Eighty years ago the Manchester Guardian (as The Guardian then was) ran a poll to discover from its readers’ votes the “novelists who may be read in 2029”.
George Simmers, on his literary greatwarfiction blog, has jumped the gun by 20 years with some satirical reflections on the top five novelists in that poll.
Only another 20 years to go, and the top five are already looking shaky:
They are John Galsworthy (1,180 votes), H. G. Wells (933), Arnold Bennett (654), Rudyard Kipling (455), J. M. Barrie (286).
Umm, I read two out of five
Umm, I read two out of five of those authors before I was in high school. Wells and Kipling looking shaky? Really? Galsworthy and Bennet maybe, although I think I remember hearing something about them as I slept through college english classes.
Another interesting question is are there other authors that were writing at the same time that are still being printed/popular recommended?
Didn’t see a link in the actual post, I think this is the entry on the blog you were talkinga bout
http://greatwarfiction.wordpress.com/2009/10/12/posterity/
I just finished reading
I just finished reading Bennets’ Old Wives Tale and Kiplings’ Kim (for the third time) and both are great novels which have stood the test of time. Both are listed on the Modern Library’s 100 greatest novels of the 20th century.