BBC's 100 Most Inspiring Novels

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 5th of November 2019, the BBC's 100 Most Inspiring Novels list arrived with a deliberately personal brief. Six writers and critics had been asked not to name the greatest novels ever written. They were tasked, instead, with choosing English language novels that had made a genuine impact on their own lives. The BBC published the resulting 100 titles to kick off a year of celebrating literature. The list quickly drew comment from critics and news organizations on multiple continents. Behind the project was an occasion 300 years in the making.

• 2. The Six Selectors

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  Stig Abell, Mariella Frostrup, Juno Dawson, Kit de Waal, Alexander McCall Smith, and Syima Aslam composed the panel of six. The Canadian broadcaster CBC characterized the group as "writers, curators and critics." The list commemorated the 300th anniversary of Robinson Crusoe, published in 1719, a novel many regard as the progenitor of English-language fiction. Robinson Crusoe itself, the book whose anniversary prompted the project, did not appear among the 100 chosen titles. The panel grouped their selections into ten thematic categories, each containing exactly ten works. The categories bore names like Identity, Adventure, and Class & Society. Each category contained novels separated by decades, sometimes by more than a century.

• 3. Frankenstein to Homegoing

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  In "Life, Death & Other Worlds," Mary Shelley's Frankenstein from 1818 appeared in the same grouping as Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, which began in 1983. Two works 165 years apart shared a single thematic bracket. The "Coming of Age" category spanned nearly a century. L. M. Montgomery's Emily of New Moon from 1923 sat beside Claire Adam's Golden Child, published in 2019, the same year as the list.

  "Love, Sex & Romance" reached back to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice from 1813. James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room from 1956 and Judy Blume's Forever... from 1975 also appeared in that category. The "Politics, Power & Protest" category brought together Aldous Huxley's Brave New World from 1932 and Kamila Shamsie's Home Fire from 2017. Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird from 1960 appeared there as well. Toni Morrison's Beloved from 1987 appeared in the Identity category. Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart from 1958 and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun from 2006 were also there. Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing, published in 2016 and listed under Identity, added a Ghanaian-American perspective to that grouping.

• 4. A Divided Reception

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  CBC News, the Canadian broadcaster, was among the international outlets to examine the list through a national lens. It sought to identify which Canadian authors had earned a place. The Nigerian news website Legit.ng did the same for Nigerian writers. The Guardian, meanwhile, noted the titles that had been left out. Moby-Dick, the Herman Melville novel first published in 1851, was among the omissions the newspaper described as surprising. Writing in The Daily Telegraph, the critic Jake Kerridge was more pointed. He called the list "a short-sighted list that will please nobody." Melville was not entirely absent from the hundred titles: his Bartleby the Scrivener, from 1853, appeared in the Rule Breakers category.