100 Best Fictional Characters Since 1900

100 Best Characters in Fiction Since 1900 From Book magazine, March/April 2002

Listen to the Talk of the Nation discussion.

1 - Jay Gatsby, The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 19252 - Holden Caulfield, The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger, 19513 - Humbert Humbert, Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov, 19554 - Leopold Bloom, Ulysses, James Joyce, 19225 - Rabbit Angstrom, Rabbit, Run, John Updike, 19606 - Sherlock Holmes, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 19027 - Atticus Finch, To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee, 19608 - Molly Bloom, Ulysses, James Joyce, 19229 - Stephen Dedalus, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce, 191610 - Lily Bart, The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton, 190511- Holly Golightly, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Truman Capote, 195812 - Gregor Samsa, The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka, 191513 - The Invisible Man, Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison, 195214 - Lolita, Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov, 195515 - Aureliano Buendia, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 196716 - Clarissa Dalloway, Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf, 192517 - Ignatius Reilly, A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole, 198018 - George Smiley, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, John LeCarre, 197419 - Mrs. Ramsay, To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf, 192720 - Bigger Thomas, Native Son, Richard Wright, 194021 - Nick Adams, In Our Time, Ernest Hemingway, 192522 - Yossarian, Catch-22, Joseph Heller, 196123 - Scarlett O'Hara, Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell, 193624 - Scout Finch, To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee, 196025 - Philip Marlowe, The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler, 193926 - Kurtz, Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad, 190227 - Stevens, The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro, 198928 - Cosimo Piovasco di Rondo, The Baron in the Trees, Italo Calvino, 195729 -Winnie the Pooh, Winnie the Pooh, A.A. Milne, 192630 - Oskar Matzerath, The Tin Drum, Gunter Grass, 195931 - Hazel Motes, Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor, 195232 - Alex Portnoy, Portnoy's Complaint, Philip Roth, 196933 - Binx Bolling, The Moviegoer, Walker Percy, 196134 - Sebastian Flyte, Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh, 194535 - Jeeves, My Man Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse, 191936 - Eugene Henderson, Henderson the Rain King, Saul Bellow, 195937 - Marcel, Remembrance of Things Past, Marcel Proust, 1913-192738 - Toad, The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame, 190839 - The Cat in the Hat, Dr. Seuss, 195540 - Peter Pan, The Little White Bird, J.M. Barrie, 190241 - Augustus McCrae, Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry, 198542 - Sam Spade, The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett, 193043 - Judge Holden, Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy, 198544 - Willie Stark, All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren, 194645 - Stephen Maturin, Master and Commander, Patrick O'Brian, 196946 - The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, 194347 - Santiago, The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway, 195248 - Jean Brodie, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark, 196149 - The Whiskey Priest, The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene, 194050 - Neddy Merrill, The Swimmer, John Cheever, 196451 - Sula Peace, Sula, Toni Morrison, 197352 - Meursault, The Stranger, Albert Camus, 194253 - Jake Barnes, The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway, 192654 - Phoebe Caulfield, The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger, 195155 - Janie Crawford, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston, 193756 - Antonia Shimerda, My Antonia, Willa Cather, 191857 - Grendel, Grendel, John Gardner, 197158 - Gulley Jimson, The Horse's Mouth, Joyce Cary, 194459 - Big Brother, 1984, George Orwell, 194960 - Tom Ripley, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith, 195561 - Seymour Glass, Nine Stories, J.D. Salinger, 195362 - Dean Moriarty, On the Road, Jack Kerouac, 195763 - Charlotte, Charlotte's Web, E.B. White, 195264 - T.S. Garp, The World According to Garp, John Irving, 197865 - Nick and Nora Charles, The Thin Man, Dashiell Hammett, 193466 - James Bond, Casino Royale, Ian Fleming, 195367 - Mr. Bridge, Mrs. Bridge, Evan S. Connell, 195968 - Geoffrey Firmin, Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry, 194769 - Benjy, The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner, 192970 - Charles Kinbote, Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov, 196271 - Mary Katherine Blackwood, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson, 196272 - Charles Ryder, Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh, 194573 - Claudine, Claudine at School, Colette, 190074 - Florentino Ariza, Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 198575 - George Follansbee Babbitt, Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis, 192276 - Christopher Tietjens, Parade's End, Ford Madox Ford, 1924-2877 - Frankie Addams, The Member of the Wedding, Carson McCullers, 194678 - The Dog of Tears, Blindness, Jose Saramago, 199579 - Tarzan, Tarzan of the Apes, Edgar Rice Burroughs, 191480 - Nathan Zuckerman, My Life As a Man, Philip Roth, 197981 - Arthur "Boo" Radley, To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee, 196082 - Henry Chinaski, Post Office, Charles Bukowski, 197183 - Joseph K. The Trial, Franz Kafka, 192584 - Yuri Zhivago, Dr. Zhivago, Boris Pasternak, 195785 - Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, J.K. Rowling, 199886 - Hana, The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje, 199287 - Margaret Schlegel, Howards End, E.M. Forster, 191088 - Jim Dixon, Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis, 195489 - Maurice Bendrix, The End of the Affair, Graham Greene, 195190 - Lennie Small, Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck, 193791 - Mr. Biswas, A House for Mr. Biswas, V.S. Naipaul, 196192 - Alden Pyle, The Quiet American, Graham Greene, 195593 - Kimball "Kim" O'Hara, Kim, Rudyard Kipling, 190194 - Newland Archer, The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton, 192095 - Clyde Griffiths, An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser, 192596 - Eeyore, Winnie the Pooh, A.A. Milne, 192697 - Quentin Compson, The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner, 192998 - Charlie Marlow, Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad, 190299 - Celie, The Color Purple, Alice Walker, 1982100 - Augie March, The Adventures of Augie March, Saul Bellow 1953

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