Here are the Biggest Fiction Bestsellers of the Last 100 Years
(And What Everyone Read Instead)
The best-selling fiction of the year:
1. Edna Ferber, Cimarron
2. Warwick Deeping, Exile
3. Thornton Wilder, The Woman of Andros
4. Margaret Ayer Barnes, Years of Grace
5. J. B. Priestley, Angel Pavement
6. Mary Roberts Rinehart, The Door
7. Hugh Walpole, Rogue Herries
8. A. Hamilton Gibbs, Chances
9. Katharine Brush, Young Man of Manhattan
10. Louis Bromfield, Twenty-Four Hours
Also published that year:
John Dos Passos, The 42nd Parallel
William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon
The best-selling fiction of the year:
1. Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth
2. Willa Cather, Shadows on the Rock
3. Bess Streeter Aldrich, A White Bird Flying
4. Vicki Baum, Grand Hotel
5. Margaret Ayer Barnes, Years of Grace
6. Erich Maria Remarque, The Road Back
7. Warwick Deeping, The Bridge of Desire
8. Fannie Hurst, Back Street
9. Mazo de la Roche, Finch’s Fortune
10. John Galsworthy, Maid in Waiting
Also published that year:
Virginia Woolf, The Waves
The best-selling fiction of the year:
1. Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth
2. Charles Morgan, The Fountain
3. Pearl S. Buck, Sons
4. Louis Golding, Magnolia Street
5. Ellen Glasgow, The Sheltered Life
6. Warwick Deeping, Old Wine and New
7. Booth Tarkington, Mary’s Neck
8. Lloyd C. Douglas, Magnificent Obsession
9. Phyllis Bentley, Inheritance
10. A. J. Cronin, Three Loves
Also published that year:
John Dos Passos, 1919
William Faulkner, Light in August
Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
The best-selling fiction of the year:
1. Hervey Allen, Anthony Adverse
2. Gladys Hasty Carroll, As the Earth Turns
3. Sinclair Lewis, Ann Vickers
4. Lloyd C. Douglas, Magnificent Obsession
5. John Galsworthy, One More River
6. Lloyd C. Douglas, Forgive Us Our Trespasses
7. Mazo de la Roche, The Master of Jalna
8. Bess Streeter Aldrich, Miss Bishop
9. Louis Bromfield, The Farm
10. Hans Fallada, Little Man, What Now?
Also published that year:
Nathanael West, Miss Lonelyhearts
The best-selling fiction of the year:
1. Hervey Allen, Anthony Adverse
2. Caroline Miller, Lamb in His Bosom
3. Stark Young, So Red the Rose
4. James Hilton, Good-Bye, Mr. Chips
5. Margaret Ayer Barnes, Within This Present
6. Sinclair Lewis, Work of Art
7. Phyllis Bottome, Private Worlds
8. Mary Ellen Chase, Mary Peters
9. Alice Tisdale Hobart, Oil for the Lamps of China
10. Isak Dinesen, Seven Gothic Tales
Also published that year:
James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night
Robert Graves, I, Claudius
Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
John O’Hara, Appointment in Samarra
Henry Roth, Call It Sleep
Evelyn Waugh, A Handful of Dust
The best-selling fiction of the year:
1. Lloyd C. Douglas, Green Light
2. Ellen Glasgow, Vein of Iron
3. Thomas Wolfe, Of Time and the River
4. Rachel Field, Time Out of Mind
5. James Hilton, Good-Bye, Mr. Chips
6. Franz Werfel, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh
7. Thornton Wilder, Heaven’s My Destination
8. James Hilton, Lost Horizon
9. Edna Ferber, Come and Get It
10. Robert Briffault, Europa
Also published that year:
Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here
Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night
John Steinbeck, Tortilla Flat
The best-selling fiction of the year:
1. Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
2. George Santayana, The Last Puritan
3. Charles Morgan, Sparkenbroke
4. Walter D. Edmonds, Drums Along the Mohawk
5. Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here
6. Lloyd C. Douglas, White Banners
7. Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall, The Hurricane
8. Rebecca West, The Thinking Reed
9. Mary Roberts Rinehart, The Doctor
10. Aldous Huxley, Eyeless in Gaza
Also published that year:
Djuna Barnes, Nightwood
William Faulkner, Absalom! Absalom!
The best-selling fiction of the year:
1. Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
2. Kenneth Roberts, Northwest Passage
3. A. J. Cronin, The Citadel
4. Vaughan Wilkins, And So-Victoria
5. Walter D. Edmonds, Drums Along the Mohawk
6. Virginia Woolf, The Years
7. W. Somerset Maugham, Theatre
8. John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men
9. Louis Bromfield, The Rains Came
10. James Hilton, We Are Not Alone
Also published that year:
John Dos Passos, U.S.A.
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis (English translation)
Franz Kafka, The Trial (English translation)
J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
The best-selling fiction of the year:
1. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling
2. A. J. Cronin, The Citadel
3. Howard Spring, My Son, My Son!
4. Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca
5. Kenneth Roberts, Northwest Passage
6. Rachel Field, All This, and Heaven Too
7. Louis Bromfield, The Rains Came
8. Laura Krey, And Tell of Time
9. Phyllis Bottome, The Mortal Storm
10. Hervey Allen, Action at Aquila
Also published that year:
Evelyn Waugh, Scoop
The best-selling fiction of the year:
1. John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
2. Rachel Field, All This, and Heaven Too
3. Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca
4. John Marquard, Wickford Point
5. Ethel Vance, Escape
6. Lloyd C. Douglas, Disputed Passage
7. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling
8. Elizabeth Page, The Tree of Liberty
9. Sholem Asch, The Nazarene
10. Christopher Morley, Kitty Foyle
Also published that year:
Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep
James Joyce, Finnegans Wake
Flann O’Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds
Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight
Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun
Nathanael West, The Day of the Locust
T. H. White, The Sword in the Stone
