Saturday, May 27, 2017

The forty greatest villains in literature

One title on ShortList's roundup of literature's forty greatest villains:
Uriah Heep (David Copperfield) by Charles Dickens (1850)

Another of Dickens' dastardly villains, Uriah Heep is perhaps the most cloying of all of them, being patronising and insincere whilst using manipulation to hide his true motivation: pure greed. Employing blackmail, fraud and treachery to gain control of the Wickfield Fortune, Heep's character is so ubiquitous that paragons of virtue such as Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson have been compared to him. A vile villain from the master of vile villains.
Read about the other entries on the list.

David Copperfield is among Siri Hustvedt's six favorite books, Janet Davey’s top ten schoolchildren in fiction, Frank Rich's top ten books, John Boyne's top ten child narrators, Lynn Shepherd's top ten fictional drownings and Elizabeth Gilbert's six favorite books. It appears on John Mullan's lists of ten of the best seductions in literature, ten of the best trips to Canterbury in literature and ten of the best valets in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue