Frank Luther Mott Collection of American Best Sellers, 1662-1945.
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The earliest book Mott considered for inclusion was Michael Wigglesworth's The Day of Doom (Cambridge: Samuel Green, 1662), and the latest books were Betty McDonald's The Egg and I (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott), Samuel Shellabarger's Captain from Castille (Boston: Little Brown), and Kathleen Windsor's Forever Amber (New York: Macmillan), all published in 1945.
Mott defined best sellers as books known (or believed) to have had total sales equal to one percent of the population of the continental United States (or the English colonies in the years before the revolution) for the decades they were published. Omitted were Bibles, hymnals, textbooks, almanacs, cookbooks, doctor-books, manuals and reference books.
Mott (1886-1964) was Dean of the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Journalism from 1942-1951.