Top ten conservative novels

Kate Macdonald is the author of Novelists Against Social Change: Conservative Popular Fiction, 1920-1960.

One of her top ten conservative novels, as shared at the Guardian:

Gaudy Night (1935) by Dorothy L Sayers

Sayers’ unquestioning acceptance of the social hierarchy, and her passion for Lord Peter Wimsey’s background and social assumptions make her a conservative novelist. Gaudy Night, a great feminist novel, also advocates the conservative status quo. The servants’ loyalty to the college is a metaphor for loyalty to a feudal society, even if the dons wear frocks. And order (it is a detective novel, underneath the romance) must be restored: the most conservative impulse of all.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Gaudy Night is one of Anna Quindlen's favorite mystery novels.

--Marshal Zeringue