchemist
17. Eoin Colfer Artemis Fowl
18. Wilkie Collins The Woman in White
19. Roald Dahl The BFG
20. Roald Dahl Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
21. Roald Dahl Matilda
22. Roald Dahl The Twits
23. Louis De Bernieres Captain Corelli's Mandolin
24. Charles Dickens Bleak House
25. Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol
26. Charles Dickens David Copperfield
27. Charles Dickens Great Expectations
28. Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities
29. Fyodor Dostoyevsky Crime and Punishment
30. Daphne Du Maurier Rebecca
31. Alexandre Dumas The Count of Monte Cristo
32. George Eliot Middlemarch
33. Sebastian Faulks Birdsong
34. Raymond E Feist Magician
35. Helen Fielding Bridge Jones's Diary
36. F Scott Fitzerald The Great Gatsby
37. Ken Follett The Pillars of the Earth
38. John Fowles The Magus
39. Stella Gibbons Cold Comfort Farm
40. Arthur Golden Memoirs of a Geisha
41. William Golding The Lord of the Flies
42. Kenneth Grahame The Wind in the Willows
43. Thomas Hardy Far from the Madding Crowd
44. Thomas Hardy Tess of the D'Urbevilles
45. Joseph Heller Catch 22
46. Frank Herbert Dune
47. Aldous Huxley Brave New World
48. John Irving A Prayer for Owen Meany
49. James Joyce Ulysses
50. Jack Kerouac On the Road
51. Stephen King The Stand
52. Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird
53. C S Lewis The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
54. Michelle Magorian Goodnight Mister Tom
55. Gabriel Garcia Marquez Love in the Time of Cholera
56. Gabriel Garcia Marquez One Hundred Years of Solitude
57. Colleen McCullough The Thorn Birds
58. A A Milne Winnie the Pooh
59. Margaret Mitchell Gone with the Wind
60. L M Montgomery Anne of Green Gables
61. George Orwell 1984
62. George Orwell Animal Farm
63. Mervyn Peake Gormenghast
64. Rosamunde Pilcher The Shell Seekers
65. Terry Pratchett The Colour of Magic
66. Terry Pratchett Good Omens
67. Terry Pratchett Guards! Guards!
68. Terry Pratchett Mort
69. Terry Pratchett Night Watch
70. Philip Pullman His Dark Materials
71. Mario Puzo The Godfather
72. Arthur Ransome Swallows and Amazons
73. J K Rowling Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
74. J K Rowling Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
75. J K Rowling Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
76. J K Rowling Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
77. Arundhati Roy The God of Small Things
78. Salman Rushdie Midnight's Children
79. Louis Sachar Holes
80. J D Salinger The Catcher in the Rye
81. Vikram Seth A Suitable Boy
82. Anya Seton Katherine
83. Anna Sewell Black Beauty
84. Nevile Shute A Town Like Alice
85. Dodie Smith I Capture the Castle
86. John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath
87. John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men
88. Robert Louis Stevenson Treasure Island
89. Patrick Suskind Perfume
90. Donna Tartt The Secret History
91. J R R Tolkien The Hobbit
92. J R R Tolkien The Lord of the Rings
93. Leo Tolstoy Anna Karenina
94. Leo Tolstoy War and Peace
95. Robert Tressell The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
96. Evelyn Waugh Brideshead Revisited
97. Jacqueline Wilson Double Act
98. Jacqueline Wilson Girls in Love
99. Jacqueline Wilson The Story of Tracy Beaker
100. Jacqueline Wilson Vicky Angel