Top 5 novelists of all-time

[Batman1980]

1. J.R.R. Tolkien
2. Anne Rice
3. Michael Crichton
4. John Grisham
5. Nicholas Sparks
What do the rest of you think?

[Elandyll]

You might have wanted to specify "in English literature" I guess?

And the "of all time" seems a tad far fetched, but I guess you mean to call for people's opinion on the books they have actually read

[JJ]

I'd have to put Jules Verne in there somewhere.

[J. J. Hunsecker]

I'm a little confused by your title. Do you mean the most talented novelists of all time? The most influential? Or is it the most successful?

From the choices you listed I'd say more than a few are very successful, but mediocre, writers. They are all modern writers, too. What about the authors of classic literature like Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, Joseph Conrad, Charles Dickens, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Hardy, Ernest Hemingway, Leo Tolstoy, or Mark Twain? It's almost unconceivable that they would be left off the list, or rated behind Anne Rice and John Grisham.

[toef]

Dostoyevsky is the best.

[Jellybeans]

Charles Dickens,CS Lewis and J.K. Rowlings have to be way up there

[assydingo]

R.L. Stine

[Clark Kent]

Originally Posted by toefer

Dostoyevsky is the best.

That is my choice also for greatest novelist of all-time. Dickens would come in second. This will sound inflammatory, but Tolkien was little more than a hack who got very lucky that Dungeons and Dragons became such a predominant cultural touchstone late in the 20th century. A vastly overrated writer in modern times.