Index: Gallery of Best-Sellers

  • 1855-1859


  • 1860-1869


  • 1870-1879


  • 1880-1889


  • 1890-1899


  • 1900-1909


  • 1910-1919


  • 1920-1929


  • 1930-1939


  • 1940-1949


  • 1950-1959


  • 1960-1965


  • All-Time Top 10 Novels (as of 1965)


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    SOURCES: Information up to 1895 -- Luther Mott, Golden Multitudes (New York: Macmillan, 1947); information after 1895, including cumulative list -- Alice Payne Hackett, 70 Years of Best Sellers (New York: R.R. Bowker, 1967).
    Mott's numbers are based on cumulative sales, while Hackett's are drawn from the annual best-seller lists published first in Bookman (1895-1912), and then in Publishers' Weekly. I've included only the American authors on Mott's list of best-sellers, but novels by Dickens, Trollope, and others (published in pirated editions) were often the most popular books of a given year.
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