There's always something enjoyable about the listicles of the previous century, especially when they're so shamelessly transparent. I think my favourite part of that description is the idea of 'home library builders' - the idea that if you don't have the Dickinson Certified Best Books™, well, your parlour simply isn't up to snuff. I stumbled on Dickinson's 1,000 Best when I was doing the research for Lost Souls , and was delighted to find that his penchant for creating league tables of literature had continued.

*According to The Best Books of Our Time: 1901 - 1925, A clue in the literary labyrinth for home library builders, booksellers and librarians, consisting of a list of 1,000 best books selected by the best authorities accompanies by critical descriptions written and compiled by Asa Don Dickinson, Librarian of the University of Pennsylvania, Author of 1,000 Best Books.

Dickinson had a strict process for inclusion. He surveyed his notable peers, and any book that received four or more nominations was included.

This book specifically covers 1901-1925, and Dickinson notes that many notable authors simply didn't make the cut because of this restriction. There's no restriction on language, but Dickinson notes that only 69 of the 378 authors in the volume produced books 'in foreign tongues', which he concludes is simply the result of preparing a guide for (stated) 'English-speaking readers'.

Dickinson's top ten authors:

Author Endorsements John Galsworthy 197 H.G. Wells 172 Arnold Bennett 137 G. Bernard Shaw 123 Edith Wharton 118 Joseph Conrad 110 Booth Tarkington 103 Rudyard Kipling 79 W.H. Hudson 78 Joseph Hergesheimer 74 Eugene O'Neill 67

Hergesheimer is totally new to me the top Hergesheimer novel (Java Head, see below) has been downloaded 13 14 times. Booth Tarkington is one of three novelists to win the Pulitzer Prize more than once, but, seems to be largely forgotten. According to Gutenberg, his most downloaded book is Lords of the Housetops: 13 Tales of Cats. Which, I'm not ashamed to say, I already had.

We also have a league table for the top 25 titles:

Dickinson, like any good proto-blogger, has much more extensive lists, as well as lots of subcategories as well. If there were Amazon Affiliate links in 1925, he would've been a very happy man.

As this is nominally a genre blog, a few inclusions of interest. Dickinson includes various critical quotes in his descriptions, and they can be a joy to read:

It is always fun to see how lists like these hold up over time, but it is hard to judge if this aggregation of critics did particularly well or badly. Certainly many of the top names have held up over time, whilst others (sorry, Tarkington) haven't. And there are some misfires as well: embarrassingly marginal inclusions (Proust and Beerbohm, for example).

The bias against non-fiction - given Dickinson surveyed literary critics - makes for an amusingly skewed scale as well. E. Phillips Oppenheim is pretty snazzy, but if we're approaching significance quantitatively, it is a little silly to have one of his adventures on par with the Theory of Relativity.

Dickinson's book is a lot of fun, as it allows us to look (and laugh at) contemporary criticism. But it does also help further the discussion of critics as curators, and, more importantly, the 'causality' of great literature. How many of these books wound up as 'great books' because the critics said they were, with the impact of a few voices lingering for generations? Who speaks for the masses - are Harold Bell Wright and James Curwood - bestsellers of their decades - justifiably forgotten? And, if so, does that mean the power of a few critics outweighs the voices of millions of readers? Or simply that the critics had impressive predictive power? Or, conversely, does the disappearance of Booth Tarkington show that there's not correlation at all - and despite collective, critical praise, the tide of cultural history is inexorable? (Discuss. This will be 50% of your grade.)

In the meantime, my Kindle now overflows with Gutenberg downloads. Perhaps, with the copyright expired, we'll be seeing a resurgence of some of these names. Or maybe not.

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Credits: Photo by Jan Mellström. All links to free, legal downloads on Project Gutenberg or Archive.org.