London: Renowned writer and activist, Arundhati Roy's Booker Prize winning novel, 'The God of Small Things', has been voted as one of the top 50 books by female authors.

Listed as 20th among the 50 best books, Roy's work figures among Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice' - - voted the 'best loved' novel -- Virginia Wolf's 'Mrs Dalloway' and Emily Bronte's 'Wuthering Heights'.

Four of Jane Austen's works -- 'Pride and Prejudice', 'Persuasion', 'Emma' and 'Sense and Sensibility' -- come into reckoning among the top 50 while three of them come within the best 10.

The result of the poll in which both men and women voted, should bring much comfort to the thinking classes as top eight best-loved novels by women published in English are the unchallenged classics.

Only two books in the top 10 are by living authors; 'Unless' by the Canadian writer Carol Shields, a moody account of the difficult relationship between a mother and daughter published last year, is in ninth place, and 'To Kill a Mockingbird', Harper Lee's devastating expose of the racial strains of America's Deep South in the 1930s, comes 10th.

'Dead white females', such as Virginia Woolf, Iris Murdoch and Louisa M Alcott, jostle with contemporary writers such as J K Rowling, Helen Fielding, Zadie Smith and Jeanette Winterson.

PTI