Dickens, Austen slighted on net.book-rec list?

Submitted by birdie on October 16, 2006 - 2:10pm
Topic: 
Electronic Publications

David Rothman writes "The works of Charles Dickens and Jane Austen are AWOL from the first half of a somewhat bizarre list of the best 19th century books found on the Net. A Kate Chopin title is the first book on the list. More at TeleRead."

Comments

Submitted by msbailey on October 16, 2006 - 5:15pm.

The list contains only those works listed in Peter Boxall's book "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die" that the blogger could find freely available in full text on the Internet. The full list from the book is here:

http://www.listology.com/content_show.cfm/content_ id.22845/Bookslistology.com>

It has 10 Dickens books and 6 by Austen. Furthermore, the list is in order of publication, not order of preference or "greatness".

Submitted by David Rothman on October 16, 2006 - 8:51pm.

Appreciated your followup to my item. I did make clear the "available on the Net" factor. Also, it would have been nice if the actual published list in the "Best" blog had made clear the reason for the order (or did I miss something?). I'm also wondering if the list really reflects order of publication. For example, Kate Chopin published in the late 19th century. Wait. Maybe the publication order is in reverse. At any rate, I certainly would have organized the listings differently to be more helpful to readers.

Meanwhile many thanks for the link. Alas, at least for now, the link isn't working. Hmmm. Is thislistology.com> the right link?

David
(Delighted to see "The Plot against America" included in the 20th century list)

Submitted by David Rothman on October 16, 2006 - 9:08pm.

Just to make clear that while I would have done the list differently in this case, I really like the Best Media in Life Is Free Blog. Meanwhile I've dropped a friendly note to the blogger (via the blog's comment area) to suggest an explanation of the list order. - David