Below are the #1 bestselling fictional novels in the United States for each year from 1900 to 1999, based on annual sales data (traditionally compiled by The Bookman and later Publishers Weekly).
created by GLeigh
last updated April, 2026
The King's General
Daphne du Maurier
Forever Amber
Kathleen Winsor
Strange Fruit
Lillian E. Smith
The Robe
Lloyd C. Douglas
The Song of Bernadette
Franz Werfel
The Keys of the Kingdom
A.J. Cronin
How Green Was My Valley
Richard Llewellyn
The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck
The Yearling
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Gone with the Wind
Margaret Mitchell
Green Light
Anthony Adverse (Anthony Adverse, #1-3)
Hervey Allen
The Good Earth (House of Earth, #1)
Pearl S. Buck
Cimarron
Edna Ferber
All Quiet on the Western Front
Erich Maria Remarque
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Thornton Wilder
Elmer Gantry
Sinclair Lewis
The Private Life of Helen of Troy
John Erskine
Soundings
A. Hamilton Gibbs
So Big
Black Oxen
Gertrude Atherton
If Winter Comes
A.S.M. Hutchinson
Main Street
The Man of the Forest
Zane Grey
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
Vicente Blasco Ibáñez
The U. P. Trail
Mr. Britling Sees It Through
H.G. Wells
Seventeen
Booth Tarkington
The Turmoil (The Growth Trilogy, #1)
The Eyes of the World
Harold Bell Wright
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