/lit/ - Literature

>>5034688
The lord of the flies is probably the most important thing that ever came out of Britain. I must bother them that all the really great writers are Irish.

HAH! I get it, its a trick question because there is none.

>>5034701
Pic relate it you

They really don't. For all their "expertise" in literature, they've never been able to come up with anything close. They've had more the 700 years of writing and nothing.

America has been around 200 something years and there's already been 3 candidates, and those are all at least 70 years old.

>>5034701
>The lord of the flies is probably the most important thing that ever came out of Britain

?

>>5034688
I'm assuming by limiting the answer to British novel you meant to exclude Canterbury Tales, Paradise Lost and Irish novels. That means I guess the obvious potential answers would be something by Dickens (Great Expectations, Bleak House, whatever) or something by Jane Austen (Sense and Sensibility or Pride and Prejudice, which get bonus points for being extra British), or Middlemarch.

If you didn't mean to exclude Irish novels then you'd probably have to throw that PoC Ulysses into the mix.

If you didn't mean to exclude epic poems then Paradise Lost is the correct answer.

Wuthering Heights

>>5034775
i limited it because people always say "great american novel" but changed it to british

>>5034750
autism

>>5034775

>Dickens
>serial works mashed together into novels
>great

yeah no

>>5034789

>>5034750

>yfw

>>5034791
I get the sense you don't know how 19th century serials worked. Do you think Dickens was paid by the word or something?

Anyway, what book would you propose?

'Well, I'm back,' he said.'

>>5034775
>Paradise Lost
>novel
pick one

>>5034802
The three best novels ever written are by a Moor, a Potato Nigger, and an Amerifat.

>>5034816
Are you retarded?

>>5034805

they were weekly instalments in newspapers weren't they? the result is that economic considerations will be at the forefront of the work rather than aesthetic or substantive considerations.

>>5034782

>>5034828

are you? its an epic poem.

>>5034832
No shit Sherlock, I identified it as such in my post.

>>5034797
>hehe
>fedora memes!!!

>>5034830
Dickens did publish in installments, either weekly or monthly, but after his first novel was complete he was already very popular. Thus he didn't have to milk one story at one paper, he could finish it as soon as he wanted and move on to another story with the same paper or another paper all-together, the guy was in high demand (at times he even ran his own paper). That's why, even though he published in installments, works like Hard Times aren't particularly long- he didn't have to milk anyone.

That's not to say publishing in installments didn't effect his work, it meant he had to make individual segments interesting as standalones, and I'm sure that encouraged him to use cliffhangers and other cheesy tricks to create dramatic tension, but the idea that his books are stretched out serial works squeezed into a volume isn't accurate.

>>5034846
>autism

Literally any novel ever published in Great Britain would be a Great British novel.

>>5034688
Class Anxiety, by Every British Author Ever.

Best contemporary British works:
Martin Amis -Money
Ian McEwan - Enduring Love
Kazuo Ishiguro - The Remains of the Day
Will Self - Umbrella
David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas (Eat shit. James Wood, Michael Silverblatt, A.S. Byatt, Michael Chabon, and Ishiguro all love Mitchell.)

>>5034870
>autism

Sons And Lovers you fucking proles

>>5034733
>>5034750
2 plebs 2 many

Hamlet probably

It seems like most of the people who ask about 'the great british novel' are Americans who don't understand that that question doesn't really make sense in terms of 'british' culture.

America has so many novels vying for the position of 'the great american novel' because America is a culture that's still trying to define itself culturally. It wants to go "yeah America has culture! look at all these great american novels!" British countries don't need to do that so much because everyone knows Britain has a literary culture. England has Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, and so on and so on. They have nothing to prove.

The other problem is that there isn't a 'British Culture' in the way Americans seem to think there is. The only people who call themselves British are the English, really, and possibly some protestant Northern Irish. A Scottish guy wouldn't say "I'm British". He'd say "I'm Scottish". I guess that's part of why even though you don't really get "the great English novelist", you do, to an extent, get people talking about "the great Scottish novelist" or poet or whatever, your Walter Scott, Rabbie Burns, etc., because Scotland is a culture that's constantly trying to define itself as distinct from England, English and 'British' culture, and is using its literary heritage to do so.

>>5036355
white teeth also

a lot of people here say it is bad, but I feel most probably haven't read it and/or think it is bad because it was written by a woman.

to be fair most of her stuff since then doesn't live up to it.

>>5036425
Is this her best? I've heard a lot about her.

>>5036385

I agree with this judgment, but lol at saying "proles" when Sons & Lovers is pretty much the definitive statement of >>5034982

>>5036436
I think it is, and I think that is somewhat of the consensus.

>>5034922
I see what you did there

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanark:_A_Life_in_Four_Books

this is interesting

Robinson Crusoe is supposed to be good.

>http://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/oct/12/features.fiction

>America getting btfo

ayyyyyyyyyy lmao

Pilgrim's Progress

>>5036425
women can't write

>>5034688
How is it not 1984?

Kazuo Ishiguro - The Unconsoled

> inb4 "invented its own category of badness"

Second Wuthering Heights

>>5037552
you, sir, are my nigga

brideshead revisited

>>5037709
homosexual detected

>oppress your neighbors to the point where they lose their language, customs and personal and economic freedoms
>their literary output massively dwarfs yours
gg sassenaigh

>>5034775
Why would you include Irish novels in a discussion about British literature? That is completely retarded.

It's like if we were talking about the best American novel and you said "assuming you exclude Mexican novels".

>>5034830
>they were weekly instalments in newspapers weren't they?

That was War and Peace. Oh, I meant Ulysses. Dumbshit.

>>5037395

Reading this right now and it's fantastic. Scottish not English, though.

>>5037738
learn some history.

>>5037395
Robinson Crusoe sucks
Wuthering Heights is great though, I support everyone saying that. Though I dunno if I'd call it a 'great British novel' in the way they talk about 'great American novels' because I get the impression that that would mean it had to represent 'British culture / values' as distinct from other countries and I'm not sure it really does. It represents a very romanticised version of a very small section of British society as it existed at a very specific point of time. Though I'm not sure a book that represents Britishness the way The Great Gatsby or whatever supposedly represents American-ness would even be possible.

>>5034737
#rekt

>>5037774
you wouldn't fucking list joyce as a british author

>>5034809
>'Well, I'm back,' he said.'
that was one fucking feelsy ending

>>5038447
Outside of those countries, no one really cares about the differences between Great Britain/United Kingdom and Ireland.

>>5038474
I care, and considering how important an understanding of Irish nationalism is to Joyce's work, you'd think you'd care too.

>>5034688
E.M. Forster

/thread/

>>5039046
Whoops, forgot title

E. M. Forster - A Passage to India

>>5037419
I just finished The Waves by Virginia Woolf, and I'd say that gets a solid nomination.

Holy shit, I just realized there really isn't one

>>5036436

Personally, I preferred On Beauty, but they're both excellent.

Fly Fishing by J. R. Hartley

the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy

There isn't one, Old World countries have a canon.

only americans do that kind of marketing

>>5034922
lel

Personally, I'd go with Sherlock Holmes.

>>5039126
U wot m8. That novel sucked donkey balls and you know it.
>Muh racial insights!

Novels by P. G. Wodehouse

>>5037419
>can't paint, can't write.

I've never really liked British people.

Without a doubt Paradise Lost

1984.

It's so great, all of Britain decided to enact it.

>>5034846
That one picture is hilarious tough.

>>5041626
Hilarious. If you're an amerifat, you should kill yourself.

>>5041632
I am not american, nyaaaaaah~

>>5037729
>whine like a nigger
>Get butt blasted when people don't call irish white

>>5037409
>"100 Greatest Novel" list on an English-language site
>8 novels written in French
>2 novels written in Russian
>the obligatory Don Quixote and Kafka
>some women/black/minority novels in English
>a few random non-English European great novels
>a few novels written in English before the nineteenth century
>60 or so novels written in English between 1800 and 1990

I guess that was to be expected.

>>5041632
Sorry I can't hear you over the sound of my AR-15 discharging.

>>5037738
I do believe Irish Writers born before 1920 were born in the United Kingdom, friend.