Ten of the best balls in literature

At the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the best balls in literature.

One novel on the list:

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Kitty goes to a ball prepared to perform the first quadrille with Vronsky. Tolstoy seems to know not only about her feelings of excitement, but also about the arrangement of her tulle dress over her pink slip and elaborate coiffure "surmounted by a rose and two small leaves". Everyone wants to dance with her, naturellement.

Read about the other entries on Mullan's list.

Anna Karenina also appears on Esther Freud's list top ten list of love stories, Elizabeth Kostova's list of favorite books, James Gray's list of best books, Marie Arana's list of the best books about love, Ha Jin's most important books list, Tom Perrotta's ten favorite books list, Claire Messud's list of her five most important books, Alexander McCall Smith's list of his five most important books, Mohsin Hamid's list of his ten favorite books, Louis Begley's list of favorite novels about cheating lovers, and among the top ten works of literature according to Peter Carey and Norman Mailer. John Mullan put it on his list of ten of the best births in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue