[EM] Guardian 100 Best Novels

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

On 2026-05-21 21:45, Ross Hyman wrote:
> Matthew Aldridge comes to the same conclusion for the voting method
> and that My Antonia is an error:
> https://mpaldridge.github.io/blog/guardian-novels.html He also found
> some books with variant titles that were not properly counted.

That's a good catch! I had found one that Matthew doesn't mention: "The 
Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" had a variant name 
(omitting ", Gentleman").

I implemented his suggested name deduplication and got the following 
results for top 20:

With Schulze:
  1. Middlemarch
  2. Beloved
  3. Ulysses
  4. To the Lighthouse
  5. Anna Karenina
  6. In Search of Lost Time
  7. War and Peace
  8. Jane Eyre
  9. Bleak House
10. Pride and Prejudice
     Madame Bovary
12. The Great Gatsby
13. Nineteen Eighty-Four
     Moby-Dick
     Emma
16. One Hundred Years of Solitude
17. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
     Mrs Dalloway
18. Persuasion
19. The Portrait of a Lady
20. Wuthering Heights

(This is the same as my first Schulze results, except that Mrs Dalloway 
now shares the #17 spot with Tristram Shandy.)

Smith,Ext-Minmax:

  1. Middlemarch
  2. Beloved
  3. Ulysses
  4. To the Lighthouse
  5. Anna Karenina
  6. In Search of Lost Time
  7. War and Peace
  8. Madame Bovary
  9. Emma
10. Pride and Prejudice
11. Mrs Dalloway
12. One Hundred Years of Solitude
13. Moby-Dick
14. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
15. Bleak House
16. The Great Gatsby
17. Wuthering Heights
18. Nineteen Eighty-Four
19. Persuasion
20. The Portrait of a Lady

which is also the same as my first Smith,Ext-Minmax results, except that 
Tristram Shandy gets 14th place and displaces everybody below by one.

I also calculated top 10 by voter type. I'll use Smith,Ext-Minmax since 
Schulze produces a lot of ties - but if you want to use another method, 
I've updated my Python script to write ballots per voter type as well.

Academics (7 votes):

  1. Middlemarch
  2. Anna Karenina
  3. Emma
  4. Great Expectations
  5. Madame Bovary
  6. Bleak House
  7. The Trial
     In Search of Lost Time
  8. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
  9. Pride and Prejudice
     Jane Eyre

Authors (115 votes):

  1. Middlemarch
  2. Ulysses
     Beloved
  3. In Search of Lost Time
  4. To the Lighthouse
  5. War and Peace
  6. Anna Karenina
  7. Pride and Prejudice
  8. Madame Bovary
  9. Mrs Dalloway
10. Moby-Dick

Journalists (36 votes):

  1. Middlemarch
  2. Beloved
  3. The Great Gatsby
     Anna Karenina
  5. War and Peace
  6. Ulysses
  7. Pale Fire
  8. Vanity Fair
  9. Lolita
10. Pride and Prejudice

Others (14 votes):

  1. Middlemarch
  2. Ulysses
  3. One Hundred Years of Solitude
  4. Emma
  5. War and Peace
  6. Madame Bovary
  7. Anna Karenina
  8. The Golden Gate
  9. The Color Purple
10. Things Fall Apart

-km