Bestsellers

Popular Fiction since 1900

C. Bloom

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN:
  9780230536890
  9780230536883
• Edition: 2
• eBook ISBN:
  9780230583870
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

This essential guide, now available in a fully updated new edition, is the only available study of all bestselling books, authors and genres since the start of the last century, giving an unique insight into a hundred years of publishing and reading and taking us on a journey into the heart of the British imagination.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Preface to the Second Edition
• Preface to the First Edition
• Acknowledgements to the Second Edition
• Acknowledgements to the First Edition
• Introduction to the Second Edition
• 1 Origins, Problems and Philosophy of the Bestseller
• 2 How the British Read
• 3 Genre: History and Form
• 4 Literature for Children
• 5 Further Thoughts on Literature for Children
• 6 Best-selling Authors Since 1900
• Appendix 1 Number of individuals out of every 1000 who could not sign their name on a marriage register: 1896–1907
• Appendix 2 Extract from Beatrice Harraden, 'What Our Soldiers Read', Cornhill Magazine, vol. XLI (Nov. 1916)
• Appendix 3 Booksellers from whose returns the Bookseller compiled its bestseller list during the 1930s and 1940s under the title 'What the Other Fellow is Selling'
• Appendix 4 From the Mass Observation Archive (ref. FR 2537): 'Reading in Tottenham, November 1947'
• Appendix 5 From Mills and Boon, 'A FINE ROMANCE… is hard to find!'
• Appendix 6 British Library loans 1987–8, showing the top 100 authors as recorded by the Bookseller (13 July 1990)
• Appendix 7 Comparative library loans between 1988 and 1998 by genre (source: Public Lending Right, 1999.)
• Appendix 8 Waterstone's and Channel 4's survey to discover the greatest books of the twentieth century (1996): the following are the top works of fiction
• Appendix 9 Which companies owned what imprints at the end of the twentieth century (source: Key Note, 1999.)
• Appendix 10 From the Bookseller (Web page: 20 Dec. 1999)
• Appendix 11 Comparative paperback bestseller lists showing relative change over the last decade of the twentieth century (source: Writers' and Artists' Yearbook, 2001.)
• Appendix 12 World Book Day 2000 Poll to find Britain's favourite writers
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Name Index
• Subject Index
• Title Index