BEST SELLERS OF YEAR

Greymouth Evening Star, 9 February 1938, Page 14

BEST SELLERS OF YEAR

HAVE YOU READ THEM ALL? LONDON, December 29. In a review of the book output of 1937, which he deScribes as one of the most spectacular of recent years, a “Daily Mail” correspondent names Dr. Cronin’s book, “The Citadel,” as the greatest success of the year. The sales in England alone are in the neighbourhood of 140,000 copies, and, adds the writer, “there can be few 7 Harley Street specialists unenviops of Dr. Cronin’s income.” A close second is Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone with the Wind,” the novel that has swept Europe and America. One can understand its success in America, for it is pre-eminent-ly their book, a great story of eatdy American days. But it has broken nearly all the records of best-seller-dom in Great Britain. The writer’s other selections in an aproximate order of sales-merit are “They Seek a Country,” by Francis Brett Young; “Dangerous Years,” by Gilbert Frankau; “John Cornelias,” by Sir Hugh Walpole; “Victoria 4.30.” | by Cecil Roberts; “Busman’s Honeymoon,” by Dorothy Sayers; “And So Victoria,” by Vaughan Wilkins; “Turning Wheels,” by Stuart Cloete; “Ordeal in England,” by Sir Philip Gibbs; and “No Hearts to Break,” by Susan Ertz. Fiction, of course, will always score the biggest commercial triumphs. But this remarkable year of literary output has produced nothing quite so remarkable as the public’s a'vid appetite for more and morel solid fare. Perhaps the most striking example of this is the huge success of “The Bible Designed to be Read as I Literature,” edited and arranged by | Ernest Sutherland Bates. At half a guinea it is a cheap book, but half-a-guinea is half-a-guinea. The price, however, has not prevented it from becoming a best-seller in the book-

shops as distinct from books in greatest demand in libraries. The biography of R. B. Cunning-hame-Graham entitled “Don Roberto,” ( by A. F. Tschiffely, has also proved a i, bookseller’s as well as a librarian’s joy.