I stumbled across Bestseller Lists 1900-1995, and I’m astonished by a few things I quickly noticed while looking at the lists for the 1900′s, 1910′s, and 1920′s:
- I recognized only the tiniest fraction of the titles and authors on the list.
- Winston Churchill had numerous bestsellers early in the century — although that’s probably not the Winston Churchill you were thinking of.
- H.G. Wells had numerous bestsellers too — that I’d never heard of.
- The year 1917 had fiction, general nonfiction, and war categories.
- Zane Grey — a name that sounded vaguely familiar — had a lot of bestsellers.
- A.A. Milne’s When We Were Very Young was a nonfiction bestseller in 1925.
- Diet and health fad bestsellers go way, way back: Diet and Health by Lulu Hunt Peters was the number 1 nonfiction bestseller of 1925.
- I’m not sure what to make of this 1931 bestseller: Boners: Being a Collection of Schoolboy Wisdom, or Knowledge as It Is Sometimes Written, compiled by Alexander Abingdon; illustrated by Dr. Seuss.
What does it mean when almost none of the bestsellers of yesteryear are in print, let alone well known and well read?