LIBRARY JOURNAL'S 
MOST INFLUENTIAL FICTION OF THE 20TH CENTURY
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Here are the 150 20th century fiction titles regarded by librarians as the most influential, either in the larger world or in their impact on them personally. This list was compiled by Library Journal Magazine and appeared in their November 15, 1998 issue. 

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1 Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird  1960
2 J.D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye  1945
3 J.R.R. Tolkien Lord of the Rings  1956
4 Margaret Mitchell Gone with the Wind  1936
5 Toni Morrison Beloved  1987
6 Alice Walker The Color Purple  1982
7 George Orwell Nineteen Eighty Four  1949
8 George Orwell Animal Farm  1954
9 William Golding Lord of the Flies  1954
10 Joseph Heller Catch-22  1961
11 Pearl Buck The Good Earth  1931
12 E.B. White Charlotte's Web  1952
13 F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby  1925
14 Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Slaughterhouse-Five  1969
15 Gabriel Garcia Marquez One Hundred Years of Solitude  1970
16 Larry McMurty Lonesome Dove  1986
17 Vladimir Nabokov Lolita  1955
18 Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451  1952
19 Daphne Du Maurier Rebecca  1938
20 John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath  1939
21 Betty Smith A Tree Grows in Brooklyn  1947
22 J.R.R. Tolkien The Hobbit  1937
23 Ken Kesey One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest  1962
24 Muriel Spark The Prime of  Miss Jean Brodie  1962
25 Willa Cather My Antonia  1918
26 Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea  1952
27 D.H. Lawrence Lady Chatterley's Lover  1928
28 Ralph Ellison Invisible Man  1952
29 Leon Uris Exodus  1957
30 William Styron Sophie's Choice  1979
31 Richard Wright Native Son  1940
32 Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House on the Prairie  1935
33 Ernest Hemingway A Farewell to Arms  1929
34 A.A. Milne Winnie the Pooh  1926
35 Upton Sinclair The Jungle  1906
36 Margaret Atwood The Handmaid's Tale  1986
37 Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence  1920
38 John Updike Rabbit Run  1960
39 Jack Kerouac On the Road  1957
40 Robert A. Heinlein Stranger in a Strange Land1961
41 Aldous Huxley Brave New World  1932
42 Wallace Stegner Angle of Repose  1971
43 Erich Maria Remarque All Quiet on the Western Front  1929
44 James Joyce Ulysses  1922
45 Ernest Hemingway The Sun Also Rises  1926
46 Albert Camus The Stranger  1942
47 William Faulkner The Sound and the Fury  1929
48 A,S, Byatt Possession  1990
49 Carol Shields  The Stone Diaries  1994
50 Toni Morrison Song of Solomon  1977
51 Amy Tan The Joy Luck Club  1989
52 Alex Haley Roots  1976
53 James Joyce A Portait of the Artist as a Young Man  1916
54 Thomas Wolfe Look Homeward Angel  1929
55 Katherine Anne Porter Pale Horse, Pale Rider  1939
56 Edith Wharton Ethan Frome  1911
57 Marguerite Duras The Lover  1972
58 Anthony Burgess A Clockwork Orange  1962
59 Sherwood Anderson Winesburg, Ohio  1919
60 Virginia Woolf To the Lighthouse  1927
61 John Irving The World According to Garp  1978
62 L. Frank Baum The Wonderful Wizard of Oz  1900
63 C.S. Lewis The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe  1950
64 A. Conan Doyle The Hound of the Baskervilles  1902
65 Ayn Rand The Fountainhead  1943
66 Nadine Gordimer The Burger's Daughter  1979
67 Jack London The Call of the Wild  1903
68 Alexander Solzhenitsyn One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich  1963
69 Marlon Zimmer Bradley The Mists of Avalon  1983
70 Robert Graves I, Claudius  1934
71 James Jones From Here to Eternity  1951
72 John Steinbeck East of Eden  1952
73 Alan Paton Cry, the Beloved Country  1948
74 Allen Drury Advise and Consent  1959
75 E.M. Forster A Passage to India  1924
76 Arthur C. Clarke 2001: A Space Odyssey  1968
77 Ford Maddox Ford The Good Soldier  1927
78 Zora Neale Hurston Their Eyes Were Watching God  1937
79 Kenneth Graham The Wind in the Willows  1908
80 Philip Roth Portnoy's Complaint  1969
81 Albert camus The Plague  1947
82 Antine de Exupery The Little Prince  1943
83 Toni Morrison The Bluest Eye  1969
84 Barbara Kingsolver The Bean Trees  1988
85 Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan of the Apes  1914
86 Theodore Dreiser Sister Carrie  1900
87 Flannery O'Connor A Good Man is Hard to Find  1955
88 Marcel Proust Remembrance of Things Past  1960
89 E.L. Doctorow Ragtime  1975
90 Judith Guest Ordinary People  1976
91 W. Somerset Maugham Of Human Bondage  1915
92 Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness  1902
93 Sinclair Lewis Babbit  1922
94 Robert Penn Warren All the King's Men  1946
95 D.H. Lawrence Women in Love  1920
96 Samuel Beckett Waiting for Godot  1953
97 John Dos Passos USA  1919, 1936, 1938
98 Milan Kundera The Unbearable Lightness of Being  1984
99 James Agee A Death in the Family  1957
100 T.H. White The Once and Future King  1953
101 Dashiell Hammett The Maltese Falcon  1930
102 Henry James The Golden Bowl  1904
103 Doris Lessing The Golden Notebook  1962
104 John Galsworthy The Forsyth Saga  1922 
105 Raymond Chandler The Big Sleep  1939
106 Sylvia Plath The Bell Jar  1963
107 Henry James The Ambassadors  1903
108 Isabel Allende The House of the Spirits  1985
109 John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men  1937
110 Norman Mailer The Naked and the Dead  1948
111 Thomas Mann The Magic Mountain  1924
112 Dalton Trumbo Johnny Got His Gun  1959
113 William Kennedy Ironweed  1983
114 Ernest Hemingway A Farewell to Arms  1929
115 Frank Herbert Dune  1965
116 Boris Pasternak Doctor Zhivago  1958
117 Willa Cather Death Comes to the Archbishop  1927
118 Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Cat's Cradle  1963
119 Evelyn Waugh Brideshead Revisited  1945
120 Anne Tyler Breathing Lessons  1988
121 Judy Blume Are You There God, It's me, Margaret  1970
122 Anne Tyler The Accidental Tourist  1985
123 Jane Smiley A Thousand Acres  1991
124 E.M. Forster A Room with a View  1908
125 Flannery O'Connor Wise Blood  1952
126 Gunter Grass The Tin Drum  1959
127 Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea  1966
128 Don De Lillo White Noise  1985
129 Maurice Sendak Where the Wild Things Are  1963
130 John Cheever The Wapshot Chronicle  1979
131 Malcolm Lowry Under the Volcano  1947
132 Henry Miller Tropic of Cancer  1934
133 Chinua Achebe Things Fall Apart  1959
134 Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings The Yearling  1948
135 Herman Wouk The Winds of War  1971
136 Walker Percy The Moviegower  1961
137 Somerset Maugham The Razor's Edge  1944
138 Albert Camus The Rebel  1954
139 John Steinbeck The Pearl  1947
140 Colin Wilson The Outsider 1956 (Not a work of fiction.)
141 Henry Roth Call It Sleep  1934
142 Carson McCullers The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter  1940
143 Mario Puzo The Godfather  1969
144 Eudora Welty A Curtain of Green  1941
145 Graham Greene The End of the Affair  1951
146 James McBride The Color of Water  1996
147 Herman Wouk The Caine Mutiny  1951
148 Thornton Wilder The Bridge of San Luis Rey  1927
149 Irving Stone The Agony and the Ecstacy  1961
150 James T. Farrell Studs Lonigan: A Trilogy  1935

 
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