1939 Popular Books and Bestsellers

1939 Books & Bestsellers

1939 Fiction Top Ten Books

(according to Publisher’s Weekly)
1. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
2. All This, and Heaven Too by Rachel Field
3. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
4. Wickford Point by John Marquard
5. Escape by Ethel Vance
6. Disputed Passage by Lloyd C. Douglas
7. The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
8. The Tree of Liberty by Elizabeth Page
9. The Nazarene by Sholem Asch
10. Kitty Foyle by Christopher Morley

1939 Non-Fiction Books

1. Days of Our Years by Pierre Van Paasen
2. Reaching for the Stars by Nora Waln
3. Inside Asia by John Gunther
4. Autobiography with Letters by William Lyon Phelps
5. Country Lawyer by Bellamy Partridge
6. Wind, Sand, and Stars by Antoine de St. Exupéry
7. Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
8. A Peculiar Treasure by Edna Ferber
9. Not Peace but a Sword by Vincent Sheehan
10. Listen! The Wind by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

1939 Notable Literature

The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
Studies in Iconology by Erwin Panofsky
Freedom and Culture by John Dewey
Factories in the Field by Carey McWilliams
Modern Poetry and the Tradition by Cleanth Brooks
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
The Civilizing Process by Norbert Elias

1939 Book of the Month Club Selections

The Sword in the Stone by T.H. White
Unforgotten Years by Logan Pearsall Smith
Days of Our Years by Pierre van Paassen
The Patriot by Pearl S. Buck
Each to the Other by Christopher LaFarge
Ordeal by Nevil Shute
Captain Horatio Hornblower by C.S. Forester
America in Midpassage by Charles and Mary Beard
Wind, Sand, and Stars by Antoine de St. Exupéry
The Brandons by Angela Thirkell
Not Peace but a Sword by Vincent Sheean
Christ in Concrete by Pietro di Donato
You and Heredity by Amram Scheinfeld
Escape by Ethel Vance
The Nazarene by Sholem Asch
Moment in Peking by Lin Yutang
1939 Nobel Prize in Literature
Most Popular Books of 1939, according to GoodReads
Scroll to Top