Six more short novels or novellas: Transparent Things by Vladimir Nabokov, Northhanger Abbey by Jane Austen, The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon, The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, and Stanley Elkins’ collection of novellas, Searches and Seizures, especially The Bailbondsman.

Great list and great suggested additions. I’d also add Notes from the Underground (Dostoevsky) and Daisy Miller (Henry James).

Whoa, a lot is missing here…Angels and Insects by A.S. Byatt for a more modern take, but more importantly The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, The Awakening by Kate Chopin, ditto on Daisy Miller, and Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu. And Bartleby? Really?

Great list! I think I would have to add ‘The Turn of the Screw’ by Henry James (if you have people-eating Zombies from I Am Legend, you may as well throw in a ghost), although the James might take a little longer than 2 hours to get through. Another really great, less well-known, novella is Achmat Dangor’s ‘Kafka’s Curse’. There are no life-threatening beings, but a man does turn into a tree.

What about Steinbeck’s THE PEARL? That book is amazing!

I’d add Death in Venice too!

I didn’t have to read Animal Farm in high school. In fact, I didn’t have it as assigned reading in college either. This explains a lot.

@Meggg – Coyotito FTW!

Steinbeck’s “The Moon is Down” isn’t as well-known as some of his others, but is brilliant.

The problem with lists:

The Old Man and the Sea
The Awakening
Notes From Underground
Heart of Darkness
The Stranger
The Metamorphosis
The Pearl
The Call of the Wild
Nightwood
Cartesian Sonata and Other Novellas
The Body Artist
etc.

Transparent Things by Vladimir Nabokov, The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, Ship Fever by Andrea Barrett

A River Runs Through It; The Day of the Locust; The Great Gatsby

I’m surprised to see I Am Legend, and Phillip Roth on this list, and yet nothing by HP Lovecraft, or, Algernon Blackwood, whom I consider particularly adept at the novella form (and who is scandalously unknown).

Not to mention excluding Kafka’s Metamorphosis, Camus’ The Stranger (if you consider that a novella), Joyce’s The Dead, or The Bear by Faulkner.

To be fair, this is an impossible list to make with so few spots. I guess it could have been easier if you limited yourself with insanely specific constraints, like, say, “Top 10 Novellas by American authors from New York in 1968″ but that’s just impractical.

Even so, this is a pretty haphazard selection, and hard to react to, other than to just say, “Hey cool, I’ve read novellas too.”

Agreed Adrian. A lot of people haven’t read many novellas, and could use a little primer. Hence, scatter-shot list. I’ve missed some of these in the comments (something I hope to remedy soon).

Maybe not the best, but definitely the most famous.

I don’t know how to quantify the ignorance that recognized Ian McEwan as a contemporary practitioner of the novella (based on one title) and makes no mention of Jim Harrison who has been steadily writing wonderful novellas for the past two decades.

In any case shame on you and the first respondents to this cultural calumny

I second Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Dostoevsky’s Notes From Underground

A few more obvious omissions: Candide by Voltaire, The Death of Ivan Ilych by Count Tolstoy, The Dead by James Joyce, Legends of the Fall by Jim Harrison, Willy Master’s Lonesome Wife by William Gass, The Stranger by Albert Camus, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens . . .

Quick – without the aid of your Googler, someone name something written by Jim Harrison…

Which is to say, he is not a staple of literary pop-culture, talented though he may be.

Not a staple of pop culture?

Oh my.

the invention of morel from bioy casares, anyone?

Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea.

Leaf Storm, No One Writes to the Colonel, and Chronicle of a Death Foretold, by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, but he writes so beautifully you want to savor it.

The Enchanter by Nabokov.

Death in Venice and Miss Lonelyhearts belong on this list. I’d also add The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which may be my favorite novella. And what about The Old Man and the Sea?

[...] keep up.”) . . . Taylor Antrim says the novella is making a comeback, and Flavorwire rounds up some of the classics. Tags:  In the Ether SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "In the Ether", url: [...]

Graham Green “Monsignor Quixote” is exquisite

I can’t believe I forgot The Dead!

Also, not to be a complete snob, but some people might want to brush up on their definition of novella…it’s not just a “shorter novel.” The Great Gatsby is not a novella, and I would argue that Animal Farm is not either.

The Pearl should be on this list; it’s a perfect novella. Harrison doesn’t belong there, but Caldwell’s Tobacco Road does.

I’m pleased to see Erskine Caldwell recommended. God’s Little Acre is another good one. Like some other writers who were published direct to paperback, he never got the recognition he deserved and is all but forgotten now.

Isn’t Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying a novella. If it is, it should be on the list.

the stranger, metamorphosis are the best

Jim Harrison is the best novella writer of his generation. Start with “Legends of the Fall”, work up to “A Woman Lit by Fireflies” and go from there. And do understand, a novella is not a short novel – Gatsby, Day of the Locusts, Miss Lonelyhearts, The Stranger, God’s Little Acre, are genuine novels. Short novels. A novella is something different, the rarest of all literary forms.

[...] to a good movie, and at ebook prices, much less expensive.  The world is filled with lists of great novellas, but few of the novellas discussed are recent.  I won’t provide my own list other than to [...]