Blast From The Past: 102 Great Novels, as of 1962-63

Among the papers of our friend Anne Braude, who passed away in 2009, I found a small pamphlet, a single folded sheet yellowed and brittle with age, that listed “102 Great Novels”. The pamphlet was distributed by the Scottsdale Public Library, and its list “COMPILED BY NELLENE SMITH, DIRECTOR”. Ms. Smith’s name dates the list to 1962 or 63 (thanks, Google!).

So, nearly sixty years ago, these were the books thought listing as “Great”. I thought it might be interesting to see how many still might be recognized as Great, or recognized at all after sixty years.

The list:

• A Death In The Family, Agee
• Moses, Asch
• Sense and Sensibility, Austen
• Pere Goriot, Balzac
• The Old Wives’ Tale, Bennett
• The Death of the Heart, Bowen
• Jane Eyre, Bronte
• Wuthering Heights, Bronte
• The Good Earth, Buck
• The Way of All Flesh, Butler
• Plague, Camus
• Death Comes For The Archbishop, Cather
• The Horse’s Mouth, Cary
• Don Quixote, Cervantes
• Greenwillow, Chute
• Lord Jim, Conrad
• The Just and the Unjust, Cozzens
• The Red Badge of Courage, Crane
• David Copperfield, Dickens
• U. S. A., Dos Passos
• The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky
• An American Tragedy, Dreiser
• Advise and Consent, Drury
• The Three Musketeers, Dumas
• Rebecca, du Maurier
• Justine, Durrell
• Middlemarch, Eliot
• Light In August, Faulkner
• The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald
• Madame Bovary, Flaubert
• A Passage To India, Forster
• The Forsythe Saga, Galsworthy
• The Cypresses Believe In God, Gironella
• Vein of Iron, Glasgow
• Dead Souls, Gogol
• I, Claudius, Graves
• Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Hardy
• The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne
• The Old Man of the Sea, Hemingway
• The Wall, Hershey
• The Rise of Silas Lapham, Howells
• Green Mansions, Hudson
• The Fox In the Attic, Hughes
• Les Miserables, Hugo
• Brave New World, Huxley
• The Wings of the Dove, James
• Ulysses, Joyce
• Trial, Kafka
• Zorba the Greek, Kazantzakis
• Darkness At Noon, Koestler
• The Leopard, Lampedusa
• Main Street, Lewis
• The Call of the Wild, London
• Epitaph For the Small Winner, Machado de Assis
• The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, McCullers
• The Watch That Ends the Night, McLennan
• The Magic Mountain, Mann
• Nectar In A Sieve, Markandaya
• Point of No Return, Marquand
• Of Human Bondage, Maugham
• Therese, Mauriac
• Moby Dick, Melville
• Gone With the Wind, Mitchell
• The Cruel Sea, Montsarrat
• Two Women, Moravia
• The Tale of the Genji, Murasaki
• Nineteen Eighty Four, Orwell
• Dr. Zhivago, Paternak
• Cry, The Beloved Country, Paton
• Ship of Fools, Porter
• The Man On A Donkey, Prescott
• Remembrance of Things Past, Proust
• All Quiet On the Western Front, Remarque
• The King Must Die, Renault
• The Trees, Richter
• Jean Christophe, Rolland
• Giants In the Earth, Rolvaag
• The Catcher In the Rye, Salinger
• The Human Comedy, Saroyan
• Ivanhoe, Scott
• Fontamara, Silone
• Strangers and Brothers, Snow
• The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck
• The Red and the Black, Stendahl
• Treasure Island, Stevenson
• The Travels of Jamie McPheeters, Taylor
• Vanity Fair, Thanckeray
• War and Peace, Tolstoy
• Barchester Towers, Trollope
• Dream of the Red Chamber, Tsao-Hsueh-Chin
• Torrents of Spring, Turgenev
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain
• Kristin Lavransdatter, Undset
• Candide, Voltaire
• The Egyptian, Waltari
• All The King’s Men, Warren
• Ethan Frome, Wharton
• The Once and Future King, White
• The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Wilder
• Look Homeward, Angel, Wolfe
• Memories of Hadrian, Yourcenar

The small pamphlet concludes with this statement from Nellene Smith: “There are so many fine novels that they all couldn’t be placed on a small list. However, I have presented a variety of classics and some works of contemporary authors whose writing is exceptional. –Nellene Smith”