User:KF/Sanctuary V

100 Best Characters in Fiction Since 1900 is a list which was published in the March/April 2002 issue of Book, a U.S. magazine which discontinued publication at the end of 2003.

A panel consisting of 55 people&mdash;authors, literary agents, editors, and actors&mdash;was assigned to "rank the top one hundred characters in literature since 1900".

The magazine may have been a U.S. publication, and most of the panelists U.S. citizens, though their task was to rank characters "in literature" rather than "in U.S. literature". The panel voted in more characters by authors from the United States (55) than any other nation, followed by the United Kingdom and Ireland (29), and the rest of the world (Canada, South America, Europe, Africa, Australia, and Asia) (17).

Results

 * 1) Jay Gatsby, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925
 * 2) Holden Caulfield, The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger, 1951
 * 3) Humbert Humbert, Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov, 1955
 * 4) Leopold Bloom, Ulysses, James Joyce, 1922
 * 5) Rabbit Angstrom, Rabbit, Run, John Updike, 1960
 * 6) Sherlock Holmes, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1902
 * 7) Atticus Finch, To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee, 1960
 * 8) Molly Bloom, Ulysses, James Joyce, 1922
 * 9) Stephen Dedalus, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce, 1916
 * 10) Lily Bart, The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton, 1905
 * 11) Holly Golightly, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Truman Capote, 1958
 * 12) Gregor Samsa, The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka, 1915
 * 13) The Invisible Man, Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison, 1952
 * 14) Lolita, Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov, 1955
 * 15) Aureliano Buendia, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez, 1967
 * 16) Clarissa Dalloway, Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf, 1925
 * 17) Ignatius Reilly, A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole, 1980
 * 18) George Smiley, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, John le Carré, 1974
 * 19) Mrs. Ramsay, To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf, 1927
 * 20) Bigger Thomas, Native Son, Richard Wright, 1940
 * 21) Nick Adams, In Our Time, Ernest Hemingway, 1925
 * 22) Yossarian, Catch-22, Joseph Heller, 1961
 * 23) Scarlett O'Hara, Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell, 1936
 * 24) Scout Finch, To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee, 1960
 * 25) Philip Marlowe, The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler, 1939
 * 26) Kurtz, Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad, 1902
 * 27) Stevens, The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro, 1989
 * 28) Cosimo Piovasco di Rondo, The Baron in the Trees, Italo Calvino, 1957
 * 29) Winnie-the-Pooh, Winnie-the-Pooh, A. A. Milne, 1926
 * 30) Oskar Matzerath, The Tin Drum, Gunter Grass, 1959
 * 31) Hazel Motes, Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor, 1952
 * 32) Alex Portnoy, Portnoy's Complaint, Philip Roth, 1969
 * 33) Binx Bolling, The Moviegoer, Walker Percy, 1961
 * 34) Sebastian Flyte, Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh, 1945
 * 35) Jeeves, My Man Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse, 1919
 * 36) Eugene Henderson, Henderson the Rain King, Saul Bellow, 1959
 * 37) Marcel, Remembrance of Things Past, Marcel Proust, 1913–1927
 * 38) Toad, The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame, 1908
 * 39) The Cat in the Hat, The Cat in the Hat, Dr. Seuss, 1955
 * 40) Peter Pan, The Little White Bird, J.M. Barrie, 1902
 * 41) Augustus McCrae, Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry, 1985
 * 42) Sam Spade, The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett, 1930
 * 43) Judge Holden, Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy, 1985
 * 44) Willie Stark, All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren, 1946
 * 45) Stephen Maturin, Master and Commander, Patrick O'Brian, 1969
 * 46) The Little Prince, The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1943
 * 47) Santiago, The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway, 1952
 * 48) Jean Brodie, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark, 1961
 * 49) The Whiskey Priest, The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene, 1940
 * 50) Neddy Merrill, The Swimmer, John Cheever, 1964
 * 51) Sula Peace, Sula, Toni Morrison, 1973
 * 52) Meursault, The Stranger, Albert Camus, 1942
 * 53) Jake Barnes, The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway, 1926
 * 54) Phoebe Caulfield, The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger, 1951
 * 55) Janie Crawford, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston, 1937
 * 56) Ántonia Shimerda, My Ántonia, Willa Cather, 1918
 * 57) Grendel, Grendel, John Gardner, 1971
 * 58) Gulley Jimson, The Horse's Mouth, Joyce Cary, 1944
 * 59) Big Brother, 1984, George Orwell, 1949
 * 60) Tom Ripley, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith, 1955
 * 61) Seymour Glass, Nine Stories, J.D. Salinger, 1953
 * 62) Dean Moriarty, On the Road, Jack Kerouac, 1957
 * 63) Charlotte, Charlotte's Web, E.B. White, 1952
 * 64) T.S. Garp, The World According to Garp, John Irving, 1978
 * 65) Nick and Nora Charles, The Thin Man, Dashiell Hammett, 1934
 * 66) James Bond, Casino Royale, Ian Fleming, 1953
 * 67) Mr. Bridge, Mrs. Bridge, Evan S. Connell, 1959
 * 68) Geoffrey Firmin, Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry, 1947
 * 69) Benjy, The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner, 1929
 * 70) Charles Kinbote, Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov, 1962
 * 71) Mary Katherine Blackwood, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson, 1962
 * 72) Charles Ryder, Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh, 1945
 * 73) Claudine, Claudine at School, Colette, 1900
 * 74) Florentino Ariza, Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez, 1985
 * 75) George Follansbee Babbitt, Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis, 1922
 * 76) Christopher Tietjens, Parade's End, Ford Madox Ford, 1924–1928
 * 77) Frankie Addams, The Member of the Wedding, Carson McCullers, 1946
 * 78) The Dog of Tears, Blindness, José Saramago, 1995
 * 79) Tarzan, Tarzan of the Apes, Edgar Rice Burroughs, 1914
 * 80) Nathan Zuckerman, My Life As a Man, Philip Roth, 1979
 * 81) Arthur "Boo" Radley, To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee, 1960
 * 82) Henry Chinaski, Post Office, Charles Bukowski, 1971
 * 83) Joseph K., The Trial, Franz Kafka, 1925
 * 84) Yuri Zhivago, Dr. Zhivago, Boris Pasternak, 1957
 * 85) Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling, 1998
 * 86) Hana, The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje, 1992
 * 87) Margaret Schlegel, Howards End, E.M. Forster, 1910
 * 88) Jim Dixon, Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis, 1954
 * 89) Maurice Bendrix, The End of the Affair, Graham Greene, 1951
 * 90) Lennie Small, Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck, 1937
 * 91) Mr. Biswas, A House for Mr. Biswas, V.S. Naipaul, 1961
 * 92) Alden Pyle, The Quiet American, Graham Greene, 1955
 * 93) Kimball "Kim" O'Hara, Kim, Rudyard Kipling, 1901
 * 94) Newland Archer, The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton, 1920
 * 95) Clyde Griffiths, An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser, 1925
 * 96) Eeyore, Winnie-the-Pooh, A. A. Milne, 1926
 * 97) Quentin Compson, The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner, 1929
 * 98) Charlie Marlow, Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad, 1902
 * 99) Celie, The Color Purple, Alice Walker, 1982
 * 100) Augie March, The Adventures of Augie March, Saul Bellow, 1953