According to an article in The Atlantic magazine, the concept of the “great American novel” was dreamed up in 1868 by a little known writer named John William DeForest. The United States had just emerged from the Civil War, and DeForest recognized that the end of the war had ushered in a fundamentally different nation than had existed just a few years earlier.
DeForest defined “the great American novel” as a work of fiction that undertook the “task of painting the American soul.” When he came up with the idea, he confessed that such a novel had not yet been written.
The Atlantic recently put together a list of the greatest American novels of the past century. The list is not ranked, but is instead listed chronologically.
Of the 136 novels on the list, 45 were debut novels. 9 went on to win the Pulitzer Prize, and 3 are intended for children. Twelve were published before the advent of the mass market paperback, and 25 were published after the introduction of the Kindle. At least 60 of the book on the list have been banned by schools or libraries at one time or another. Several authors have 2 books on the list, but only one, Toni Morrison, has 3.
Here is the list compiled by The Atlantic of the greatest American novels of the past 100 years (books I’ve read are bolded):
- 1925 The Great Gatsby — F. Scott Fitzgerald
- 1925 An American Tragedy — Theodore Drieser
- 1925 The Making of Americans — Gertrude Stein
- 1927 Death Comes for the Archbishop — Willa Cather
- 1929 A Farewell to Arms — Ernest Hemingway
- 1929 Passing — Nella Larsen
- 1929 The Sound and the Fury — William Faulkner
- 1936 Absalom! Absalom! — William Faulkner
- 1936 Nightwood — Djuna Barnes
- 1937 East Goes West — Younghill Kang
- 1937 Their Eyes Were Watching God — Zora Neale Hurston
- 1938 U.S.A. — John Dos Passos
- 1939 Ask the Dust — John Fante
- 1939 The Big Sleep — Raymond Chandler
- 1939 The Day of the Locust — Nathaniel West
- 1939 The Grapes of Wrath — John Steinbeck
- 1940 Native Son — Richard Wright
- 1940 The Heart is a Lonely Hunter — Carson McCullers
- 1942 A Time to be Born — Dawn Powell
- 1946 All the King’s Men — Robert Penn Warren
- 1946 The Street — Ann Petrey
- 1947 In A Lonely Place — Dorothy Hughes
- 1947 The Mountain Lion — Jean Stafford
- 1951 The Catcher in the Rye — J.D. Sallinger
- 1952 Charlotte’s Web — E.B. White
- 1952 The Invisible Man — Ralph Ellison
- 1953 Fahrenheit 451 — Ray Bradbury
- 1953 Maud Martha — Gwendolyn Brooks
- 1953 The Adventures of Augie March — Saul Bellow
- 1955 Lolita — Vladimir Nabokov
- 1956 Giovanni’s Room — James Baldwin
- 1956 Peyton Place — Grace Metalious
- 1957 Deep Water — Patricia Highsmith
- 1957 No No Boy — John Okada
- 1957 On the Road — Jack Kerouac
- 1959 The Haunting of Hill House — Shirley Jackson
- 1961 Catch-22 — Joseph Heller
- 1962 A Wrinkle in Time — Madeline L’engle
- 1962 Another Country — James Baldwin
- 1962 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest — Ken Kesey
- 1962 Pale Fire — Vladimir Nabokov
- 1962 The Zebra-Stripped Hearse — Ross MacDonald
- 1963 The Bell Jar — Sylvia Plath
- 1963 The Group — Mary McCarthy
- 1966 The Crying of Lot 49 — Thomas Pynchon
- 1967 The Sport and the Pastime — James Salter
- 1968 Couples — John Updike
- 1968 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? — Philip K. Dick
- 1969 Divorcing — Susan Taubes
- 1969 Portnoy’s Complaint — Philip Roth
- 1969 Slaughterhouse-Five — Kurt Vonnegut
- 1970 Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret — Judy Blume
- 1970 Desperate Characters — Paula Fox
- 1970 Play It as It Lays — Joan Didion
- 1972 Log of the SS Mrs. Unguentine — Stanley Crawford
- 1972 Mumbo Jumbo — Ishmael Reed
- 1973 Sula — Toni Morrison
- 1973 The Revolt of the Cockroach People — Oscar Zeta Acosta
- 1974 Oreo — Fran Ross
- 1974 The Dispossessed — Ursula K. Le Guin
- 1974 Winter in the Blood — James Welch
- 1975 Corregidora — Gayl Jones
- 1976 Speedboat — Renata Adler
- 1977 Ceremony — Leslie Marmon Silko
- 1977 Song of Solomon — Toni Morrison
- 1978 A Contract with God — Will Eisner
- 1978 Dancer from the Dance — Andrew Holleran
- 1978 The Stand — Stephen King
- 1979 Kindred — Octavia E. Butler
- 1979 The Dog of the South — Charles Portis
- 1980 Housekeeping — Marilyn Robinson
- 1980 The Salt Eaters — Toni Cade Bambara
- 1981 Little, Big: Or, The Fairies’ Parliament — John Crowley
- 1982 Oxherding Tale — Charles Johnson
- 1984 Machine Dreams — Jayne Anne Phillips
- 1985 Blood Meridian — Cormac McCarthy
- 1986 The Summons to Memphis — Peter Taylor
- 1986 Watchmen — Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
- 1987 Beloved — Toni Morrison
- 1987 Dawn — Octavia E. Butler
- 1989 Geek Love — Katherine Dunn
- 1989 Tripmaster Monkey — Maxine Hong Kingston
- 1990 Dogeaters — Jessica Hagedorn
- 1991 American Psycho — Brett Easton Ellis
- 1991 How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents — Julia Alvarez
- 1991 Mating — Norman Rush
- 1992 Bastard Out of Carolina — Dorothy Allison
- 1992 The Secret History — Donna Tartt
- 1993 So Far From God — Ana Castillo
- 1993 Stone Butch Blues — Leslie Feinberg
- 1993 The Shipping News — Annie Proulx
- 1995 Native Speaker — Chang-Rae Lee
- 1995 Sabbath’s Theater — Philip Roth
- 1995 Under the Feet of Jesus — Helena Maria Viramontes
- 1996 Infinite Jest — David Foster Wallace
- 1997 I Love Dick — Chris Kraus
- 1997 Underworld — Don Delillo
- 1999 The Intuitionist — Colson Whitehead
- 2000 Blonde — Joyce Carol Oates
- 2000 House of Leaves — Mark Z. Danielewski
- 2000 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay — Michael Chabon
- 2000 The Last Samurai — Helen DeWitt
- 2000 The Quick and the Dead — Joy Williams
- 2001 Erasure — Percival Everett
- 2001 I, the Devine — Rabih Alammedine
- 2001 The Corrections — Jonathan Frantzen
- 2002 Caramelo — Sandra Cisneros
- 2002 Perma Red — Debra Magpie Earling
- 2002 The Russian Debutane’s Handbook — Gary Shteyngart
- 2003 The Namesake — Jhumpa Lahiri
- 2005 Veronica — Mary Gaitskill
- 2007 The Brief Wondorous Life of Oscar Wao — Junot Diaz
- 2010 A Visit from the Goon Squad — Jennifer Egan
- 2010 I Hotel — Karen Tei Yamashita
- 2011 Open City — Teju Cole
- 2011 Salvage the Bones — Jesmyn Ward
- 2012 The Round House — Louise Erdrich
- 2013 Americanah — Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie
- 2013 Nevada — Imogene Binnie
- 2014 A Brief History of Seven Killings — Marlon James
- 2014 Family Life — Akhil Sharma
- 2015 Fates and Furies — Lauren Groff
- 2015 The Fifth Season — N.K. Jemisin
- 2015 The Sellout — Paul Beatty
- 2015 The Sympathizer — Viet Thanh Nguyen
- 2017 Amiable with Big Teeth — Claude McKay
- 2017 Lincoln in the Bardo — George Saunders
- 2018 Sabrina — Nick Drnaso
- 2018 Severance — Ling Ma
- 2018 There There — Tommy Orange
- 2019 Lost Children Archive — Valerie Luiselli
- 2019 Nothing to See Here — Kevin Wilson
- 2019 The Old Drift — Namwali Serpell
- 2021 No One is Talking About This — Patricia Lockwood
- 2021 The Love Songs of W.E.B. Dubois — Honoree’ Fanonne Jeffers
- 2023 Biography of X — Catherine Lacey
