The Guardian newspaper asked 170 novelists, critics and academics for their top 10 works of fiction, ranked in order. Five of the 100 were novels by Virginia Woolf.

Woolf scholar Vara Neverow shared this information via the VWoolf Listserv, and Emilia Castellucci, membership secretary for the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain, passed it on to members.

Here are Woolf’s five novels that made The Guardian list:

• Jacob’s Room (#90 of 100)
• The Waves (55)
• Orlando (54)
• Mrs Dalloway (14) and
• To the Lighthouse (4).

Comparison to previous poll years

The Guardian ran similar polls in 2003 and 2015, and here is what has changed.

• More female writers made the list. Thirty-six out of 100 this year,  compared with 21 in 2015 and a paltry 16 in 2003
• Of women writers, only Jane Austen’s Emma and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein made the top 10 of both previous lists. This year, Emma was number 13 and Frankenstein number 30.

Which novel made the top of the list this year? It is Middlemarch by George Eliot, one of Woolf’s favorites. Of it, she said:

the magnificent book […] with all its imperfections is one of the few English novels written for grown-up people’

Stephen King, David Nicholls, Bernardine Evaristo, Salman Rushdie, Anne Enright, Yiyun Li, Elif Shafak, Ian McEwan, Maggie O’Farrell, Colm Tóibín, Lorrie Moore and Katherine Rundell were among those polled. All were asked for their top 10, ranked in order. Any book published in English, but originally written in any language, was eligible.