LITERATURE
Economics
Best-Selling Books of the 20th Century
This list features the book that have sold the most copies from 1900—1999.
Books that claim to have high sales including The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien have multiple editions and therefore there is too much uncertainty regarding sales figures. Thus, these books have been omitted from the list. Furthermore, e-books have not been included in this list as out of copyright texts are often available in this format.
RANK | BOOK | AUTHOR | SALES | YEAR |
1 | The Little Prince | Antoine de Saint-Exupéry | 200 million | 1943 |
2 | The Alchemist | Paulo Coehlo | 150 million | 1988 |
3 | Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone | J. K. Rowling | 120 million | 1997 |
4 | And Then There Were None | Agatha Christie | 100 million | 1939 |
5 | The Hobbit | J.R.R. Tolkien | 100 million | 1937 |
6 | The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe | C.S. Lewis | 85 million | 1950 |
7 | Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets | J. K. Rowling | 77 million | 1998 |
8 | The Catcher in the Rye | J. D. Salinger | 65 million | 1951 |
9 | Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban | J. K. Rowling | 65 million | 1999 |
10 | The Bridges of Madison County | Robert James Waller | 60 million | 1992 |
11 | One Hundred Years of Solitude | Gabriel García Márquez | 50 million | 1967 |
12 | Lolita | Vladimir Nabokov | 50 million | 1955 |
13 | Anne of Green Gables | Lucy Maud Montgomery | 50 million | 1908 |
14 | The Name of the Rose | Umberto Eco | 50 million | 1980 |
15 | The Eagle Has Landed | Jack Higgins | 50 million | 1975 |
16 | Watership Down | Richard Adams | 50 million | 1972 |
17 | Charlotte’s Web | E. B. White | 50 million | 1952 |
18 | The Ginger Man | J. P. Donleavy | 50 million | 1955 |
19 | The Tale of Peter Rabbit | Beatrix Potter | 45 million | 1902 |
20 | Jonathan Livingston Seagull | Richard Bach | 44 million | 1970 |
References
