Publishers Weekly #1 Best Seller for 1922.

Hutchinson makes a compelling story out of a difficult subject; an unhappy marriage, a divorce, and an unwed mother who commits suicide. The book was almost immediately adapted as a film, and also republished in the 1940's.

Publishers Weekly #1 Best Seller for 1921.

Sinclair Lewis is the first American to receive a Nobel Price for literature. Main Street was initially awarded the 1921 Pulitzer Price, but the Board of Trustees overturned the jury decision and awarded the prize to Edith Wharton for Age of Innocence.

The novel is an indictment of the 'vacuous respectability' of small town America and an exploration of the conflict between those who strive for intensity and those who are content with a routine existence. Lewis's characters are skillfully drawn and he shows subtle and compelling insights into their psychology. In spite of it's critical stance the initial publication of the book was a political and and social event.

Publishers Weekly #1 Best Seller for 1914.

Set in the world of authors, artists, and their patrons this novel explores the conflict between art for art sake and art for profit and fame. It was quite controversial in it's day; some accusing Wright of preaching and others supporting his observations.

Publishers Weekly #1 Best Seller for 1913.

It is important to note that the author is not the famed English politician and author, but an unrelated American writer.

"masterly grip of detail and rare psychological insight" - Henry Davies from letters to the New York Times 1913.

Publishers Weekly #1 Best Seller for 1915.

Tarkington was a widely read and prolific multiple Pulitzer Prize winning novelist and dramatist. The story uses a tale of two families following different trajectories but linked by romance to provide a glimpse of the changes induced by industrialization and urbanization.

Publishers Weekly #1 Best Seller for 1918.

An epic novel set against the construction of the Union-Pacific Railroad between 1864 and 1869 and the introduction of the telegraph. Full of wonderfully drawn characters and a central romantic thread.

A Victorian "sensation novel" par excellence, but perhaps a little challenging for some when it was first published: 'One of the most hardened female villains whose devices and desires have ever blackened fiction' The Athenaeum reviewer of Armadale (1866). Throughout the novel you know Lydia Gwilt is a wicked woman and that she is out to destroy Alan Armadale, but you can't help wishing her success.