A Century of Books

A book can take you away to exotic places or the town next door depending on where you want to go. When you get there, you’ll find love, deception, torrid romances, electric encounters, jealousy and sacrifice, break-ups and make-up sex, and a whole new world of fantasy and fun. Curl up in a comfy chair and take a look at some of the top romance novels since the 1920s.

  • 1920

    The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton 1920

    Chéri by Sidone-Gabrille Colette 1920

    Women in Love by DH Lawrence 1920

    Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley 1921

    The Fox, by D.H. Lawrence 1923

    A Lost Lady by Willa Cather 1923

    The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925

    Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos 1925

    Ali and Nino by Kurban Said 1928

    A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway 1929

  • 1930

    Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon 1932

    Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller 1934

    Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald 1934

    The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann 1936

    Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell 1936

    Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston 1937

    Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier 1938

    The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen 1938

  • 1940

    The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers 1940

    The Snow Goose by Paul Gallico 1941

    Gigi by Colette 1944

    The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford 1945

    At Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept by Elizabeth Smart 1945

    The Reluctant Widow by Georgette Heyer 1946

    The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen 1948

    I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith 1948

  • 1950

    The End of the Affair by Graham Greene 1951

    Love for Lydia by HE Bates 1952

    The Go-Between by LP Hartley 1953

    The Echoing Grove by Rosamond Lehmann 1953

    Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan 1954

    Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov 1955

    Arturo’s Island: A Novel by Elsa Morante 1957

    Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote 1958

  • 1960

    Lady Chatterley’s Lover by DH Lawrence 1960

    Diary of a Mad Old Man by Junichiro Tanizaki 1961

    Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates 1961

    The Garden of the Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani 1962

    Beauty and Sadness by Yasunari Kawabata 1964

    Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys 1966

    A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter 1967

    The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles 1969

  • 1970

    Love Story by Erich Segal 1970

    Enemies, a Love Story by Isaac Bashevis Singer 1972

    The Princess Bride by William Goldman 1973

    The Other Side of Midnight by Sidney Sheldon 1973

    Light Years by James Salter 1975

    The Painter of Signs by RK Narayan 1976

    The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough 1977

    The Far Pavilions by MM Kaye 1978

    The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera 1978

  • 1980

    So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell 1980

    A Month in the Country by JL Carr 1980

    The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard 1980

    The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera 1982

    Look at Me by Anita Brookner 1983

    The Lover by Marguerite Duras 1984

    Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie 1984

    Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel García Márquez 1985

    More Die of Heartbreak by Saul Bellow 1987

    Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami 1987

    Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey 1988

    The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro 1989

  • 1990

    Possesion by AS Byatt 1990

    The Silent Duchess by Dacia Maraini 1990

    The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje 1992

    Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel

    The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides 1993

    Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières

    The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald 1995

    The Reader by Bernhard Schlink 1995

    The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks 1996

    Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier

    The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif 1999

    Music and Silence by Rose Tremain 1999

  • 2000

    Atonement by Ian McEwan 2001

    Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer 2002

    The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory 2002

    The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger 2003

    Gilead by Marilynne Robinson 2004

    Twilight by Stephenie Meyer 2005

    The Book Thief by Markus Zusak 2005

    Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen 2006

    The Pact by Jodi Picoult 2006

    Eat, PrAy, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert 2007