While I was looking something up this morning, I came across a very interesting article posted by the U.K. newspaper The Independent. It’s a list of the top 100 favorite fictional characters of all time, as chosen by some prominent people in the British literary world.
I’m happy to report that I knew a majority of the characters on the list, and was pleased to see the inclusion of several of my own personal favorites such as Tom Jones, Emma Bovary, Becky Sharp, Jane Eyre, Elizabeth Bennett, and even Dick Diver from Tender is the Night. I wholeheartedly agree that these characters all deserve a place on the list.
However, there were also a bunch of characters that I’d never heard of before, including newspaper man John Dyson from Towards the End of the Morning, pub-crawler Mike from a story called “The Day We Got Drunk on Cake”, and long term care insurance salesman George Bowling from Coming Up For Air.
Not only have I never heard of these characters before, I’ve never heard of the works they appear in either.
However, since people have chosen them as some of the best fictional characters around, I’m thinking I ought to give these novels and short stories a look at some point in the near future here…!