The 100 best nonfiction books of all time

Robert McCrum launches the Observer’s definitive 100 works of nonfiction – key texts in English that have shaped our literary culture and made us who we are

• The 100 best novels written in English: the full list

Another book list? Yes and no. When we completed our 100 best novels in the English language last August, you did not have to be one of its fiercest critics – there were a few of those – to recognise it was still a job half done. Plainly, the English literary tradition is rich in great works of poetry and prose that are not novels. The King James Bible of 1611, for instance, is every bit as influential as the greatest novelists of the past 300 years, from Austen to Waugh. Indeed, as the 100 best novels series drew to a close, we began to wonder what a complementary list of 100 great English-language nonfiction titles might look like.

So this new list is really part of a continuing investigation, a quest for the classic titles that form the core of Anglo-American literary culture: the 100 key texts that have had a decisive influence on the shaping of the “Anglo-American imagination”, economically, socially, culturally and politically.

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