What are some really great novels written in English few people know about?

Well, that depends on what kind of people. But I will go with the general public.

Let me start with perhaps the greatest novelist that few people know, the Canadian Robertson Davies, who should have won the Nobel Prize in Literature if those Swedish nitwits had any taste. Start with The Deptford Trilogy, one of the great achievements in English fiction. Then read anything else you can get your hands on.

Another underappreciated writer is Anthony Powell, whose 12 novel cycle, A Dance To The Music Of Time, is another of the great achievements in 20th century fiction in English. Mesmerizing. I zoomed though the 12 volumes (4 fat paperbacks) in record time. If you like the sort of thing that used to be on Masterpiece Theater, this is one for you.

A third is perhaps the funniest novel in English, Stella Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm. I’ve read it numerous time, and it still sends me into laughter. It is also one of the best books to read when you are feeling down. Flora Poste, the main character, organizes the world around her and makes it right, and gives you the feeling that you can as well.

A little gem from a contemporary of Jane Austen is Thomas Love Peacock’s Nightmare Abbey, a very funny parody of Romantics of the late 18th and early 19th century. The better you know the romantics, the funnier it is. It was published in the same year as Austen’s Northanger Abbey, her parody of the Gothic novel.

by Direct_Tale4499