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Lady Chatterley's Lover. The Blue Lagoon. Portnoy's Complaint. The Da Vinci Code. For the last century, the tastes and preferences of the common reader have been reflected in the American and British bestseller lists, and this Very Short Introduction takes an engaging look through the lists to reveal what we have been reading—and why. John Sutherland shows that bestseller lists monitor one of the strongest pulses in modern literature and are therefore worthy of serious study. Exploring the relationship between bestsellers and the fashions, ideologies, and cultural concerns of the day, the book includes short case-studies and lively summaries of bestsellers through the years: from In His Steps—now almost totally forgotten, but the biggest all-time bestseller between 1895 and 1945—to Gone with the Wind, The Andromeda Strain, and The Da Vinci Code. Discussing both classic and contemporary novels, alongside some surprising titles and long-forgotten names. Sutherland lifts the lid on the bestseller industry, revealing what makes a book into a bestseller and what separates bestsellers from canonical fiction.
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Walter Hopkins
reviewed Bestsellers: A Very Short Introduction on November 15, 2016
Bestsellers: A Very Short Introduction
Here's a fast little gallop through the crazy world of bestsellers - I liked it! Some fun facts for you:
Agatha Christie is probably the world biggest selling novelist ever - 72 novels in total, 2 billion sales. That is not really a fun fact. It's actually a yawn. I think most people are born knowing this already.
Barbara Cartland is a best selling author although none of her 600-PLUS NOVELS (it says here) was an individual bestseller
Gone With the Wind sold a million in 1936 (first year of publication) which was phenomenal, but the top five novels regularly sell that amount in their first year in recent years in America
Genre novelists, maybe predictably, were able to crank out the merchandise at speeds which indicate some form of chemical assistance - check it out :
Zane Grey - 200 westerns
Max Brand, "king of the pulps" - 600 novels plus 900 stories under 20 pen names in various different genres (most famous title : Destry Rides Again, but he also created Dr Kildare)
Louis L'Amour - 200 western novels
John Creasey - 600 mystery novels
Hank Jansen - about 220 novels with titles like Frails Can Be So Tough and Broads Don't Scare Easy
Leslie Charteris - umpteen novels (he created The Saint)
Dennis Wheatley - also umpteen
Erle Stanley Gardner - 80-plus mystery novels
Mickey Spillane - not that many novels but he did brag that he could turn out one in three days if he was pushed
Stephen King - 54 novels and going strong
There's a constant strand of what you might call research fiction in the bestsellers - The Agony and the Ecstasy, which was the life of Michaelangelo fictionalized by Irving Stone, Hawaii, which is the fictionalized story of Hawaii by James Michener, Hotel, Airport, Wheels, The Moneychangers - all by Arthur Hailey in which he investigates one industry per novel, then there's John Grisham and Michael Crichton. Some of 'em contract out the research.
There's an assumption that bestsellers are the fast food of fiction, to be scraped off the shoes of any readers of proper literature before entering a decent household; but sometimes great novels actually sell well, such as
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
Main Street
The Grapes of Wrath
All the King's Men
Lolita
The Naked and the Dead
Lady Chatterley's Lover (guess why)
Couples
Portnoy's Complaint
Humboldt's Gift
Ragtime
Sophie's Choice
The Handmaid's Tale
The Satanic Verses
The Bonfire of the Vanities
Some big name authors, as you have noticed, turn themselves into franchises and brands - new James Bond novels are produced without the need for the frankly deceased Ian Fleming; likewise V C Andrews novels continued to be published as "A V C Andrews novel by Andrew Neiderman". If only they'd have thought to do that with Charles Dickens or Shakespeare.
Unwittingly I seem to have become a John Sutherland fanboy - I have now read this one, plus his very amusing Lives of the Novelists, plus his also amusing 50 Literature Ideas you Really Need to Know, plus his strange, annoying, but never boring How to be Well Read. Perhaps he is stalking me.
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