What fiction have British people been reading in the last hundred years? Who are the most popular authors, the most popular books and the most important genres? Such straightforward questions raise intriguing literary, cultural, social and intellectual responses which often require much detective work in the annals of lost literature. This essential guide and reference work is the only available study of all of the bestselling books, authors and genres since the beginning of the twentieth-century, providing an unique insight into over one hundred years of publishing and reading as well as taking us on a journey into the heart of the British imagination.