John Cowper Powys Thomas Hardy, and these novels are set in Somerset and Dorset, part of Hardy's mythical Wessex. American scholar Richard Maxwell describes these four novels "as remarkably successful with the reading public of his time". "Maiden Castle", the last of the Wessex novels, is set in Dorchester, Thomas Hardy's Casterbridge, and which he intended to be a "rival" to Hardy's "Mayor of Casterbridge". All the same, despite his indebtedness to the Victorian novel and his enthusiasm for Hardy and Walter Scott, as well as for lesser figures such as Ainsworth, Powys was clearly a modernist, and has affinities also with Fyodor
The Guardian's 100 Best Novels Written in English Piercy. 7. The Guardian's 100 Best Novels Written in English "The Guardians 100 best novels"' is a list of the best English-language novels as selected by Robert McCrum for "The Guardian". 1. Don Quixote Miguel De Cervantes 2. Pilgrim's Progress John Bunyan 3. Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe 4. Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift 5. Tom Jones Henry Fielding 6. Clarissa Samuel Richardson 7. Tristram Shandy Laurence Sterne 8. Dangerous Liaisons Pierre Choderlos De Laclos 9. Emma Jane Austen 10. Frankenstein Mary Shelley 11. Nightmare Abbey Thomas Love Peacock 12. The Black Sheep Honoré De Balzac 13. The Charterhouse of Parma Stendhal