Century of Books Project

I read about A Century of Books here at the blog Stuck in a Book (and here is Stuck in a Book’s 2012 Century of Books completed project). The idea is to read one book from each year of a century, whatever century you choose, to total 100 books. Simon at Stuck in a Book chose the century from 1914-2013.

I’m going to choose the century from 1851-1950. And for the purposes of my project, books can either be set in the particular year indicated or published in that year.

Project beginning date: January, 2014.

1851: The King of the Golden River or The Black Brothers: A Legend of Stiria by John Ruskin. I have a copy of this children’s classic, published in 1851.
1852: READ: Bleak House by Charles Dickens. Published 1852-1853 in installments. READ: The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne. 

1853:  READ: Ruth by Mrs.(Elizabeth) Gaskell. Published in 1853.
1854: The Lamplighter by Maria Susanna Cummins. Hard Times by Charles Dickens. Published in 1854.
1855: The Warden by Anthony Trollope. Published in 1855.
1856: John Halifax, Gentleman by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik. Published in 1856. READ: Granny’s Wonderful Chair by Frances Browne. Published in 1856.
1857: Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens. Published in book form in 1857.
1858: Mrs. Robinson’s Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady by Kate Summerscale. Setting, 1858. Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope. Published in 1858. The Courtship of Miles Standish by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Published in 1858.
1859: Family Happiness by Leo Tolstoy. Published in 1859.
1860: The Professor at the Breakfast Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes. Published in 1860.

1861: READ March by Geraldine Brooks. Setting, 1861, published in 2006. Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (2006). Book of Nonsense by Edward Lear. 
1862: Goblin Market and Other Poems by Christina Rossetti. Published in 1862. Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev. Published in 1862.
1863: Tales of a Wayside Inn by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
1864: Choke Creek by Lauren Small. Setting, 1864, published in 2009. Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Published in 1864.
1865: The March by E.L. Doctorow. Setting, 1864-65, published in 2005. Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates by mary Makes Dodge. Published in 1865.
1866: Miss Marjoribanks (The Chronicles of Carlingford #5) by Margaret Oliphant. Jessica’s First Prayer by Hesba Stretton. Published in 1866.
1867: The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (short story collection) by Mark Twain. Published in 1867.
1868: The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins. Published in 1868.
1869: Lorna Doone by R.D. Blackmore. Published in 1869.
1870: The Last Dickens by Matthew Pearl. Setting 1867-1870, published in 2009. The Story of a Bad Boy by Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Published in 1870.

1871: At the Back of the North Wind by George Macdonald. Published in 1871.
1872:
1873: A Flat Iron for a Farthing by Juliana Horatia Ewing. Published in 1873.
1874: The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne.  Christie’s Old Organ by Mrs. O.F. Walton. Published in 1874: Christie’s Old Organ by Mrs.O.F. Walton
1875: The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope. READ: The Wise Woman, or The Lost Princess by George MacDonald. Published in 1875.
1876: READ: Rose in Bloom by Louisa May Alcott. Published in 1876.
1877: Under the Lilacs by Louisa May Alcott. Published in 1877.
1878: Daisy Miller by Henry James. Published in 1878.
1879: A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella Bird. Sir Gibbie by George MacDonald. Published in 1879.
1880: Aunt Charlotte’s Evenings at Home With the Poets. A collection of poems for the Young, with conversations, arranged in twenty five evenings, etc. by Charlotte Mary Yonge. Published in 1880. READ: Heidi by Johanna Spyri. Published in English in 1880.

1881: Silver Canyon by Louis L’Amour. Set in Utah Territory, 1881, published in 1957. Uncle Remus stories by Joel Chandler Harris. Published in 1881.
1882: Boy Knight (Winning His Spurs) by G.A. Henty. Published in 1882.
1883: The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood of Great Renown in Nottinghamshire by Howard Pyle. Published in 1883: Flatland by Edwin Abbot. Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson. Published in 1885.
1884: With Fire and Sword by Henryk Sienkiewicz.
1885: READ: The Ox-bow Incident by Walter Van Tilberg Clark. Setting 1885, published in 1940. “The Lady or the Tiger?” (short story) by Frank R. Stockton.
1886: Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow by Jerome K. Jerome. Published in 1886.
1887: The Brownies, Their Book by Palmer Cox. Published in 1887.
1888: The Man Who Would Be King by Rudyard Kipling. Published in 1888.
1889: The Master of Ballantrae: A Winter’s Tale by Robert Louis Stevenson.
1890: Larkrise to Candleford by Flora Thompson. Set in the last decade of the nineteenth century, published in 1945. The Red Fairy Book by Andrew Lang. Published in 1890.

1891: The White Company by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
1892: Across the Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson. Published in 1892.
1893: Beric the Briton: A Story of the Roman Invasion by G.A. Henty.  Beautiful Joe by Margaret Saunders. Published in 1893.
1894: Seven Little Australians by Ethel Turner. Published in 1894.
1895: Wulf The Saxon: A Story of the Norman Conquest by G.A. Henty. The Amateur Immigrant by Robert Louis Stevenson. Published in 1895.
1896: The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac by Eugene Field. Published in 1896.
1897: Travels in West Africa by Mary Henrietta Kingsley. Published in 1897.
1898: Elizabeth and Her German Garden by Elizabeth von Arnim. Published in 1898.
1899: Parables of the Christ-Life by Lilias Trotter. Published in 1899.
1900: Goops, and How To Be Them by Gelett Burgess. Published in 1900. Beautiful Dreamer by Joan Naper. Set in Chicago, 1900, published in 2010. Reviewed by Sarah Johnson at Reading the Past.

1901: The Octopus: A Story of California by Frank Norris.
1902: The Wings of the Dove by Henry James. Published in 1902.
1903: Robert Browning by G.K. Chesterton
1904: By What Authority? by Robert Hugh Benson. Published in 1904.
Dandelion Cottage by Carroll Watson Rankin. Published in 1904.
1905: The Club of Queer Trades by G.K. Chesterton. Published in 1905.
1906: Puck of Pook’s Hill by Rudyard Kipling. Published in 1906. The Railway Children by E. Nesbit
1907: Songs of a Sourdough by Robert W. Service. Published in 1907.
1908: The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp by W.H. Davies. Published in 1908. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame.
1909: Gunnar’s Daughter by Sigrid Undset. The Children’s Own Longfellow, Poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Published in 1909.
1910: When a Man Marries by Mary Roberts Rinehart. Published in 1910.

1911: Flambards by K.M. Peyton. Set during the period 1910-1918, published in 1967.  The Innocence of Father Brown by G.K. Chesterton. The Ballad of the White Horse by G.K. Chesterton. Published in 1911.
1912: The Four Men: A Farrago by Hilaire Belloc. Published in 1912.
1913: Trent’s Last Case by E.C. Bentley. Published in 1913.
Laddie by Gene Stratton-Porter. Published in 1913.
1914: The Three Sisters by May Sinclair. Published in 1914.
1915: The Star of Gettysburg by Joseph Altsheler. The Lost Prince by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Published in 1915.
READ: The Beekeeper’s Apprentice by Laurie R. King. Setting 1915, published in 2007.
1916: Uneasy Money by P.G. Wodehouse. Published in the U.S. in 1916. READ: Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher.

1917: The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley. Published in 1917.
1918: READ: Risked (The Missing: Book 6) by Margaret Peterson Haddix. Setting 1918, published in 2013. (no review at Semicolon)
1919: Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen, Karen Blixen. Setting 1914-1931, published in 1937.
1920: The Great Impersonation by E. Phillips Oppenheim. Published in 1920.

1921: Penny Plain by Anna Buchan. Published in 1921.
1922: READ: Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim Published in 1922.
1923: My Garden of Memory: An Autobiography by Kate Douglas Wiggin. Published in 1923.
1924: The Dream Coach by Anne Parrish. Published in 1924. Newbery Honor Book in 1925.
Theras and His Town by Caroline Snedeker. Published in 1924.
1925: READ: The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham. Published in 1925.
1926: Smoky the Cowhorse by Will James. Newbery Medal in 1927, published in 1926.
1927: The Midnight Folk by John Masefield. Published in 1927.
READ: One Summer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson. Published in 2013.
1928: The Footsteps at the Lock by Ronald A. Knox. Published in 1928.
The Bishop’s Wife by Robert Nathan. Published in 1928.
1929: 
1930: Meggy Macintosh by Elizabeth Janet Gray. Published in 1930. Newbery Honor Book in 1931.
READ: Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome. Published in 1930.

1931: Endurance by Frank Arthur Worsley. Setting, 1914-1916, published in 1931. Waterless Mountain by Laura Armer. !932 Newbery Medalist, published in 1931.
1932: Cold Comfort Farm by StellaGibbons. Published in 1932.
1933: The House of Exile by Nora Waln. Published in 1933.
1934: READ: Miss Buncle’s Book by D.E. Stevenson. (no review at Semicolon) Dobry by Monica Shannon. 1935 Newbery Medalist, published in 1934.
1935: READ: The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Alone 1932-1940 by William Manchester. Published in 1988.
1936: READ:The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown. Setting, 1936, published in 2013.
1937: Diary of a Country Priest by Georges Bernanos. READ: The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien. Published in 1937.
1938: Death in a White Tie by Ngaio Marsh Excellent Intentions by Richard Hull. Published in 1938.
1939: Mrs. Miniver by Jan Struther. The Priory by Dorothy Whipple. Published in 1939.
1940: Growing Pains: Diaries And Drawings From The Years 1908-17 by Wanda Gag. My Name Is Aram by William Saroyan. Published in 1940.

1941: Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal by Ben MacIntyre. Setting, 1941-1945, published in 2007.
Mrs. Tim Carries On (Leaves from the Diary of an Officer’s Wife in the Year 1940) by D. E. (Dorothy Emily) Stevenson. Setting, 1940, published in 1941.
1942: READ: Pied Piper by Nevil Shute. Setting, 1940, published in 1942.
Tragedy at Law (Francis Pettigrew #1) by Cyril Hare. Published in 1942.
1943: READ: The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis.
1944: Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies by Ben Macintyre. Setting, 1944, published in 2012.
Fair Stood the Wind for France by H.E. Bates. Published in 1944.
1945: Captain from Castile by Samuel Shellabarger. Published in 1945.
Mr. Wilmer by Robert Lawson. Published in 1945.
1946: The Moving Toyshop (Gervase Fen #3) by Edmund Crispin. Setting, 1938, published in 1946.
The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge. Published in 1946, winner of the Carnegie Medal. The Four Graces by D.E. Stevenson. Published in 1946.

1947: READ: The Chequer Board by Nevill Shute. Published in 1947.
1948: READ:The Lark in the Morn (The Haverard Family #1) by Elfrida Vipont. Published in 1948.
1949: Tree of Freedom by Rebecca Caudill. Published in 1949. Newbery Honor Book in 1950.
1950: READ: The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer. Published in 1950.
Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys. Set in 1950 New Orleans, published in 2013.

2 Comments

2 thoughts on “Century of Books Project

  1. Sherry, it is quite an accomplishment just to make this list. I love it!

    From it, I’ve read Bleak House, The Warden, The Moonstone, all titles from 1871-1879, Robin Hood, Larkrise to Candleford, The White Company, Beric the Briton, Wulf the Saxon, Out of Africa, Penny Plain, The Footsteps at the Lock, Endurance, Cold Comfort Farm, Miss Buncle’s Book, Boys in the Boat, and The Little White Horse.

    There are several titles on my shelves. I’m just entranced by this idea of reading through a century. Thanks for several moments of joyful recollection and eager anticipation.

  2. Pingback: 10 Best Adult Novels I Read in 2021 | Semicolon

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