“What are the best 1920’s books?” We consulted 12 articles and 378 books to answer that very question. Below you will find our results of the 51 top books from and about the 1920’s of all-time. Click here to see the methodology used.

Info That can be Found in a Best 1920’s Book Listicle

• Flappers
• A single woman on the book cover
• Sinclare Lewis
• New York

Editor’s Pick: One Summer by Bill Bryson

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51.) A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

Appears on: 2
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50.) A Passage to India by E.M. Forster

Appears on: 2
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49.) A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

Appears on: 2
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48.) All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

Appears on: 2
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47.) Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos

Appears on: 2
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46.) Just William by Richmal Crompton

Appears on: 2
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45.) Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence

Appears on: 2
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44.) Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe

Appears on: 2
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43.) Main Street by Sinclair Lewis

Appears on: 2
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42.) Manhattan Transfer by Dos Passos

Appears on: 2
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41.) Mein Kampf by A Huge Asshole

Appears on: 2
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40.) Mother India

Appears on: 2
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39.) Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Appears on: 2
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38.) Only Yesterday by Frederick Lewis Allen

Appears on: 2
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37.) Our Times: The United States, 1900-1925 by Mark Sullivan

Appears on: 2
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36.) Point Counter Point by Aldous Huxley

Appears on: 2
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35.) So Big by Edna Ferber

Appears on: 2
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34.) Strange Interlude by Eugene O’Neill

Appears on: 2
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33.) The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

Appears on: 2
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32.) The Boston Cooking School Cook Book

Appears on: 2
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31.) The Castle by Franz Kafka

Appears on: 2
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30.) The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim

Appears on: 2
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29.) The Enormous Room by E.E.Cummings

Appears on: 2
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28.) The Home-Maker

Appears on: 2
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27.) The Making of Americans by Gertrude Stein

Appears on: 2
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26.) The Man Nobody Knows by Bruce Barton

Appears on: 2
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25.) The Mind in the Making

Appears on: 2
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24.) The New Negro by Alain Locke

Appears on: 2
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23.) The Outline of History by Herbert George Wells

Appears on: 2
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22.) The Story of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting

Appears on: 2
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21.) The Trial by Franz Kafka

Appears on: 2
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20.) The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes

Appears on: 2
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19.) To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Appears on: 2
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18.) Twilight Sleep by Edith Wharton

Appears on: 2
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17.) Ulysses by James Joyce

Appears on: 2
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16.) We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

Appears on: 2
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15.) Winnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne

Appears on: 2
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14.) Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence

Appears on: 2
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13.) Dave at Night by Gail Carson Levine

Appears on: 2
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12.) Harlem Stomp!: a cultural history of the Harlem Renaissance by Laban Carrick Hill

Appears on: 2
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11.) Harlem Summer by Walter Dean Myers

Appears on: 2
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10.) Henry and the Kite Dragon By Bruce Edward Hall

Appears on: 2
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9.) Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis

Appears on: 3
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8.) The Americanization of Edward Bok by Edward William Bok

Appears on: 3
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7.) The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

Appears on: 3
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6.) The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot

Appears on: 3
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5.) This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Appears on: 3
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4.) Witness By Karen Hesse

Appears on: 3
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3.) The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Appears on: 4
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2.) Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis

Appears on: 5
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1.) The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

Appears on: 5
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The 327 Other 1920’s Books Appearing on a Single List

• A Dictionary of Twentieth-Century World History – Jan Palmowski
• A Gentleman of Courage
• A Good Woman
• A High Wind in Jamaica
• A Man from Maine
• A Poor Wise Man
• A Preface to Morals
• A Vision
• Absentee Ownership
• Accelerated Grimace: Expressionism in the American Drama of the 1920sBy Mardi Valgemae
• After Noon
• After Wilson: The Struggle for the Democratic Party, 1920-1934By Douglas B. Craig
• Age of Innocence
• All Kneeling
• Almanacs of American Life: Modern America 1914 to 1945 – Gregory, Ross
• America in the 1920s. (The Decades of Twentieth-Century America Series
• American Culture in the 1920sBy Susan Currell
• American Decades – Layman, Richard
• An American Idyll
• An American Tragedy
• An Emerging World Power, 1900-1929
• An Ocean Apart, a World Away
• An Old-fashioned ABC Book By: Elizabeth Allen Ashton
• Anatole France Himself
• Ariel
• Arrowsmith
• Ask Me Another
• Aspects of the Novel
• Asylum – William Seabrook
• Auction Bridge Complete
• Autobiography of Mark Twain
• Bad Girl
• Beau Geste
• Beau Sabreur
• Becoming Babe Ruth
• Being and Time
• Believe It or Not
• Beyond the Pleasure Principle by Sigmund Freud
• Big Blonde and Other Stories by Dorothy Parker
• Billy Budd (posthumous)
• Black Oxen
• Bliss by Katherine Mansfield
• Bootleg: Murder, Moonshine, and the Lawless Years of Prohibition.
• Bridge of San Luis Rey
• Call It Sleep – Henry Roth
• Cane
• Celeste’s Harlem Renaissance
• Cheri by Colette
• Choosing Up Sides
• Citizen Klansmen: The Ku Klux Klan in Indiana, 1921-1928By Leonard J. Moore
• Civilization in the United States
• Claire Ambler
• Collected Legal Papers
• Coming of Age in Samoa
• Conditioned Reflexes
• Cornhuskers – Carl Sandburg
• Count Luckner, the Sea Devil
• Daily Life in the United States, 1920-1939: Decades of Promise and PainBy David E. Kyvig
• Dance Marathons: Performing American Culture of the 1920s and 1930sBy Carol Martin
• Dancing Fools and Weary Blues: The Great Escape of the TwentiesBy Lawrence R. Broer; John
  D. Walther
• Dark Hester
• Dear Mr. Rosenwald
• Death Comes for the Archbishop
• Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh
• Disraeli
• Dodsworth
• Does Prohibition Work? – Martha Bensley Bruere
• Doomsday
• Duke Ellington, the Piano Prince and His Orchestra
• Dusty Answer by Rosamond Lehmann
• Egyptology: search for the tomb of Osiris, being the journal of Miss Emily Sands, November
  1926 By: Emily Sands
• Elizabeth and Essex
• Ella’s Big Chance: A Jazz Age Cinderella.
• Emil and the Detectives
• Emily of New Moon
• Emma Goldman, My Disillusionment with Russia
• Encyclopedia of the United States in the Twentieth Century – Kutler, Stanley I.
• Every Man a Speculator: A History of Wall Street in American Life Steve Fraser
• Everybody Was So Young – Amanda Vaill
• Exile’s Return: A Literary Odyssey of the 1920sBy Malcolm Cowley; Donald W. Faulkner
• Experience and Nature
• Fabulous Fashions of the 1920s
• Flappers and the New American Woman: Perceptions of Women from 1918 through the 1920s
• Flight: The Journey of Charles Lindbergh
• Gentle Julia
• Glorious Apollo
• Goethe
• Good-bye to All That
• Greenwood Encyclopedia of Daily Life in America – Francis J. Sicius
• Harriet and the Piper
• Helen of the Old House
• Henry the Eighth
• Her Father’s Daughter
• His Children’s Children
• History and Class Consciousness
• How it Happened in Peach Hill By: Marthe Jocelyn
• Hugh Selwyn Mauberley by Ezra Pound
• I and Thou
• Ideology and Utopia
• If Winter Comes
• In Our Time – Ernest Hemingway
• In the American Grain
• Introduction to the Science of Society
• Jalna
• Jazz Age: People and PerspectivesBy Mitchell Newton-Matza
• Jean Piaget, Judgment and Reasoning in the Child
• Jefferson and Hamilton
• Joe-Joe’s First Flight
• John Brown’s Body
• Joseph and His Brethren
• Keep Your Eye on the Kid: The Early Years of Buster Keaton. illus. by author.
• Kindred of the Dust
• Language
• Law, Alcohol, and Order: Perspectives on National ProhibitionBy David E. Kyvig
• Les Enfants Terribles by Jean Cocteau
• Living Well Is the Best Revenge – Calvin Tomkins
• Lost Ecstasy
• Main Currents in American Thought
• Mamba’s Daughters
• Marcel Mauss, The Gift
• Maria Chapdelaine
• Mark Twain’s Autobiography
• Mary-Marie
• Middlesex By: Jeffrey Eugenides
• Middletown
• Miracles And Modern Spiritualism –Alfred Russel Wallace
• Mirrors of Washington
• Mistress Wilding
• Modern Temper
• Mr. Fortune’s Maggot by Sylvia Townsend Warner
• Nadja by Andre Breton
• Napoleon
• Nature of the Physical World
• New Aspects of Politics
• New Hampshire
• New World Coming By: Nathan Miller
• Notes on Democracy
• Now It Can Be Told
• Of Time And The River – Thomas Wolfe
• Old Pybus
• One Increasing Purpose
• Operation Red Jericho By: Joshua Mowll
• Outwitting Our Nerves
• Over Here: The First World War and American Society David M. Kennedy
• Paint By Magic
• Painted Windows
• Parade’s End
• Peace Negotiations
• Peder Victorious
• Public Opinion
• Queen Victoria
• Quest for Certainty
• R.U.R.
• Reconstruction in Philosophy
• Religion and the Rise of Capitalism
• Revolt in the Desert
• Romancero Gitano by Federico Garcia Lorca
• Roosevelt’s Letters to His Children
• Roper’s Row
• Saint Joan
• Scarlet Sister Mary
• Science and Poetry
• Science and the Modern World
• Self-Mastery Through Conscious Auto-Suggestion
• Shailer Mathews, Faith of Modernism
• Show Boat
• Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
• Simon Called Peter
• Sir Charlie: Chaplin, the Funniest Man in the World
• Six Characters in Search of an Author
• Six Days in October: The Stock Market Crash of 1929
• Skyward
• Smoke And Steel – Carl Sandburg
• Social Change
• Sorrell and Son
• Soundings
• Spoon River Anthology – Edgar Lee Masters
• Structures of the Jazz Age: Mass Culture, Progressive Education, and Racial Discourse in
  American Modernism By Chip Rhodes
• Studies in Classic American Literature
• Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate Over Science and
  Religion
• Swan Song
• Taft, Holmes, and the 1920s Court: An AppraisalBy David H. Burton
• Temperance Or Prohibition – Francis J. Teitsort ed.
• Tender Is The Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The 1920s Decade in Photos: The Roaring Twenties
• The 1920s: From Prohibition to Charles Lindbergh
• The 1920s: Luck By: Dorothy Hoobler
• The Argonauts of the Western Pacific
• The Art of Thinking
• The Autobiography of Margot Asquith
• The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Big Town – Ring Lardner
• The Bishop Murder Case
• The Blue Window
• The Book Nobody Knows
• The Boxcar Children
• The Boy Who Invented TV: The Story of Philo Farnsworth
• The Breaking Point
• The Bridge of San Luis Rey
• The Brimming Cup
• The Call of the Canyon
• The Carolinian
• The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
• The Children of Odin: The Book of Northern Myths
• The Coast of Folly
• The Color Purple By: Alice Walker
• The Concept of the Political
• The Constant Nymph
• The Cradle of the Deep
• The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy
• The Cross Word Puzzle Books
• The Decline of the West, vol. 2
• The Dim Lantern
• The Dollar Decade: Mammon and the Machine in 1920s AmericaBy Gary Dean Best
• The Economic Consequences of the Peace
• The Frontier in American History
• The Galaxy
• The Gangs of New York by Herbert Asbury
• The Glorious Adventure
• The Golden Day
• The Good Earth By: Pearl S. Buck
• The Great Impersonation
• The Green Hat
• The Greene Murder Case
• The Head of the House of Coombe
• The Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov
• The Heirs Apparent
• The Hounds of Spring
• The Hours By: Michael Cunningham
• The House By: Danielle Steel
• The Inimitable Jeeves by P.G Wodehouse
• The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism
• The Kat Who Walked in Beauty: the panoramic dailies of 1920 By: George Herriman
• The Keeper of the Bees
• The Kingdom Round the Corner
• The Lamp in the Desert
• The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page
• The Light of Faith
• The Little French Girl
• The Little Match Girl By: Jerry Pinkney
• The Logic of Modern Physics
• The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
• The Magical Land of Noom
• The Man of the Forest
• The Mansions of Philosophy
• The Meaning of Relativity
• The Middle Border – Hamlin Garland
• The Midlander
• The Midnight Folk
• The Milly-Molly-Mandy Storybook.
• The Mine with the Iron Door
• The Mirrors of Downing Street
• The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
• The Mysterious Rider
• The New Decalogue of Science
• The Night Owls
• The Old Countess
• The Outline of Science
• The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham
• The People, Yes – Carl Sandburg
• The Perennial Bachelor
• The Plastic Age
• The Plutocrat
• The Portygee
• The Private Life of Helen of Troy
• The Prophet
• The Public and Its Problems
• The Re-Creation of Brian Kent
• The Revolt of the Masses
• The Ring Lardner Reader – Ring Lardner
• The Rise of American Civilization
• The River’s End
• The Royal Road to Romance
• The Scopes Trial: Faith, Science, and American Education
• The Sea-Hawk
• The Sheik
• The Silver Spoon
• The Sisters-in-Law
• The Specialist
• The Star Fisher By: Laurence Yep
• The Story of Mankind
• The Story of My Experiments with Truth
• The Story of Philosophy
• The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg
• The Timetables of History – Grun, Bernard
• The Tragic Era
• The Trial of Sacco and Vanzetti: A Primary Source Account
• The Trumpeter of Krakow
• The Twenties – Edmund Wilson
• The Twenties in America: Politics and HistoryBy Niall Palmer
• The Valley of Silent Men
• The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
• The Voice that Challenged a Nation By: Russell Freedman
• The Wanderer of the Wasteland
• Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
• Theodore Roosevelt
• They Came Like Swallows – William Maxwell
• They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? – Horace McCoy
• Thirty Years Among The Dead – Carl Wickland M.D.
• This Freedom
• This Land is your Land By: Woody Guthrie
• Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
• Three Across: The Great Atlantic Air Race of 1927
• Tinkers By: Paul Harding
• Tintin in the Land of the Soviets by Herge
• To the Last Man
• Tobacco Road – Erskine Caldwell
• Tomorrow Morning
• Towards a New Architecture
• Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
• Trader Horn, vol. 1
• Twentieth-Century Teen Culture by the Decades: A Reference GuideBy Lucy Rollin
• Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair by Pablo Neruda
• Twenty-Five Years
• Twice Thirty
• U.S.A. – John Dos Passos
• Uncle Jed’s Barbershop By: Margaree King Mitchell
• Vixen By: Jillian Larkin
• When We Were Very Young
• White Lilacs By: Carolyn Meyer
• White Shadows in the South Seas
• Why I Am Not a Christian
• Why We Behave Like Human Beings
• Winesburg, Ohio – Sherwood Anderson
• Wintersmoon
• With Courage and Cloth: Winning the Fight for a Woman’s Right to Vote.
• Woman Suffrage and Politics
• Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze By: Elizabeth Foreman Lewis

Article Sources Arranged by Publish Date

• 2009: Books For Teens – Historical Fiction: 1920s 
• 4/19/2012: BookRiot – My 1920s Reading List 
• 6/5/2012: Sewickley Library – The 1920s – Books for All-Ages
• 9/24/2012: What Do We Do All Day – 10 Children’s Classics: 1920’s
• 3/19/2013: School Library Journal – The 1920’s: The Decade That Roared 
• 10/20/2013: NPR – Prohibition-Era Passion: Three ’20s Books On Trailblazing Loves 
• 9/17/2015: Lib Guides – 1920s Books & Sites 
• Stylist – 50 Best books of the 1920s 
• OCF Berkeley – The Books of the Century: 1920-1929 
• Shmoop – The 1920s Books 
• 1920-30 – 1920’s Literature – Books That Define This Period 
• Questia – 1920’s America