We asked you on our Facebook page who your favourite British author was? As always you answered in your droves and with a huge range of authors being mentioned.
Over 100 different writers received a mention but here are the top ten British authors as voted by you.
I don’t suppose it comes as much of a surprise to discover that J.K. Rowling topped our poll with half as many votes again as the second placed author.
In second place with 69 votes is classic author Jane Austen.
You placed the wonderful Agatha Christie third, her characters and tales have stood the test of time and are as adored as much today as when first published.
Charles Dickens comes in at number four, I cannot imagine there are many of us who haven’t read at least one of his novels.
Three for the price of one next; The Bronte Sisters received a combined 30 votes.
Awww I’m so pleased Mr Terry Pratchett appears in our top ten. 28 of you chose him as your favourite British Author.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is your number eight choice. Sherlock Holmes has been reincarnated so many times he’s become his own phenomenon, suffice to say he never once said, “Elementary dear Watson.”
And scraping into to our top ten is.. William Shakespeare; we owe so much of our modern language to this man as he coined many of the words we use today.
The next ten authors, in the order of nomination are:
Neil Gaiman
Thomas Hardy
P.D. James
George Orwell
Enid Blyton
Jeffrey Archer
Ian Rankin
Oscar Wilde
Alexander McCall Smith
Lee Child
I hope you found your favourite British author amongst those listed above. If not let us know in the comments, we always love to hear from you.
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I am an American whose top ten favorite authors include 5 British authors in the top 5 slots.
1 – Barry Unsworth
2 – John LeCarre
3 – William Golding
4 – Graham Greene
5 – Charles Dickens
and Jim Crace ain’t bad either.
For me, the British are the best writers in the world.
Ruth Rendell and Sue Townsend
No Kipling? No Delderfield? What is wrong with you people?
Out of those that are mentioned, I didn’t see Kenneth Graham. Author of the Wind and the Willows. He’s one of my favorites too.
So where are EM Forster, George Elliot and AA Milne?
Malcolm Saville
Susan Cooper
Philippa Pearce
Leon Garfield
John Connolly
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Noel Streatfield
Joan Aiken
Beatrix Potter
Michelle Magorian
Where is Douglas Adams? I adored that man – a little piece of me died when he passed.
Roald Dahl!
Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse!
Rudyard Kipling!
Although Kipling was a colonial, racist, imperialist twat…
Elizabeth Chadwick, Sheri Holman, Morgan Llywelyn, Ian Morson, Alan Gordon, Peter Tremayne, Edward Rutherfurd, Rory Clark, Norman Davies, Bryan Sykes, Ariana Franklin, Daphne du Maurier, Kate Mosse, Victoria Holt/Jean Plaidy, Bill Bryson, The Medieval Murderers, Imogene Robertson, Anne Perry, Peter Mayle, Valerie Anand. How is that for additional authors?
Georgette Heyer, Ellis Peters,, Anthony Buckeridge, Geoffrey Trease
JK Rowling above Shakespeare. Good Grief.
We really ought to include the writers of the “Beano” then, since they too are British.
Rudyard Kipling (and to the person above who claimed he was “racist”, you have quite obviously either never read or utterly failed to understand anything he ever wrote. “Racist” my Aunt Fanny. You, sir, are a “politically correct” ignoramus.
Leslie Thomas.
EM Forster
Robert Harris
George MacDonald Fraser
Sir Henry Rider Haggard
Graham Greene
RD Wingfield
Conn İggulden
George Orwell
Colin Dexter
Michael Dodds
Bernard Cornwell
Frederick Forsyth
John Le Carre, Dorothy L Sayers, Anthony Trollope, Joanna Trollope, Len Deighton, CP Snow, Mary Wesley, Nancy Mitford, RF Delderfield, JB Priestly and Oscar Wilde. Many more but blank mind
A disappointing list, full of predictable – mostly dead – British writers. Not that I don’t think many of them are great but what about a list of contemporary British writers? I must have been thinking along those lines snd fully expected to find the likes of McEwan, Barnes, Zadie Smith and Ali Smith on your list.
I’ve been on a Jasper Fforde kick recently.