Novels that made the 1937 bestseller list have remarkably good staying power. Every book on the list is still readable, and several are superb entertainment even today.
Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, which topped both the 1936 and 1937 bestseller lists, is still a winner. Mitchell’s characters are unforgettable. Her picture of the death of the Old South has become historical fact for readers and movie-watchers ever since.
Like Gone with the Wind, And So—Victoria by Vaughan Wilkins is a whopping historical romance. With an English setting and male lead character, it appeals less to American readers than Mitchell’s novel, but it’s still super entertainment.
My top pick, though, is Louis Bromfield’s The Rains Came: A Novel of Modern India. Though narrower in scope than Mitchell’s and Wilkins’ novels, The Rains Came shows a time and place with a clarity that takes readers to the spot. The flood scenes are as harrowing as the burning of Atlanta. The characters are as marvelous and as ordinary as the next door neighbors.
In the next rank are three short novels: John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, W. Somerset Maugham’s Theatre: A Novel, and James Hilton’s We Are Not Alone. Steinbeck and Hilton each focus on a pair of losers fated to keep on losing. By contrast, Maugham’s heroine is at the top of her career and likely to remain there.
At the end of my list of durable reading from the 1937 bestseller list are Kenneth Roberts’ novel of the French and Indian Wars, Northwest Passage and Walter D. Edmonds’ tale of the American Revolution, Drums Along the Mohawk. Both authors sacrifice their stories on the altar of history, but sections of each novel are great reading.
Look for some of these vintage novels at your library or used book store. They are well worth reading today.
