Dear Readers,
We’re in the midst of celebrating Warren Public Library’s 150th Anniversary…and guys, it’s pretty big deal. Warren Public Library predates Andrew Carnegie’s first library in the United States by over ten years. We’re older than the Philadelphia Free Library. While we aren’t the first or the oldest, we have been serving our community for a long time and we’re so excited to celebrate this milestone with all of you.
Much has happened during these past 150 years, both locally and nationally. Warren Public Library has adapted to it all. While our services have evolved over the years to best serve our community, the one mainstay that we’ve always provided is access to books and the written word. We felt that there was no better time than now to compile a list of some of the most memorable reading from the last 150 years. Some of these books are instantly recognizable, while other titles may not have stood the test of time. We also wanted to chart some more notable publication dates for popular writers today (ahem, James Patterson). Personally, I’ve done my best to choose titles that have had broad appeal and not those that I simply enjoy more (the struggle was real). We hope that you enjoy looking through this list and maybe find something worth borrowing.
We’ve still got so many wonderful things planned to celebrate with all of you this year. Thank you for supporting us!
Happy Exploring!
-Julie, Communication & Outreach Librarian
Jump to a decade:
1873: Around the World in Eighty Days, Jules Verne
1874: Far From the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
1875: The Way We Live Now, by Anthony Trollope
1876: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain
1877: Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
1878: Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
1879: The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1880: Heidi, Johanna Spyri
1881: The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James
1882: Anandamath, Bankim Chatterjee
1883: Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
1884: Flatland, Edwin Abbott Abbott
1885: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
1886: Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,
Robert Louis Stevenson
1887: A Study in Scarlet, Arthur Conan Doyle
1888: Wessex Tales, Thomas Hardy
1889: Three Men in a Boat, Jerome K. Jerome
1890: Poems, Emily Dickinson
1891: Spring Awakening, Frank Wedekind
1892: The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman
1893: A Woman of No Importance, Oscar Wilde
1894: The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling
1895: The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane
1896: The Island of Doctor Moreau, H. G. Wells
1897: Dracula, Bram Stoker
1898: The Turn of the Screw, Henry James
1899: The Awakening, Kate Chopin
1900: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum
1901: Three Sisters, Anton Chekhov
1902: The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Beatrix Potter
1903: The Call of the Wild, Jack London
1904: Peter Pan, J. M. Barrie
1905: The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton
1906: The Jungle, Upton Sinclair
1907: The Secret Agent, Joseph Conrad
1908: Anne of Green Gables, Lucy Maud Montgomery
1909: The Promise of American Life, Herbert Croly
1910: Howards End, E. M. Forster
1911: The Phantom of the Opera, Gaston Leroux
1912: Riders of the Purple Sage, Zane Grey
1913: Pollyanna, Eleanor H. Porter
1914: Tarzan of the Apes, Edgar Rice Burroughs
1915: The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
1916: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
1917: Prufrock, and Other Observations, T. S. Eliot
1918: My Antonia, Willa Cather
1919: The Haunted Bookshop, Christopher Morley
1920: The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
1921: Nets to Catch the Wind, Elinor Wylie
1922: Ulysses, James Joyce
1923: New Hampshire, Robert Frost
1924: The Boxcar Children, Gertrude Chandler Warner
1925: The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
1926: Winnie the Pooh, A. A. Milne
1927: To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
1928: Lady Chatterley’s Lover, D. H. Lawrence
1929: The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
1930: The Murder at the Vicarage, Agatha Christie
1931: Joy of Cooking, Irma S. Rombauer
1932: Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
1933: Testament of Youth, Vera Brittain
1934: The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain
1935: Little House on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls Wilder
1936: Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
1937: Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
1938: Our Town: A Play, Thornton Wilder
1939: The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
1940: For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
1941: Curious George, H. A. Rey and Margret Rey
1942: Little Golden Books Debut; Titles include:
The Poky Little Puppy by Janette Sebring Lowrey,
Three Little Kittens by Marie Simchow Stern,
and The Little Red Hen
1943: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith
1944: The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams
1945: Animal Farm, George Orwell
1946: Hiroshima, John Hersey
1947: Goodnight Moon, Margaret Wise Brown
1948: The Heart of the Matter, Graham Greene
1949: Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller
1950: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, C. S. Lewis
1951: The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
1952: Charlotte’s Web, E. B. White
1953: Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
1954: The Fellowship of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien
1955: The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith
1956: Howl, Allen Ginsberg
1957: The Cat in the Hat, Dr. Seuss
1958: A Bear Called Paddington, Michael Bond
1959: The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson
1960: To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
1961: Catch-22, Joseph Heller
1962: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey
1963: Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak
1964: The Giving Tree, Shel Silverstein
1965: Dune, Frank Herbert
1966: In Cold Blood, Truman Capote
1967: The Outsiders, S. E. Hinton
1968: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke
1969: Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
1970: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Dee Brown
1971: The Exorcist, William Peter Blatty
1972: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson
1973: The Godwulf Manuscript, Robert B. Parker
1974: All the President’s Men, Carl Bernstein
and Bob Woodward
1975: The Great Train Robbery, Michael Crichton
1976: Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
1977: The Shining, Stephen King
1978: Eye of the Needle, Ken Follett
1979: The Executioner’s Song, Norman Mailer
1980: Cosmos, Carl Sagan
1981: Ramona Quimby, Age 8, Beverly Cleary
1982: The Color Purple, Alice Walker
1983: The Little Drummer Girl, John le Carre
1984: The Hunt for Red October, Tom Clancy
1985: The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
1986: It, Stephen King
1987: Beloved, Toni Morrison
1988: Matilda, Roald Dahl
1989: The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan
1990: Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton
1991: The Firm, John Grisham
1992: All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy
1993: Along Came a Spider, James Patterson
1994: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, John Berendt
1995: The Horse Whisperer, Nicholas Evans
1996: Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace
1997: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, J. K. Rowling
1998: The Hours, Michael Cunningham
1999: Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson
2000: The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
2001: Life of Pi, Yann Martel
2002: The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold
2003: The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown
2004: My Sister’s Keeper, Jodi Picoult
2005: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson
2006: Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen
2007: Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Jeff Kinney
2008: The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
2009: The Help, Kathryn Stockett
2010: Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand
2011: The Martian, Andy Weir
2012: Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn
2013: The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman
2014: All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr
2015: The Nightingale, Kristin Hannah
2016: When Breath Becomes Air, Paul Kalanithi
2017: The Hate U Give, Angie Thomas
2018: Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens
2019: The Dutch House, Ann Patchett
2020: The Vanishing Half, Brit Bennett
2021: Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro
2022: Reminders of Him, Colleen Hoover
2023: I Have Some Questions for You, Rebecca Makkai
