The 30+ Best Southern Novels of All Time (As Voted by Scholars)

On February 16, 2025 By newsroom Topic: Best Books

These were the top southern novels, as voted for in a poll of 134 scholars. 

 

Absalom
All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren (80 votes)
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (64 votes)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (58 votes)
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (57 votes)
The Moviegoer by Walker Percy (55 votes)
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner (52 votes)
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (47 votes)
Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor (44 votes)
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (41 votes)
The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Light in August by William Faulkner
A Death in the Family by James Agee
Look Homeward
Beloved by Toni Morrison
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Native Son by Richard Wright
The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty
Suttree by Cormac McCarthy
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Go Down
The Golden Apples by Eudora Welty
Cane by Jean Toomer
The Known World by Edward P. Jones
The Last Gentleman by Walker Percy
Deliverance by James Dickey
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines
The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron
Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison
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