1902

1. The Virginian, Owen Wister 283 copies on LT not to mention movies and TV shows.

2. Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, Alice Caldwell Hegan 55 copies

3. Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall, Charles Major 10 copies

4. The Mississippi Bubble, Emerson Hough 6 copies

5. Audrey, Mary Johnston 4 copies

6. The Right of Way, Gilbert Parker 21 copies

7. The Hound of the Baskervilles, A. Conan Doyle 1,693 copies

8. The Two Vanrevels, Booth Tarkington 6 copies

9. The Blue Flower, Henry van Dyke 21 copies

10. Sir Richard Calmady, Lucas Malet 2 copies

Unlike some of these early years The Virginian and Sherlock had some real staying power. I loved Jeremy Brett's potrayal of Holmes.

Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch was a popular children's book up into the fifties, at least.

The Virginian was made into a popular TV Western in the late fifties.

The Virginian was filmed in 1929 with Gary Cooper and 1946 with Joel McCrea. Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch was filmed with W. C. Fields and Zasu Pitts in 1934.

I have a copy of The Blue Flower by Henry van Dyke but have not read it. Have read Hound of the Baskervilles more than once and, yes, Jeremy Brett WAS Sherlock Homes! :)

Not only have I read The Virginian multiple times; I've visited Medicine Bow, WY, stayed at The Virginian Hotel, and had breakfast at The Shiloh restaurant (biggest and best breakfast I've ever had - HUGE pancakes). There's not much there except the hotel and restaurant, a small museum, and some of the biggest mosquitoes I've ever seen - and I'm from Texas!!

I read Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch as a child of the sixties, so she was still going strong then.

I've just read The Hound of the Baskervilles.

I've read Mrs. Wiggs and the Hound, but not the others.

I really liked The Virginian when I read it years ago. Maybe I should put Medicine Bow on my list for next time I drive across Wyoming (which could be a long time).

I see on Wikipedia that Heart of Darkness, Just So Stories, Brewster's Millions, Five Children and It, The Tale of Peter Rabbit and The Varieties of Religious Experience were all published in 1902. Perhaps it should be mentioned in the group description that the lists used here are of US bestsellers, not world bestsellers.

I never realised Brewster's Millions was a novel before. I saw the film with Richard Pryor when I was a kid. Reminds me of when I discovered Vice Versa was a Victorian novel (there was a film in the 1980s with Fred Savage from The Wonder Years). I enjoyed the book, Vice Versa, so I think I'd probably enjoy the Brewster's Millions. Good popular fiction from the past can be very entertaining.

Akiyama, I think it would be great if someone would come up with the lists for world bestsellers or by country to post under the specific years. That would certainly revive some of these threads. The US stats are easy to find because of the New York TImes and Publishers Weekly. Does anyone know where this data may be published for the rest of the world?

I tried posting to this from work, and it wouldn't take.

Anyway, the bestseller lists going back to 1900 have a non-fiction list, which we've never done anything with. This might cover Varieties of Religious Experience. I'll take a look and see what I can find.

I did take a look for other country's bestseller lists some time ago, and the closest I could find for books published over 25 years ago, was some info for Canada (written in prose format, not as a table). I think MacLeans Magazine has done them for a while. The (Toronto) Globe and Mail lists bestsellers currently, but I don't know how far back they go.

I've read all of Sherlock Holmes.

I have read all of Sherlock Holmes too so I am sure that I have read Hound of the Baskervilles

Count another reader for all of Sherlock Holmes.

I've read The Virginian...the scene where he wreaks havoc on a roomful of sleeping babies by switching their clothes - or some such thing, so that the parents had a terrible time figuring out which children were theirs, in the dark, after the barn dance was finally over, has always stayed with me.

The Hound of the Baskervilles is wonderful! I enjoyed all the long Sherlock Holmes stories actually.