Creating the Greatest Literature of All Time list
What's different about our lists • How are works selected? • The biggest shift • The rest of our lists
Updated: August 24, 2025
What's different about our lists
We like to say our Greatest Literature of All Time lists are handcrafted.
That is, they aren't just the product of popularity polls, aggregations of other lists, or blind algorithms. Lists created those ways can be fun and interesting but are usually less than comprehensive. They can also leave you feeling the people (or machines!) who put them together don't really know the literary works they are listing, nor their significance in their times and places.
To be fair, our Greatest Literature lists are also informed by polls, aggregations and algorithms. But the core of our research has come from consultations with readers, writers, critics and scholars. From curricula reading lists. From reviews. From sales. From critical studies. From literary awards. And, of course, by personal reading—lots and lots of reading.
All these sources—and more—have helped us as we've delved into every form of writing, every genre, every local literature, every era and every culture we can think of.
In short, The Greatest Literature of All Time is an amalgam of many different perspectives on literature. Somehow we've shaped all this information and opinion into lists that reflect—as well as possible—the consensus of the world's readers, writers, critics and scholars.
Differences from other best literature lists may quickly become apparent.
While others claim to be "of all time", most are overwhelmingly focused on the modern or postmodern era with a few obvious classics from earlier times thrown in.
Many aim to deal in "world literature" but are stuck on the Western canon, especially on works originally written in English.
Many disdain writing outside the literary mainstream, ignoring works of supposedly inferior genres except for a few widely known titles. On the opposite hand many lists are really popularity contests, focused only on bestselling and famous titles, bypassing great works not widely known across all categories of literature lovers.
Don't get me wrong. Our Greatest Literature of All Time lists do present plenty of modern, English-language titles, both mainstream and popular. But they also offer many more titles that may be less known, or unknown, in any given reading circles but are worthy of the "greatest" accolade.
Of course, one person's greatest-ever book may be another's not-so-great work. (See "What does 'greatest' even mean?") Despite our efforts to get the widest possible consensus, literary evaluations are always partially subjective. So if you see a title ypou hate on one of our Greatest lists, be aware it is on the list because a significant number of readers, writers, critics or scholars must think it's terrific. You are free to disagree with them. I often do.
Note also, The Greatest Literature of All Time is not engraved in stone. Actually, some of it is—literally—but the point I'm making is that the Greatest list remains open to revision.
New great works are always being discovered and assessments of older works continue to evolve—without abandoning the enduring judgments of the ages.
That's partly why our flagship list has 999 entries, rather than a rounder number. It is purposely unfinished to imply the list is perpetually incomplete.
How are works selected?
We'll start with that flagship list. The short answer is they are chosen from a huge database of works, based on the claimed consensus mentioned above.
But to get a better idea, let's look at the history and development of the list's creation.
As the main compiler of The Greatest Literature of All Time, I have personally read fewer than half the works on the completed list. I'm still working on it. There are obviously too many books on this list for one person to know well. Just to get the number of works on the list down to 999, many thousands of works had to be assessed—more than could be read in any one lifetime. And please don't begrudge me the time to read all those other books, stories, plays, poems and other literary productions that can catch a reader's fancy—all the works that anyone who loves literature ends up reading, regardless of whether the titles are candidates for a "greatest" list.
About three decades ago, to come up with an initial list I consulted hundreds of sources: critical studies, bibliographies, companions to literature, literary histories, handbooks, catalogues, literary prizes, reviews, scholarly works, and the like. I even contacted experts and other readers directly to get recommendations. I sought what well-read people considered the most important works from different parts of the world and from different time periods.
This long process resulted in my first Greatest Literature list. I published it online in 1999. (Actually it had appeared few years earlier on tractor-fed printer paper, plastered across an office wall where I worked. But that's another story.)
After posting that first researched list online, I set to work putting together a separate database of other lists of "top", "best", "favourite" or "must-read-before-you-die" literary works—found both online and in print—as well as reading lists of major educational institutions, appearances in anthologies, and results of literary awards. Some of these sources focused on modern works, some on classic works and some on works from specific periods. Some featured all forms of literature while others focused on novels, stories, plays or poetry. They ranged in length from a handful to a thousand-plus items each. Some were themselves compiled from the votes of many readers or reviewers, while others were the more idiosyncratic product of individual writers and critics.
With this database, a points system was devised, assigning values to works based on their placement on the contributing lists, as well as on the age, breadth, authority and other factors of the sources. This resulted in what I considered a consensus list.
In case you're curious, the top twenty entries on that first consensus list were:
- Don Quixote
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
- Lolita
- Nineteen Eighty-Four
- Madame Bovary
- In Search of Lost Time
- Gulliver's Travels
- Anna Karenina
- Middlemarch
- Ulysses
- War and Peace
- Moby Dick
- Hamlet
- The Brothers Karamazov
- The Great Gatsby
- Tristram Shandy
- One Hundred Years of Solitude
- The Portrait of a Lady
- Frankenstein
- Pride and Prejudice
While few would disagree with any of these titles appearing on a list of greatest-ever literary works, this initial ranking may give you pause. All these works, except Hamlet, were novels. Most were from the past two centuries. Almost all came from Europe and America.
However, this consensus list was never meant to completely replace the titles on the original researched list. Rather, amalgamating the two held the promise of getting the best of both approaches.
So, over several years the posted Greatest Literature list was crafted and re-crafted. Titles were added and subtracted based on the ever-growing consensus database, as well as on the researched views of readers, authors, critics and academics, who continued to be consulted.
Decisions were not always easy, especially when the consensus and research opinions differed widely. Take a work low in the consensus rankings but championed in one corner of experts. Was it an unfairly neglected great work or was it just the darling of a few critics or academics with limited public appeal? Conversely, was a widely popular book worthy despite the disdain of professionals?
Judgments were made and revised editions of The Greatest Literature of All Time continued to appear, containing all the works that at the time were widely accepted as being among the greatest, along with many just-as-great works that may have been less known across the broad spectrum but were treasured by respected sources or beloved by readers in various parts of the world. Updates continued to be based on both new research and changing consensus, with maybe twenty titles (about two percent of the list) changing annually.
The biggest shift
After a few years the list seemed to have settled into a state of relative stability. Minor tweaking was ongoing, but overall it seemed to be a complete and accurate summary of great literature that would endure.
But then we were struck by an earthquake.
For some time a shift away from the old idea of the male and white-dominated "Western Canon" as the backbone of the world's great literature had been taking place. Since the first formulation of the Greatest Literature list in the 1990s we had always made an effort to bring in diverse writers and their deserving works.
But now from the world at large came a more insistent clamouring for more works by women, more voices from different cultures, and more writing from different parts of the world.
Previously overlooked works from outside the modern and classical Anglo-American-European nexus were increasingly being recognized. New and recent writing from around the world was rising to prominence in the public conversation. Minority and culturally diverse authors were being heralded as never before.
Accordingly, the Greatest Literature list (and its offshoot Greatest lists) continued to change and grow more rapidly year by year, culminating in in the early 2020s with its most widespread redactions since the list began.
Meanwhile, more twenty-first century works were also beginning to be recognized and a few older works whose lustre had faded—largely from the over-represented twentieth century—were falling away.
In all, up to fifteen percent of the list changed over a three-year period. That's about 150 of our 999 titles. And the trend continues, albeit at a slower pace.
Now, to be sure, "dead white guys" are still well represented on the list. They probably still make up the majority of authors. Most of the formerly greatest works of literature are still counted among the currently greatest works—as confirmed in our ongoing research.
Also, to be clear, diverse authors added to the list are there because they deserve to be—so judged by today's readers, writers, critics and scholars.
The database from which we draw our choices for the Greatest Literature list now comprises about twelve thousand titles and incorporates more than four hundred other lists, anthologies, curricula, awards and other sources—as well as countless individual suggestions from avid readers and experts. And it's still growing.
We do not know what new writers may win admiration nor how evaluations of past authors may develop in the years to come. But we can be sure there will be changes to the The Greatest Literature of All Time. If you are citing the list for your own research purposes, be sure to note the date on which the page was retrieved.
The rest of our lists
At some point during the continual revisions to our Greatest Literature of All Time list, it became apparent many readers were interested primarily in novels. Others were fans mainly of short stories. A subset of readers loved poetry or drama.
They could just pick their favourite types of writing from the 999 entries on the Greatest Literature list, but we wanted to offer something more. So we set about crafting lists to provide guidance to readers in each of the literary forms.
We went back to our extensive database to get additional recommendations and we sought new sources focusing on specific literary forms. More titles for our growing database of great works. We came up with more titles in each category than could be found on the original Greatest list.
Using the same criteria that shaped that first list, we created The Greatest Novels of All Time. This was eventually followed by Greatest lists for novellas, stories, plays, poetry and other kinds of publications. All used both our previously accumulated research and widely sought new sources.
Inevitably, using the same approach, we moved on to creating Greatest lists for genre writing, starting with historical fiction, crime and mysteries, science fiction and fantasy.
And then we began crafting Greatest lists for individual countries and regions. This particular extension of our mandate probably required the biggest investment of time and the widest expansion of our literary knowledge since the Greatest Literature site was founded. Again we were not satisfied to simply pluck the relevant titles from our already established database. We investigated the literature of each area anew—to find many more works that are acclaimed by the readers, writers, critics and scholars of the world's diverse people and cultures.
Several other kinds of lists have also appeared on the Greatest Literature of All Time site and more are scheduled. Yours to discover.
Together these Greatest lists present way, way, way too many works for any one reader to handle. But we hope they offer you enough choices of great literature to appreciate the rest of your life, whatever your reading interests.
— Eric
