Early 1970s Fiction: 45 Novels for 45 Years of Mid-Manhattan
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
*The Bell Jar was first published in the U.S. in 1971. It was originally published in 1963 in London.
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!