Hit Lit: Cracking the Code of the Twentieth Century's Biggest Bestsellers Read Online Free

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    2 . The Exorcist , 1971, William Peter Blatty, 11,700,000 sold .
    3 . To Kill a Mockingbird , 1960, Harper Lee, 11,120,000 sold .
    4 . Peyton Place , 1956, Grace Metalious, 10,670,000 sold .
    5 .
Love Story
, 1970, Erich Segal, 9,905,000 sold.
    6 . Valley of the Dolls , 1966, Jacqueline Susann, 9,500,000 sold .
    7 . Jaws , 1974, Peter Benchley, 9,475,000 sold .
    8 .
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
, 1970, Richard Bach, 9,055,000 sold.
    9 . Gone with the Wind , 1936, Margaret Mitchell, 8,630,000 sold .
    10 .
God’s Little Acre
, 1933, Erskine Caldwell, 8,260,000 sold.
    It’s interesting to note that the decades of the 1960s and 1970s contain more than their share of the largest bestsellers of all times, while the 1940s is missing in action, as are the first two decades of the century. For those readers interested in such matters, Korda’s
Making the List
sketches out some of the historical, economic, and cultural factors that shapedthese decade-by-decade differences in sales figures, but such considerations are not my focus here.
    For the purposes of this book, I made some nips and tucks to Hackett’s master list. I’ve jettisoned two mushy books,
Love Story
and
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
, replacing them with the more recent (though, let’s admit it, equally mushy)
The Bridges of Madison County
. I’ve also dropped that ode to incest and small-town squalor
God’s Little Acre
, because those same subjects are already well represented by
Peyton Place
and
To Kill a Mockingbird
.
    To flesh out the total to an even dozen, I included four more novels. I’m confident the authors I’ve added would be on any modern reader’s top ten list: John Grisham, Stephen King, Dan Brown, and Tom Clancy.
OUT OF PRINT
    All the books on our reading list are still in print, but the same cannot be said for the great majority of bestsellers from the past century. Most of the smash hits of yesteryear can no longer be unearthed except by shopping at rare-book dealers. Such novelists as Warwick Deeping, Russell Janney, Ethel Vance, May Sinclair, and Harry Bellamann (whose
Kings Row
was made into a film starring Ronald Reagan) all had their fifteen minutes of literary fame, riding atop the bestseller lists of previous decades, but all are virtually unknown today. Which makes you wonder which of the huge bestsellers of our current age will still be around fifty years from now and beyond, and how and why one lives on and another doesn’t.
    For instance, how about
Lamb in His Bosom
by Caroline Miller? Still in print, though no longer widely read, Ms. Miller’s1934 novel, which is set in pre–Civil War Georgia and won the Pulitzer Prize, will always be a quirky footnote in American bestseller history. After witnessing the great commercial success of Caroline Miller’s novel, Macmillan editor Harold S. Latham went shopping for other books with similar southern settings and in the process discovered Margaret Mitchell. Would
Gone with the Wind
have been published and heavily promoted without
Lamb in His Bosom
nudging open the door? It’s one of those intriguing and unanswerable questions. But it’s entirely possible that Caroline Miller is as responsible for our knowing and loving Rhett and Scarlett and Ashley Wilkes as Margaret Mitchell was.
FIRST NOVELS AND BREAKOUT BOOKS
    Successful first novels are more likely to reveal popular tastes than bestsellers written by an established author. Because of the brand-name effect, a tenth or twentieth novel by Danielle Steel or John Grisham or Stephen King is virtually guaranteed a spot on the bestseller list and as such is less an indicator of public tastes than an indicator of public habits—and therefore is not particularly useful in demonstrating the recurring features that helped make it popular.
    When an author’s first novel does manage to overcome the incredible odds against it and turns into a commercial success, the student of popular culture needs to pay special attention. In such a case,