TheBestseller
Observatory

Best Sellers

Hardcover Fiction

Week of January 16, 1955

FictionNonfiction
WeekMonth
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2
LOVE IS ETERNAL
Irving Stone

LOVE IS ETERNAL

by Irving Stone · Doubleday

20 wks on list

A sympathetic portrait of Mary Todd Lincoln. The author pictures her marriage to Abraham Lincoln as a great love story.

4
KATHERINE
Anya Seton
Cover of KATHERINE

KATHERINE

by Anya Seton · Houghton Mifflin

14 wks on list

This classic romance novel tells the true story of the love affair that changed history-- that of Katherine Swynford and John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the ancestors of most of the British royal family. Set in the vibrant 14th century of Chaucer and the Black Death, the story features knights fighting in battle, serfs struggling in poverty, and the magnificent Plantagenets-- Edward III, the Black Prince, and Richard II-- who ruled despotically over a court rotten with intrigue. Within this era of danger and romance, John of Gaunt, the king's son, falls passionately in love with the already married Katherine. Their well-documented affair and love persist through decades of war, adultery, murder, loneliness, and redemption. This epic novel of conflict, cruelty, and untamable love has become a classic since its first publication in 1954.

8
GOOD MORNING, MISS DOVE
Frances Gray Patton
Cover of GOOD MORNING, MISS DOVE

GOOD MORNING, MISS DOVE

by Frances Gray Patton · Curtis Publishing Company

8 wks on list

When the citizens of Liberty Hill see the redoubtable Miss Dove being carried to a doctor, two generations remember with gratitude a code of behavior learned in her classroom, where no leeway was given to the personality, where a thing was black or white, right or wrong, polite or rude, simply because Miss Dove said it was.

10
1
BENTON'S ROW
Frank Yerby
Cover of BENTON'S ROW
12
1
MARY ANNE
Daphne du Maurier
13
NEW
REUNION
Merle Miller
16
NEW
THE SEARCHERS
Alan Lemay
Cover of THE SEARCHERS

THE SEARCHERS

by Alan Lemay · Harper and Brothers

South-plains cattlemen, Comanche Indians, and a captured child in a story of Texas just after the Civil War.

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