100 Best Characters in Fiction Since 1900Book Magazine, now defunct, compiled a panel of 55 authors, literary agents, editors, and actors in 2002 to “rank the top one hundred characters in literature since 1900.”
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- Jay Gatsby / The Great Gatsby (1925) / F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Holden Caulfield / The Catcher in the Rye(1951) / J.D. Salinger
- Humbert Humbert / Lolita (1955) / Vladimir Nabokov
- Leopold Bloom / Ulysses (1922) / James Joyce
- Rabbit Angstrom / Rabit, Run (1960) / John Updike
- Sherlock Holmes / The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) / Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- Atticus Finch / To Kill A Mockingbird (1960) / Harper Lee
- Molly Bloom / Ulysses (1922) / James Joyce
- Stephen Dedalus / Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) / James Joyce
- Lily Bart / The House of Mirth (1905) / Edith Wharton
- Holly Golightly / Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958) / Truman Capote
- Gregor Samsa / The Metamorphosis (1915) / Franz Kafka
- The Invisible Man / Invisible Man (1952) / Ralph Ellison
- Lolita / Lolita (1955) / Vladimir Nabokov
- Aureliano Buendia / One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) / Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- Clarissa Dalloway / Mrs. Dalloway (1925) / Virginia Woolf
- Ignatius Reilly / A Confederacy of Dunces(1980) / John Kennedy Toole
- George Smiley / Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy(1974) / John LeCarre
- Mrs. Ramsay / To the Lighthouse (1927) / Virginia Woolf
- Bigger Thomas / Native Son (1940) / Richard Wright
- Nick Adams / In Our Time (1925) / Ernest Hemingway
- Yossarian / Catch-22 (1961) / Joseph Heller
- Scarlett O'Hara / Gone With the Wind (1936) / Margaret Mitchell
- Scout Finch / To Kill A Mockingbird (1960) / Harper Lee
- Philip Marlowe / The Big Sleep (1939) / Raymond Chandler
- Kurtz / Heart of Darkness (1902) / Joseph Conrad
- Stevens / The Remains of the Day(1989) / Kazuo Ishiguro
- Cosimo Piovasco di Rondo / The Baron in the Trees (1957) / Italo Calvino
- Winnie the Pooh / Winnie the Pooh (1926) / A.A. Milne
- Oskar Matzerath / The Tin Drum (1959) / Gunter Grass
- Hazel Motes / Wise Blood (1952) / Flannery O'Connor
- Alex Portnoy / Portnoy's Complaint (1969) / Philip Roth
- Binx Bolling / The Moviegoer (1961) / Walker Percy
- Sebastian Flyte / Brideshead Revisited (1945) / Evelyn Waugh
- Jeeves / My Man Jeeves (1919) / P.G. Wodehouse
- Eugene Henderson / Henderson the Rain King(1959) / Saul Bellow
- Marcel / Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927) / Marcel Proust
- Toad / The Wind in the Willows(1908) / Kenneth Grahame
- The Cat in the Hat / The Cat in the Hat (1955) / Dr. Seuss
- Peter Pan / The Little White Bird (1902) / J.M. Barrie
- Augustus McCrae / Lonesome Dove (1985) / Larry McMurtry
- Sam Spade / The Maltese Falcon (1930) / Dashiell Hammett
- Judge Holden / Blood Meridian (1985) / Cormac McCarthy
- Willie Stark / All the King's Men (1946) / Robert Penn Warren
- Stephen Maturin / Master and Commander(1969) / Patrick O'Brian
- The Little Prince / The Little Prince (1943) / Antoine de Saint-Exupery
- Santiago / The Old Man and the Sea(1952) / Ernest Hemingway
- Jean Brodie / The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961) / Muriel Spark
- The Whiskey Priest / The Power and the Glory(1940) / Graham Greene
- Neddy Merrill / The Swimmer (1964) / John Cheever
- Sula Peace / Sula (1973) / Toni Morrison
- Meursault / The Stranger (1942) / Albert Camus
- Jake Barnes / The Sun Also Rises (1926) / Ernest Hemingway
- Phoebe Caulfield / The Catcher in the Rye(1951) / J.D. Salinger
- Janie Crawford / Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) / Zora Neale Hurston
- Antonia Shimerda / My Antonia (1918) / Willa Cather
- Grendel / Grendel (1971) / John Gardner
- Gulley Jimson / The Horse's Mouth (1944) / Joyce Cary
- Big Brother / 1984 (1949) / George Orwell
- Tom Ripley / The Talented Mr. Ripley(1955) / Patricia Highsmith
- Seymour Glass / Nine Stories (1953) / J.D. Salinger
- Dean Moriarty / On the Road (1957) / Jack Kerouac
- Charlotte / Charlotte's Web (1952) / E.B. White
- T.S. Garp / The World According to Garp (1978) / John Irving
- Nick and Nora Charles / The Thin Man (1934) / Dashiell Hammett
- James Bond / Casino Royale (1953) / Ian Fleming
- Mr. Bridge / Mrs. Bridge (1959) / Evan S. Connell
- Geoffrey Firmin / Under the Volcano (1947) / Malcolm Lowry
- Benjy / The Sound and the Fury(1929) / William Faulkner
- Charles Kinbote / Pale Fire (1962) / Vladimir Nabokov
- Mary Katherine Blackwood / We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962) / Shirley Jackson
- Charles Ryder / Brideshead Revisited (1945) / Evelyn Waugh
- Claudine / Claudine at School (1900) / Colette
- Florentino Ariza / Love in the Time of Cholera(1985) / Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- George Follansbee Babbitt / Babbitt (1922) / Sinclair Lewis
- Christopher Tietjens / Parade's End (1924-28) / Ford Madox Ford
- Frankie Addams / The Member of the Wedding(1946) / Carson McCullers
- The Dog of Tears / Blindness (1995) / Jose Saramago
- Tarzan / Tarzan of the Apes (1914) / Edgar Rice Burroughs
- Nathan Zuckerman / My Life As a Man (1979) / Philip Roth
- Arthur "Boo" Radley / To Kill A Mockingbird (1960) / Harper Lee
- Henry Chinaski / Post Office (1971) / Charles Bukowski
- Joseph K. / The Trial (1925) / Franz Kafka
- Yuri Zhivago / Dr. Zhivago (1957) / Boris Pasternak
- Harry Potter / Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (1998) / J.K. Rowling
- Hana / The English Patient (1992) / Michael Ondaatje
- Margaret Schlegel / Howards End (1910) / E.M. Forster
- Jim Dixon / Lucky Jim (1954) / Kingsley Amis
- Maurice Bendrix / The End of the Affair (1951) / Graham Greene
- Lennie Small / Of Mice and Men (1937) / John Steinbeck
- Mr. Biswas / A House for Mr. Biswas(1961) / V.S. Naipaul
- Alden Pyle / The Quiet American (1955) / Graham Greene
- Kimball "Kim" O'Hara / Kim (1901) / Rudyard Kipling
- Newland Archer / The Age of Innocence (1920) / Edith Wharton
- Clyde Griffiths / An American Tragedy (1925) / Theodore Dreiser
- Eeyore / Winnie the Pooh (1926) / A.A. Milne
- Quentin Compson / The Sound and the Fury(1929) / William Faulkner
- Charlie Marlow / Heart of Darkness (1902) / Joseph Conrad
- Celie / The Color Purple (1982) / Alice Walker
- Augie March / The Adventures of Augie March (1953) / Saul Bellow
