7. THE APOSTLE, by Sholem Asch. Putnam
8. HUNGRY HILL, by Daphne du Maurier. Doubleday, Doran
9. THE FOREST AND THE FORT, by Hervey Allen. Farrar & Rinehart
10. THE SONG OF BERNADETTE, by Franz Werfel. Viking Press
Non-Fiction
1. UNDER COVER, by John Roy Carlson. Dutton
2. ONE WORLD, by Wendell L. Willkie. Simon & Schuster
3. JOURNEY AMONG WARRIORS, by Eve Curie. Doubleday, Doran
4. ON BEING A REAL PERSON, by Harry Emerson Fosdick. Harper
5. GUADALCANAL DIARY, by Richard Tregaskis. Random House
6. BURMA SURGEON, by Lt. Col. Gordon Seagrave. Norton
7. OUR HEARTS WERE YOUNG AND GAY, by Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimbrough. Dodd, Mead
8. U.S. FOREIGN POLICY, by Walter Lippmann. Little, Brown
9. HERE IS YOUR WAR, by Ernie Pyle. Holt
10. SEE HERE, PRIVATE HARGROVE, by Marion Hargrove. Holt
* * * * *
With the landing of a great Allied armada in North Africa came the
turning point of the war. Our troops moved on into Sicily and Italy,
and, from Britain, Germany and the occupied countries of Europe were
blasted from the air. In the Pacific our Navy began moving in on
Jap-held islands. Again a religious novel topped fiction--_The Robe_,
which had been published late the previous year. With paper supply cut
to 90 per cent of the 1942 level, Houghton Mifflin was hard put to it to
meet the demand. As new printings of _The Robe_ appeared, the book
shrank in height and thickness, though the text was not cut. Marcia
Davenport was a new best-selling author whose _Valley of Decision_,
story of a Pennsylvania mine-owning family, met with great success. The
daughter of Alma Gluck, she had already written two well-liked books
with musical background, a biography of Mozart and a novel, _Of Lena
Geyer_. By the end of 1943, _Valley of Decision_ had been on 14
consecutive monthly lists and _Bernadette_ on 13. Novels reflected the
war only slightly; it was the background for only two best sellers of
the year, _So Little Time_, in which John Marquand deserted his
customary Boston scene, and William Saroyan’s tender and moving story of
a California family, which became a memorable movie as well. This was
Saroyan’s first appearance on an annual best seller list. A new author
with a first novel whose title was to become as familiar as _Gone with
the Wind_ was Betty Smith, who put neglected Brooklyn on the fiction
map. The four other authors were all familiar names among best
sellers--Sholem Asch with his second religious novel, Daphne du Maurier
with the successor to _Rebecca_, Hervey Allen with the first book of his
projected series of American historical novels, and Franz Werfel with
_The Song of Bernadette_ in its second year. Three novels on the 1943
list were religious in theme. Only two titles on the non-fiction list
were not “war books.” These were Dr. Fosdick’s _On Being a Real Person_,
which sold over 200,000, and the gay reminiscences of a trip to
pre-World War I Europe by Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimbrough.
_Under Cover_, an opinion-making report of subversive activities in this
country, sold 600,000 copies in its original edition. Wendell Willkie’s
wartime trip around the world created an eager market for his report,
which reached over 1,500,000 copies. Since it was published
simultaneously in a cloth and a paperbound edition, the latter greatly
outselling the former and having a wide newsstand and drugstore sale,
Willkie’s book might well have stood at the head of this list. But these
lists are based upon bookstore sales only, and therefore the reports on
_Under Cover_ outdistanced those on _One World_. _One World_ was also an
“Imperative” of the Council on Books in Wartime, has been translated
into sixteen languages, and has sold 3,000,000 copies throughout the
world. Eve Curie was again a best seller, this time with an account of
her trip to the war fronts of the globe. _Guadalcanal Diary_ was a
correspondent’s report of our hard-fought campaign. _Burma Surgeon_
related the experiences of a doctor who became an Army medical officer
when the Japanese took over the country in which he had labored long as
a medical missionary. Walter Lippmann, influential newspaper columnist
who had been a best seller in 1929 with _A Preface to Morals_, gave his
views on what our foreign policy had been and should be, another Council
“Imperative.” In _Here Is Your War_ newspaperman Ernie Pyle revealed the
human qualities of the infantryman as he saw them in North Africa--a
book that found country-wide response as had the newspaper articles upon
which it was based. _See Here, Private Hargrove_ was still going strong
in its second year.
1944
Fiction
1. STRANGE FRUIT, by Lillian Smith. Reynal & Hitchcock
2. THE ROBE, by Lloyd C. Douglas. Houghton Mifflin
3. A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN, by Betty Smith. Harper
4. FOREVER AMBER, by Kathleen Winsor. Macmillan
5. THE RAZOR’S EDGE, by W. Somerset Maugham. Doubleday, Doran
6. THE GREEN YEARS, by A. J. Cronin. Little, Brown
7. LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN, by Ben Ames Williams. Houghton Mifflin
8. GREEN DOLPHIN STREET, by Elizabeth Goudge. Coward-McCann
9. A BELL FOR ADANO, by John Hersey. Knopf
10. THE APOSTLE, by Sholem Asch. Putnam
Non-Fiction
1. I NEVER LEFT HOME, by Bob Hope. Simon & Schuster; Home Guide
2. BRAVE MEN, by Ernie Pyle. Holt
3. GOOD NIGHT, SWEET PRINCE, by Gene Fowler. Viking Press
4. UNDER COVER, by John Roy Carlson. Dutton
5. YANKEE FROM OLYMPUS, by Catherine Drinker Bowen. Little, Brown
6. THE TIME FOR DECISION, by Sumner Welles. Harper
7. HERE IS YOUR WAR, by Ernie Pyle. Holt
8. ANNA AND THE KING OF SIAM, by Margaret Landon. John Day
9. THE CURTAIN RISES, by Quentin Reynolds. Random House
10. TEN YEARS IN JAPAN, by Joseph C. Grew. Simon & Schuster
* * * * *
The news of the invasion of northern Europe that the world had been
waiting and hoping for so long was broadcast early on the morning of
June 6. With the Allies closing in on Germany from all sides, confidence
rose that the end of the war was in sight. In the fall, as Dewey and
Roosevelt campaigned for the Presidency, two influential and greatly
admired men on the national political scene died within a few days of
each other, Al Smith and Wendell Willkie, the latter also the author of
one of the great best sellers, _One World_. _Strange Fruit_, poignant
first novel of white and black in the South, published by the
comparatively new firm of Reynal & Hitchcock, was first on the fiction
list of the year. It was later banned in Boston as was another first
novel, fourth among best sellers, _Forever Amber_. Kathleen Winsor was
the much publicized and photogenic author of _Forever Amber_, a novel of
Restoration England which emphasized the bawdiness of the period. There
were two religious novels on the list--_The Robe_ in its third year of
best-sellerdom and _The Apostle_ in its second. Another first novel, _A
Tree Grows in Brooklyn_, was in third place. It had been fourth the year
before. The war was the background in only two novels, in _The Razor’s
Edge_ and in _A Bell for Adano_, which was John Hersey’s first novel but
third book about the war. It was the story of an American AMG officer in
Italy and of the problems he faced in administering the affairs of a
region recently swept of the Nazis. Ben Ames Williams, long a favorite
fiction and magazine writer, appeared on a yearly list for the first
time. _Green Dolphin Street_ was a historical novel which won for its
author, Elizabeth Goudge, the $125,000 prize offered by the film
producers Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. War books of 1944, seven out of the ten
in non-fiction, were notable because of their timeliness, their coverage
of the diverse phases of the war, and their excellence of presentation.
One was written by a comedian who journeyed to the war fronts to
entertain the troops, three by war correspondents, one by an
investigator of subversive activities, and two by statesmen. Bob Hope’s
book, published in a paper as well as a cloth edition, far outstripped
the rest in sales, going well over the million mark. Ernie Pyle was the
newspaperman responsible for two books on the list. He was awarded a
Pulitzer Prize for his reporting from the war fronts. Quentin Reynolds
had written many excellent books, from the war correspondent’s vantage
point, since the start of the war, but not until _The Curtain Rises_ was
published did he make the annual list. The books by former Under
Secretary of State Sumner Welles and former Ambassador Grew were
outstanding examples of those which, like _Berlin Diary_ and _One
World_, influenced American thinking. First of the three non-war books
of the year was _Good Night, Sweet Prince_, a biography of one of the
most famous stars of stage and screen, John Barrymore of the glamorous
theatrical family. The other two non-war books were also biographies.
_Yankee from Olympus_, in fifth place, was primarily the story of
Justice Holmes but included as well other members of a family that held
a prominent place in American life and letters over many years. _Anna
and the King of Siam_ was the interesting story of a woman who went to
Siam in the 19th century as governess to the King’s daughters. It
became, many years later, basis of the popular musical, and then the
movie, _The King and I_.
1945
Fiction
1. FOREVER AMBER, by Kathleen Winsor. Macmillan
2. THE ROBE, by Lloyd C. Douglas. Houghton Mifflin
3. THE BLACK ROSE, by Thomas B. Costain. Doubleday
4. THE WHITE TOWER, by James Ramsey Ullman. Lippincott
5. CASS TIMBERLANE, by Sinclair Lewis. Random House
6. A LION IS IN THE STREETS, by Adria Locke Langley. Whittlesey House
7. SO WELL REMEMBERED, by James Hilton. Little, Brown
8. CAPTAIN FROM CASTILE, by Samuel Shellabarger. Little, Brown
9. EARTH AND HIGH HEAVEN, by Gwethalyn Graham. Lippincott
10. IMMORTAL WIFE, by Irving Stone. Doubleday
Non-Fiction
1. BRAVE MEN, by Ernie Pyle. Holt
2. DEAR SIR, by Juliet Lowell. Duell, Sloan & Pearce
3. UP FRONT, by Bill Mauldin. Holt
4. BLACK BOY, by Richard Wright. Harper
5. TRY AND STOP ME, by Bennett Cerf. Simon & Schuster
6. ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN, by George and Helen Papashvily. Harper
7. GENERAL MARSHALL’S REPORT. Simon & Schuster
8. THE EGG AND I, by Betty MacDonald. Lippincott
9. THE THURBER CARNIVAL, by James Thurber. Harper
10. PLEASANT VALLEY, by Louis Bromfield. Harper
* * * * *
The world was shocked at Roosevelt’s death at Warm Springs in April. The
long-awaited VE day came in May and, in August, VJ day, after the atomic
bomb had exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The UN charter was signed
in San Francisco. War shortages still prevailed in the book industry;
though “thin” books were necessary to conserve paper and other
production materials a very “fat” book was 1945’s best-selling novel,
the already-famous _Forever Amber_, selling 868,630 copies in its second
year. Two hundred and seventy thousand copies of the second novel on the
1945 list were sold during that year, also its second year, bringing the
total of _The Robe_ close to 2,000,000 at that time. These two novels at
the top of the 1945 list were the only ones that year that were not book
club selections or dividends or issued in the Armed Services Editions of
which 90,000,000 books had been distributed to men in the service. Three
new novelists appeared during the year--James Ramsey Ullman, Adria Locke
Langley, and Gwethalyn Graham--most of the others were well-known and
popular writers. There were no war novels on the 1945 fiction list;
historical fiction predominated. War books, however, took first, second,
third and seventh places in non-fiction. _Brave Men_, published late in
1944 and second for that year, sold 687,450 copies through the
bookstores, and, with its book club sales, well over a million. _Dear
Sir_, the little book of war humor, unexpectedly showed up with the
total of 654,391. The leading autobiography of 1945, _Black Boy_, sold
195,000 copies, and, with book club, 546,000. _General Marshall’s
Report_ sold 133,770 copies, of which 15,000 were clothbound, 118,770,
paper-bound--representing a trend toward two editions, in cloth and
paper, of a single title which was further developed in succeeding
years. In general non-fiction did not attain the high sales of fiction,
though _Brave Men_ (its author had been killed early in the year by a
Japanese sniper’s bullet) outdistanced every book in both
classifications.
1946
Fiction
1. THE KING’S GENERAL, by Daphne du Maurier. Doubleday
2. THIS SIDE OF INNOCENCE, by Taylor Caldwell. Scribner
3. THE RIVER ROAD, by Frances Parkinson Keyes. Messner
4. THE MIRACLE OF THE BELLS, by Russell Janney. Prentice-Hall
5. THE HUCKSTERS, by Frederic Wakeman. Rinehart
6. THE FOXES OF HARROW, by Frank Yerby. Dial Press
7. ARCH OF TRIUMPH, by Erich Maria Remarque. Appleton-Century
8. THE BLACK ROSE, by Thomas B. Costain. Doubleday
9. B. F.’S DAUGHTER, by John P. Marquand. Little, Brown
10. THE SNAKE PIT, by Mary Jane Ward. Random House
Non-Fiction
1. THE EGG AND I, by Betty MacDonald. Lippincott
2. PEACE OF MIND, by Joshua L. Liebman. Simon & Schuster
3. AS HE SAW IT, by Elliott Roosevelt. Duell, Sloan & Pearce
4. THE ROOSEVELT I KNEW, by Frances Perkins. Viking Press
5. LAST CHAPTER, by Ernie Pyle. Holt
6. STARLING OF THE WHITE HOUSE, by Thomas Sugrue and Col. Edmund Starling. Simon & Schuster
7. I CHOSE FREEDOM, by Victor Kravchenko. Scribner
8. THE ANATOMY OF PEACE, by Emery Reves. Harper
9. TOP SECRET, by Ralph Ingersoll. Harcourt, Brace
10. A SOLO IN TOM-TOMS, by Gene Fowler. Viking Press
* * * * *
1946 was the year in which the American public first listened to an
atomic explosion--at Bikini Atoll, via radio, in which Mother Cabrini
was the first American citizen to be raised to sainthood and in which
the end of World War II was officially proclaimed by President Truman.
_Call Me Mister_ and _Annie Get Your Gun_ were popular stage productions
and _The Best Years of Our Lives_, the movie of the year. Daphne du
Maurier, whose _The King’s General_ headed the 1946 best seller list,
was a novelist familiar to readers of best sellers. Her _Hungry Hill_
was a best seller of 1943 and her famous _Rebecca_ appeared on the lists
of both 1938 and 1939. Through the bookstores, 228,235 copies of _The
King’s General_ were sold in 1946; including sales through three book
clubs, its total was 1,095,571. Besides _The King’s General_, there were
four other historical novels on the 1946 list of best-selling fiction.
_This Side of Innocence_, by Taylor Caldwell, took second place with a
bookstore sale of about 221,000 copies. This novel had, in addition, the
largest sale ever attained at that time by any Literary Guild selection,
over 1,055,000, making a grand total of 1,276,000. Another longtime
popular novelist, Frances Parkinson Keyes, reached the annual list for
the first time with her _River Road_, with sales of 225,000, plus a book
club sale adding up to 950,000. Fourth of the historical novels was a
first novel by Frank Yerby, later to become one of the biggest-selling
novelists of the ’40’s and ’50’s. _The Foxes of Harrow_ sold 172,000
through the bookstores, and, with sales from three book clubs, attained
a total of 1,200,000 during the year. Eighth was _The Black Rose_, a
Thomas B. Costain historical. A widely publicized first novel, _The
Miracle of the Bells_, by Russell Janney, reached fourth place, the only
title on the fiction list which was not the selection of any book club.
Another writer new to the best seller lists, Frederic Wakeman, had a
trade sale of over 180,000 for his _The Hucksters_, with a total of
712,434, with book club sales. _Arch of Triumph_, by Erich Maria
Remarque, whose great novel of World War I, _All Quiet on the Western
Front_, topped the 1929 best seller list, was in seventh place. _B. F.’s
Daughter_, by John P. Marquand, a favorite novelist, sold 129,000 copies
through the trade plus 680,000 book club copies, a total of 809,000.
_The Snake Pit_, by Mary Jane Ward, making her first appearance on the
list and starting a trend for psychiatric novels, sold about 125,000,
which, with the book club sale, made a total of 600,000. All these
figures for fiction in the first postwar year seemed staggering in the
cold light of less prosperous earlier and later years. With production
problems still keeping publishers busy trying to keep up with demand,
books were sold in quantities never before reached, though the actual
number of new titles was at its lowest in about 40 years. Said
_Publishers’ Weekly_, “Never before have so few titles gone to so many
readers ... the major book clubs ... think nothing of printing a
half-million copies of a current selection.” Nonfiction figures were not
quite so startling. Though Betty MacDonald’s first book, _The Egg and
I_, sold 496,000 copies through the bookstores and a total of 1,038,500
with its book club sale, Joshua L. Liebman’s _Peace of Mind_, which was
to be the non-fiction best seller of 1947 and still on the annual list
in 1948, reached second place with a mere 242,000 copies. There were two
biographies of the late President among 1946 best sellers, and a volume
of White House reminiscences, two war books, a book on the peace, and
two biographies, one a Russian political autobiography.
1947
Fiction
1. THE MIRACLE OF THE BELLS, by Russell Janney. Prentice-Hall
2. THE MONEYMAN, by Thomas B. Costain. Doubleday
3. GENTLEMAN’S AGREEMENT, by Laura Z. Hobson. Simon & Schuster
4. LYDIA BAILEY, by Kenneth Roberts, Doubleday
5. THE VIXENS, by Frank Yerby. Dial Press
6. THE WAYWARD BUS, by John Steinbeck. Viking Press
7. HOUSE DIVIDED, by Ben Ames Williams. Houghton Mifflin
8. KINGSBLOOD ROYAL, by Sinclair Lewis. Random House
9. EAST SIDE, WEST SIDE, by Marcia Davenport. Scribner
10. PRINCE OF FOXES, by Samuel Shellabarger. Little, Brown
Non-Fiction
1. PEACE OF MIND, by Joshua L. Liebman. Simon & Schuster
2. INFORMATION PLEASE ALMANAC, 1947, ed. by John Kieran. Garden City Publishing Co.
3. INSIDE U.S.A., by John Gunther. Harper
4. A STUDY OF HISTORY, by Arnold J. Toynbee. Oxford University Press
5. SPEAKING FRANKLY, by James F. Byrnes. Harper
6. HUMAN DESTINY, by Pierre Lecomte du Nouy. Longmans, Green
7. THE EGG AND I, by Betty MacDonald. Lippincott
8. THE AMERICAN PAST, by Roger Butterfield. Simon & Schuster
9. THE FIRESIDE BOOK OF FOLK SONGS, ed. by Margaret B. Boni. Simon & Schuster
10. TOGETHER, by Katharine T. Marshall. Tupper & Love
* * * * *
The Taft-Hartley Act was passed by Congress in 1947 and the Marshall
Plan announced; the Freedom Train, exhibiting the great historical
documents of the U.S.A., and the Friendship Train, bearing food for
devastated Europe, were started on their ways. Street-cars disappeared
from Manhattan Island and flying saucers were seen in the sky. New
Yorkers went to the theatre to see _All My Sons_, _A Streetcar Named
Desire_ and the first plays by Gian-Carlo Menotti to be produced here.
Henry Ford died at his home in Michigan, leaving an estate of over 500
million dollars. Titles which rang up most sales in the bookstores
during 1947 were _The Miracle of the Bells_, a first novel by Russell
Janney, in fiction, and _Peace of Mind_, by Rabbi Liebman, in
non-fiction. The non-fiction title outsold the fiction title by about
30,000 copies. Both books were also on the 1946 best seller list. _The
Miracle of the Bells_ had a larger sale, one of over 240,000 copies, in
its second year. With book club sales it had reached an overall figure,
by the end of 1947, of approximately 400,000. Only two novels and three
books of non-fiction on the combined list had no book club or
extra-bookstore sales whatsoever. Half the fiction list in 1947 was made
up of historical novels. Thomas B. Costain’s _The Moneyman_, in second
place in fiction, selling 185,000 through the trade, started out with an
advance sale double that of his earlier historical romance, _The Black
Rose_. The other historical novels on the 1947 list were _Lydia Bailey_,
_The Vixens_, _House Divided_, and _Prince of Foxes_, all by well-known
and popular authors. _The Vixens_ sold 152,706 copies through
bookstores, plus over 125,000 Fiction Book Club sale. _House Divided_,
one of the two “bookstore only” novels on the list, sold just over
125,000. _Prince of Foxes_ sold 107,000 copies--with its Literary Guild
sales, over 1,125,000. The heightened postwar interest in problems of
race relations was reflected in the sale of _Gentleman’s Agreement_, by
Laura Z. Hobson, dealing with Jewish-Gentile relations, and _Kingsblood
Royal_, in which Sinclair Lewis presented the dilemma of a white man who
discovered that he had Negro blood. _Gentleman’s Agreement_ sold 172,615
copies through bookstores, over a million in 1947 through all media. The
Lewis book had an overall sale of about 800,000, of which 115,000 were
sold in the stores. _The Wayward Bus_, by John Steinbeck, sold 520,000,
including trade, book club, and Armed Services Editions. _East Side,
West Side_, by Marcia Davenport, the other of the two “bookstore only”
novels, had a sale of approximately 111,000. _Peace of Mind_, one of the
first of the big sellers in the “inspirational” market that boomed in
the ’40’s and ’50’s, had a bigger sale in its second year in the
bookstores, 270,669. Its overall sale by the end of 1947 was 577,693.
Nearly 300,000 copies of the first _Information Please Almanac_ were
sold--the famous radio program was at the height of its popularity--and
the _Almanac_ was the second best seller of that year. John Gunther’s
1947 “Inside” book, _Inside U.S.A._, was in third place, with 187,000
copies printed. It was among the four non-fiction best sellers which may
be roughly classified as historical and political. The others were
Arnold Toynbee’s _A Study of History_, with 123,000 trade sale plus
60,000 book club; _Speaking Frankly_, Secretary of State Byrnes’ memoirs
of the war years, with 125,000 printed; and _The American Past_, picture
history by Roger Butterfield, with a sale of about 68,000. Besides
_Peace of Mind_, another religious book was a big 1947 seller. _Human
Destiny_, by Pierre Lecomte du Nouy, reached sixth place with a sale of
105,000 and a book club printing of 320,000. _The Egg and I_, which had
been the 1946 leader in non-fiction, appeared again in 1947 with sales
of 101,138 copies in that year. Its two-year total was in the
neighborhood of a million and a quarter. Besides the MacDonald book, the
only other 1947 best seller which could be classified as biography, a
category that formerly dominated non-fiction lists, was _Together_, the
life of General Marshall written by his wife. It sold 59,156 copies
through the stores, 300,000 with its book club sales.
1948
Fiction
1. THE BIG FISHERMAN, by Lloyd C. Douglas. Houghton Mifflin
2. THE NAKED AND THE DEAD, by Norman Mailer. Rinehart
3. DINNER AT ANTOINE’S, by Frances Parkinson Keyes. Messner
4. THE BISHOP’S MANTLE, by Agnes Sligh Turnbull. Macmillan
5. TOMORROW WILL BE BETTER, by Betty Smith. Harper
6. THE GOLDEN HAWK, by Frank Yerby. Dial Press
7. RAINTREE COUNTY, by Ross Lockridge, Jr. Houghton Mifflin
8. SHANNON’S WAY, by A. J. Cronin. Little, Brown
9. PILGRIM’S INN, by Elizabeth Goudge. Coward-McCann
10. THE YOUNG LIONS, by Irwin Shaw. Random House
Non-Fiction
1. CRUSADE IN EUROPE, by Dwight D. Eisenhower. Doubleday
2. HOW TO STOP WORRYING AND START LIVING, by Dale Carnegie. Simon & Schuster
3. PEACE OF MIND, by Joshua L. Liebman. Simon & Schuster
4. SEXUAL BEHAVIOR IN THE HUMAN MALE, by A. C. Kinsey and others. Saunders
5. WINE, WOMEN AND WORDS, by Billy Rose. Simon & Schuster
6. THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE SHMOO, by Al Capp. Simon & Schuster
7. THE GATHERING STORM, by Winston Churchill. Houghton Mifflin
8. ROOSEVELT AND HOPKINS, by Robert E. Sherwood. Harper
9. A GUIDE TO CONFIDENT LIVING, by Norman Vincent Peale. Prentice-Hall
10. THE PLAGUE AND I, by Betty MacDonald. Lippincott
* * * * *