TheBestseller
Observatory

Best Sellers

Hardcover Fiction

Week of June 11, 1934

FictionNonfiction
WeekMonth
Jump to
1
LAMB IN HIS BOSOM
Caroline Miller
Cover of LAMB IN HIS BOSOM

LAMB IN HIS BOSOM

by Caroline Miller · Harper

8 wks at #1 · 4 on list

This 1934 Pulitzer Prize winner tells the story of a pair of young newlyweds in antebellum rural Georgia. In 1934, Caroline Miller's novel Lamb in His Bosom won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature. It was the first novel by a Georgia author to win a Pulitzer, soon followed by Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind in 1937. In fact, Lamb was largely responsible for the discovery of Gone With the Wind; after reading Miller's novel, Macmillan editor Harold S. Latham sought other southern novels and authors, and found Margaret Mitchell. Caroline Miller was fascinated by the other Old South-not the romantic inhabitants of Gone With the Wind, but rather the poor people of the south Georgia backwoods, who never owned a slave or planned to fight a war. The story of Cean and Lonzo, a young couple who begin their married lives two decades before the Civil War, Lamb in His Bosom is a fascinating account of social customs and material realities among settlers of the Georgia frontier. At the same time, Lamb in His Bosom transcends regional history as Miller's quietly lyrical prose style pays poignant tribute to a woman's life lived close to nature-the nature outside her and the nature within.

4
2
THE UNPOSSESSED
Tess Slesinger
Cover of THE UNPOSSESSED

THE UNPOSSESSED

by Tess Slesinger · Simon & Schuster

3 wks on list

Tess Slesinger’s 1934 novel, The Unpossessed details the ins and outs and ups and downs of left-wing New York intellectual life and features a cast of litterateurs, layabouts, lotharios, academic activists, and fur-clad patrons of protest and the arts. This cutting comedy about hard times, bad jobs, lousy marriages, little magazines, high principles, and the morning after bears comparison with the best work of Dawn Powell and Mary McCarthy.

5
NEW
I, CLAUDIUS
Robert Graves
Cover of I, CLAUDIUS

I, CLAUDIUS

by Robert Graves · Smith & Haas

1 wks on list

Reconstructing grandeur, folly, & fantastic sensuality of Imperial Rome.

6
2
SEVEN GOTHIC TALES
Isak Dinesen
Cover of SEVEN GOTHIC TALES

SEVEN GOTHIC TALES

by Isak Dinesen · Smith & Haas

7 wks on list

An anthology of seven suspenseful stories in nineteenth-century settings.

8
NEW
THREE MEN AND DIANA
Kathleen Norris
Cover of THREE MEN AND DIANA

THREE MEN AND DIANA

by Kathleen Norris · Doubleday, Doran

Raised in a boarding house by her grandmother, who eventually is killed in a fire, Diana first marries an actor and boarding house tenant named Neal Tressady. Neal leaves her for an actress. After a divorce she reunites with wealthy Bruce Palmer and they are secretly married, but the marriage turns out to be invalid. Just as they find this out, Bruce is killed in a polo match. Penniless and pregnant, Diana runs into Neal, who marries her again, but things are not good. Then Peter Platt, an old friend, reenters the picture, loving Diana. At the same time, Neal's actress girlfriend shows up again. Neal shoots himself and we are left knowing that Peter will care for Diana and her baby.

Historical bestseller data sourced from the New York Times Book Review, archived by Hawes Publications.