20th-Century American Bestsellers

"We shall not busy ourselves with what men ought to have admired, what they ought to have written, what they ought to have thought, but with what they did think, write, admire."

-- A History of Criticism, George Saintsbury (cribbed from Alice Hackett, 70 Years of Best Sellers)

Browse the Bestsellers DB

Bestseller Lists by Decade

1900-1909	1910-1919	1920-1929	1930-1939	1940-1949
1950-1959	1960-1969	1970-1979	1980-1989	1990-1999

See also:

An interview describing this class (from the MLA's radio show "What's the Word"), downloadable in in MP3 format (7.3 MB)
An exhibition on bestselling American fiction curated in 2002 by Linda Clendenning and John Unsworth, abbreviated and refreshed in 2013 by Melinda Baumann, Hoke Perkins, Mercy Quintos Procaccini, Melissa Ragain, and John Unsworth.
... and just for fun: An oral history of the making of Naked Came the Stranger
Credits & Acknowledgments

The 20th-Century American Bestsellers Database consists of work done by undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Virginia, the University of Illinois, Catholic University, and Brandeis University, from 1998 to the present.