The Mid-Manhattan Library turned 45 this year. The library opened its doors to the public on October 26, 1970 and we’ve been serving readers from all over the city—and the world—ever since. To celebrate our 45th birthday this fall, we compiled a list of 45 fiction titles, including award-winners, bestsellers, and some other noteworthy fiction from the early 1970s, currently available in NYPL’s circulating and/or e-collections. As end of the year book lists are circulating, we thought we’d share this blast from the fiction past.
What books were in the news in October 1970?Love Story by Erich Segal was at the top of the New York Times Best Seller List for October 25, 1970. It was also the number one bestselling novel of that year with The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles in second place. The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction was awarded to The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford, and Joyce Carol Oates received the National Book Award for her novel Them in 1970. Ursula Le Guin won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards that year for The Left Hand of Darkness, and Forfeit by Dick Francis won the Edgar Award for Best Mystery Fiction. The 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and future Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison published her first novel, The Bluest Eye that year.
In making our list, we started started with National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winners, looked at other literary awards, and consulted NYPL's Books to Remember lists from the early 1970s. Bestsellers are taken from the Publisher's Weekly annual lists. Finally, we included a few other culturally significant novels that did not win awards or become bestsellers when published in the early 1970s, but which have had a lasting impact. Please feel free to suggest others. There is some crossover among the categories. Several bestsellers, like E. L. Doctorow's Ragtime and John le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy also appeared on NYPL's Books to Remember lists. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is both a Nobel Prize winner and a bestselling author of the time; his August 1914 was the second best-selling novel of 1972.
Award Winners
| Angle of Repose | Wallace Stegner | 1972 Pulitzer Prize |
| The Bell Jar* | Sylvia Plath | 1971 NYPL Books to Remember |
| Chimera | John Barth | 1973 National Book Award |
| The Complete Stories | Flannery O’Connor | 1972 National Book Award |
| The Conservationist | Nadine Gordimer | 1974 Booker Prize |
| Deliverance | James Dickey | 1971 NBA finalist; NYPL Books to Remember |
| Dog Soldiers | Robert Stone | 1975 National Book Award |
| The Gods Themselves | Isaac Asimov | 1972 Hugo Award & 1973 Nebula Award |
| Gravity’s Rainbow | Thomas Pynchon | 1974 National Book Award |
| In a Free State | V. S. Naipaul | 1971 Booker Prize |
| The Killer Angels | Michael Shaara | 1975 Pulitzer Prize |
| The Left Hand of Darkness | Ursula K. Le Guin | 1970 Hugo & Nebula Awards |
| The Master of Go | Yasunari Kawabata | 1972 NYPL Books to Remember |
| Mr. Sammler’s Planet | Saul Bellow | 1971 National Book Award |
| One Hundred Years of Solitude | Gabriel Garcia Marquez | 1970 NYPL Books to Remember |
| The Optimist’s Daughter | Eudora Welty | 1973 Pulitzer Prize winner |
| Rabbit Redux | John Updike | 1972 NYPL Books to Remember; 1971 bestseller list |
| Slaughterhouse-Five | Kurt Vonnegut | 1970 National Book Award finalist |
| The Tenants | Bernard Malamud | 1970 NYPL Books to Remember |
| Them | Joyce Carol Oates | 1970 National Book Award |
| Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy | John le Carré | 1974 NYPL Books to Remember & bestseller |
| Watership Down | Richard Adams | 1974 NYPL Books to Remember & bestseller |
Bestsellers
| August 1914 | Alexander Solzhenitsyn | 1972 bestseller list |
| The Betsy | Harold Robbins | 1971 bestseller list |
| Breakfast of Champions | Kurt Vonnegut | 1973 bestseller list |
| The Day of the Jackal | Frederick Forsyth | 1971 & 1972 bestseller lists and 1972 Edgar Award winner |
| The Exorcist | William P. Blatty | 1971 bestseller list |
| The French Lieutenant’s Woman | John Fowles | 1970 bestseller list |
| Islands in the Stream | Ernest Hemingway | 1970 bestseller list |
| Jaws | Peter Benchley | 1974 bestseller list |
| Jonathan Livingston Seagull | Richard Bach | #1 bestseller in 1972 |
| Love Story | Erich Segal | #1 bestseller in 1970 |
| My Name is Asher Lev | Chaim Potok | 1972 bestseller list |
| QB VII | Leon Uris | 1970 bestseller list |
| Ragtime | E. L. Doctorow | #1 bestseller in 1975 |
| The Winds of War | Herman Wouk | 1971 & 1972 bestseller lists |
More culturally significant novels from the early 1970s
| The Bluest Eye | Toni Morrison | Published in 1970 (debut novel) |
| Carrie | Stephen King | Published in 1974 (debut novel) |
| Dusklands | J. M. Coetzee | Published in 1974 (debut novel) |
| Fear of Flying | Erica Jong | Published in 1973 |
| The Great American Novel | Philip Roth | Published in 1973 |
| Great Jones Street | Don De Lillo | Published in 1973 |
| Play It as It Lays | Joan Didion | Published in 1970 |
| Sula | Toni Morrison | Published in 1973 |
| Surfacing | Margaret Atwood | Published in 1971 |
What were you reading in the 1970s? What books written in the 1970s resonate with you? If I remember correctly, my favorite book in 1970 was Richard Scarry’s Best Story Book Ever, but 45 years on I'd be more likely to read Margaret Atwood or John le Carré. Please share your favorite 1970s fiction in the comments section below!
Thanks to Nancy Aravecz, Lois Moore, Billy Parrott, and Melissa Scheurer for contributing to this list!