1881 Best Seller.

The first of a series of books about the Pepper children. The story of their impoverished lives with their widowed mother. The book was part of a fantastically popular series of 12.

1865 Best Seller.

The story of Hans and his sister's participation in a skating competition is interwoven with their class reading of _The Hero of Haarlem_ (the boy who saved his country by plugging a dike with his finger). Somehow poplular myth has transferred Han's name to the dike boy.

1871 Best Seller.

The second of the 'Little Women' / 'March Family Saga' trilogy, follows the progress of Jo Bhaer and her students of Plumfield Estate school.

1888 Best Seller.

A utopian novel. Julian West falls into an hypnotic trance near the end of the 19th Century and awakens more than 100 years later (right around now) to find America transformed into a socialist utopia. Bellamy uses the conceit to explore his ideas of how to improve society.

1874 Best Seller.

In his day E. P. Roe was a bigger seller than Mark Twain.

"In the Opening of a Chestnut Burr, Mr. Roe has made a marked advance upon his two previous stories. He has already exhibited a remarkable power of description, which in this volume he uses with good effect in the scenes of fire and shipwreck. It is thoroughly religious, thoroughly Christian both in tone and teaching." -- Harper's Magazine. (a contemporary review)

1867 Best Seller.

A young girl wins the heart of a dissipated man.

Thirty years later reviewers looked back on the book as though it was from an earlier culture altogether.

1855 Best Seller.

Ten Nights in a Bar-Room is temperance novel that helped demonize alcohol. In the story a miller gives up his mill and opens a tavern. The narrator visits intermittently over the years and charts the changes in the proprietor and the town due to the negative influence of alcohol.