My 15 Favorite Novels With Happy Endings

Take a look at any “Top 100” list of novels and you’ll quickly notice that books with happy endings are in the minority.

There’s a perception that high art has to be tragic, helped along by the angst of modernism and the disorientation of post-modernism. In fact, as far back as Aristotle’s Poetics, one can distinguish a faint snobbishness about comedy compared to tragedy.

And that’s fine - literature is about describing the world truthfully, and sometimes the truth hurts.

And yet - there is also joy in the world, and an aspirational happy ending is not only satisfying, but it also carries a truth about reality.

The Victorians were great believers in happy endings, despite living in a world with childhood mortality at unimaginable levels and a life expectancy in the mid-40s. Some of the books on this list are from that era - but not all. If you don’t see your favorite Victorian novel with a happy ending here, it’s because I wanted to make room for other eras as well. The books on this list range from 1749 to 2004, and encompass a variety of styles, from picaresque to modern.

If you want to feel uplifted AND read great literature, keep reading. Here are my 15 favorite books with a happy ending. And I’m beginning not with Victorian literature, but with a book from 1969: