Who was the all-time greatest English novelist?

Not Scottish, not Irish, not Welsh, not American, not Canadian, not South African, not Australian... just English.

• Jacqueline Susann

  Ekaterina%20of%20Yuriatin

• [quote]Jacqueline Susann American, not English.

• She writes in English.

• Jackie Collins

• Conrad was Polish.

• The directions again: "Not Scottish, not Irish, not Welsh, [bold]not American,[/bold] not Canadian, not South African, not Australian... just English."

• The naive-yet-hissy OP seems to think that citizens of the United Kingdom who are of Welsh or Scottish descent somehow are less authentic than someone such as Henry James, who was always an AMERICAN novelist no matter how much his fussiness demanded a switch to British citizenship. Is your next thread going to be on the greatest English poet, but for heaven's sake leave out the Welsh and keep in T.S. Eliot? Thought so. Auden, that old cowboy American, must give you nightmares. Not a good start, OP. Are you having trouble in Ohio with your sophomore English Lit. class at East Dacron High School?

  The%20Authentic%20R1

• Conrad became a British citizen in 1886, r5, nine full years before he wrote his first novel. He wrote all of his fiction while a UK citizen and while he was living in England.

• [quote]Not a good start, OP. Are you having trouble in Ohio with your sophomore English Lit. class at East Dacron High School? I am a tenured college English professor at a well-known selective liberal arts college.

  OP

• Give it up, OP.

• He's the Powder Room Prowler, R7.

• James only became a British citizen one year before his death. And Conrad, regardless of citizenship status, considered himself Polish.

• Capella University?

• 2nd for Susann.

• My vote is for Austen Dickens wrote potboilers; critics hated him when he was alive. He's awful. And, OP? This nest of vipers will do nothing but talk trash to you. Arguing with them does little good. Trust.

  PPSM

• I voted for Woolf, but what list of English novelists leaves out Joyce? OP's idiotic caveat about the exclusion of the Welsh/Irish/Scottish notwithstanding.

• R16. Please leave Joyce out of it. Discussing him gets me into trouble, especially when some puffed up queen pretends to "get" Finnegan's Wake. :)

  PPSM

• The greatest was Laurence Sterne and I'm surprised, frankly, that PPSM doesn't know that.

• r16, your bitching makes absolutely no sense. If the OP specified "non-Irish," then Joyce is by definition excluded. And Joyce would be horrified to think anyone would ever include him on a list of English novelists... he never even went to England even once.

• These questions needed to be narrowed in focus. Best populist English novelist? Austen for sure. Best literary fiction English novelist? Woolf by a mile.

• [quote] OP seems to think that citizens of the United Kingdom who are of Welsh or Scottish descent somehow are less authentic Most Welsh and Scottish people I know see themselves as Welsh or Scottish before being part of the UK, and are very militant about it. You guys think the English are racist? Try Scotland or Wales.

• Anthony Trollope and EM Forster must rightfully take the places of Henry James and Joseph Conrad.