[EM] Guardian 100 Best Novels

[Ross Hyman]

The Guardian has acknowledged errors in its 100 best novels list.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2026/may/23/corrections-and-clarifications

On Fri, May 22, 2026 at 1:36 PM Kristofer Munsterhjelm
<km-elmet at munsterhjelm.no> wrote:
>
> 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