Most Popular Books by Year, 1920 to 1999

From an article in Southern Living magazine

1920: The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

1921: Rilla of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery

1922: Ulysses by James Joyce

1923: Cane by Jean Toomer

1924: A Passage to India by E.M. Forster

1925: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

1926: The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

1927: To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

1928: All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

1929: The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

1930: As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

1931: The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck

1932: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

1933: Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain

1934: Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

1935: Blandings Castle and Elsewhere by P.G. Wodehouse

1936: Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

1937: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

1938: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

1939: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

1940: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

1941: Mildred Pierce by James M. Cain

1942: The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis

1943: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

1944: Dragonwyck by Anya Seton

1945: Black Boy by Richard Wright

1946: Delta Wedding by Eudora Welty

1947: The Pearl by John Steinbeck

1948: Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote

1949: Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

1950: Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith

1951: The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

1952: Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

1953: Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin

1954: The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien

1955: A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories by Flannery O’Connor

1956: Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

1957: Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

1958: Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

1959: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

1960: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

1961: The Moviegoer by Walker Percy

1962: Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

1963: The Group by Mary McCarthy

1964: Herzog by Saul Bellow

1965: Dune by Frank Herbert

1966: Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann

1967: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Márquez

1968: The High King by Lloyd Alexander

1969: The Godfather by Mario Puzo

1970: The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

1971: Grendel by John Gardner

1972: Watership Down by Richard Adams

1973: The Princess Bride by William Goldman

1974: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

1975: Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

1976: Roots by Alex Haley

1977: Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

1978: A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeline L’Engle

1979: Kindred by Octavia Butler

1980: The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

1981: Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

1982: The Color Purple by Alice Walker

1983: A Gathering of Old Men by Ernest J. Gaines

1984: The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

1985: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

1986: The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy

1987: Beloved by Toni Morrison

1988: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

1989: The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

1990: The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien

1991: A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley

1992: The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje

1993: The Shipping News by Annie Proulx

1994: The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields

1995: High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

1996: CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders

1997: The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

1998: The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

1999: Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

Dr. R. Beverly Raney, 84, Died March 14, 1991

From page 12 of the Chapel Hill NC News, Sunday, March 17, 1991

Dr. R. Beverly Raney, chairman emeritus of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, died Thursday after a brief illness at UNC Hospitals. He was 84.

Raney was the first chairman of the UNC orthopaedic division, a position he held from 1952 to 1967. He was also responsible for establishing UNC’s residency program in orthopaedics. Raney’s contributions to the School of Medicine were recognized by a Distinguished Service Award in 1972 and a visiting professorship bearing his name. A portrait of him hangs in the Raney Orthopaedic Library in the orthopaedic clinic of UNC Hospitals.

“A man’s humanity is harder to measure than his scholarship, but certainly few physicians have been more genuinely, unselfishly and totally concerned with the welfare of their patients and friends than Beverly Raney,” said Dr. frank Wilson Jr., professor and chief of the UNC medical school’s division of orthopaedics.

“His gentleness and understanding are legendary among those whose lives he has touched,” Wilson said. “If scholarship was one cornerstone of his life, compassion was the other. It is people like Beverly Raney who have made surgery as much a humanity as a technical discipline.”

Raney, a Raleigh native, earned his undergraduate degree from UNC in 1926. He graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1930 and trained at the University of Rochester School of Medicine. He became the first resident in orthopaedic surgery at Duke University Medical Center.

He remained in Durham to enter private practice and stayed with the Duke faculty through the residency program. He also had ties to the Cerebral Palsy, Lincoln and Watts hospitals.

Raney was instrumental in the development of Clinics and programs for crippled children across the state. He visited clinics in Elizabeth City, Jacksonville and Tarboro for more than 25 years.

Raney’s writings, which include 33 articles and book reviews, are well known in his field. In 1937, he was the co-author of the first edition of the “Handbook of Orthopaedic Surgery,” now in its 10th edition.

He served as a member of the editorial board of the “Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery” for 10 years and later as a member and chairman of its Board of Trustees. His last book, “Useful Orthopaedic Eponyms,” was published in 1987.

Raney belonged to numerous professional organizations, including the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, of which he was vice president in 1962 He was a member of the American Orthopaedic Association and served as a chairman and a member of several of its committees. He was among the founders of the N.C. Orthopaedic Association and served terms as its secretary and president.

Survivors are his wife, Carolyn F. Raney of Chapel Hill, and two sons, Dr. R. Beverly Raney Jr. of Houston, Texas, and Thomas Blount Fuller Raney of Chapel Hill.

Funeral and burial were Saturday.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that contributions be made to the Raney Orthopaedic Library in the Division of Orthopaedics.

Cashier of Bank of Midland Charged with Arson, June 17, 1926

Blakeney Charged with Arson; Out on $10,000 Bond. . . Cashier of Bank of Midland When it Burned, Arrested in Charlotte Yesterday Afternoon. . . Scott Had the Warrant Issued. . . Father and Uncle of Defendant Sign Bond—Preliminary Hearing June 22nd Here

Carl T. Blakeney, cashier of the Bank of Midland when it was burned several weeks ago, was arrested yesterday on a warrant issued by W.A. Scott, State deputy insurance commissioner. The warrant charges are arson.

Mr. Blakeney was arrested at his home at 527 Sunnyside Avenue, Charlotte, by detectives who were sent there by Deputy Sheriff Honeycutt of Cabarrus County, and Commissioner Scott, who went to Charlotte during the afternoon and turned the warrant over to the Charlotte officers for service.

Later in the afternoon the officers returned to concord with Mr. Blakeney, who was taken before ‘Squire G.M. Lore, who set his bond at $10,000. The bond was immediately raised by W.S. and P.P. Blakeney, uncle and father, respectively, of the defendant. The bondsmen reside in Monroe, it is said, the former being president of the Bank of Union.

Mr. Blakeney, it was stated, did not discuss the case at all, except to say that he had worked hard for the bank and did not deserve to have a crime laid against him. Before leaving Charlotte he communicated with relatives and his uncle and father arrived from Monroe shortly after he arrived from Charlotte.

Mr. Blakeney told the officers, they said, that he had not been working in Charlotte, where he has been living since the latter part of May. He expected to get lined up shortly, he said, and start to work there.

After the bond was signed, ‘Squire Lore set June 22 as the date for the preliminary hearing, to be held in Concord. Mr. Blakeney has retained Frank Armfield of the local bar and the State will be assisted by H.S. Williams and Harsell & Hartsell, also of the local bar.

The Bank of Midland was burned early on the morning of April 8th while Mr. Blakeney was at work in it. The building was completely destroyed along with some of the records and books on which the defendant has been quoted as saying he was working. Bank examiners took the cash and books from the safe several hours after the fire had been extinguished and later the American Trust Company of Charlotte was named receiver for the bank at the request of bank examiners.

Mr. Blakeney has been quoted as saying that he was struck on the head by some unknown party or parties who set fire to the bank, after robbing or trying to rob it. He was found near the front corner of the bank by persons who first reached the fire and was under the care of a physician for several days.

Mr. Blakeney went to the bank about 4:30 o’clock on the morning of the fire, it was said, following a custom he established soon after becoming cashier of the bank. Often when business was heavy, he is said to have stated, he went to the bank at an early hour to get in a full day. He had been in the bank for half an hour or more when the fire was discovered.

Bank examiners, so far as is known, have never made a public report of the check-up they made of the money taken from the safe. Whether robbers took any on the morning of the fire has not been stated, since the examiners have not made a report.

It is said that a number of prominent men of the county have been summoned as witnesses by the State.

From the front page of The Concord Daily Tribune, Thursday, June 17, 1926

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James McAllister Christmas Fund for Cross Creek Township Negroes, June 17, 1926

Trust Fund Created of Negro’s Possessions. . . Left His Property to Multi-Millionaire Who Will Create Fund

By International News Service

Fayetteville, June 16—Enhancement in value of a little cottage of a humble old negro drayman who died here three years back and left all his possessions to a multi-millionaire has resulted in the creation of a $5,000 Christmas fund for the benefit of Cross Creek Township negroes.

W.W. Fuller, New York lawyer, is the donor of the trust, which will be known as the James McAllister Christmas Fund, bearing the old negro’s name.

The little home on a Fayetteville side street has increased in value since his death, and the millionaire, finding it worth more money than the slave-negro ever dreamed of possessing himself, converted into a trust fund to be administered by three Cumberland County citizens. The trust consists of 8 per cent preferred stock of the Bethlehem Steel Company.

“When I have been in trouble or needed help or advice,” the old negro’s will read, “I knew where to turn, and Mr. Willie never failed me. He may not need my little home . . . but he will know better what to do with it than I; and in this I want to show my appreciation of what he has done for me.”

Among McAllister’s possessions was the horse and dray which he had driven on the streets of Fayetteville for years. This was kept by the beneficiary of the will, and is now at Fuller’s winter home at Pinehurst, where a canopy has been built to preserve it. And there the two-wheeled dray will remain, compelling proof that sentiment is not dead.

From page 4 of The Concord Daily Tribune, Thursday, June 17, 1926

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W.B. Ellis Given Road Terms for Criminal Libel, June 17, 1926

W.B. Ellis Is Given Road Term; Appeals. . . Winston-Salem Man Is Convicted in City Court in Two Cases Charging Criminal Libel

Winston-Salem, June 16—W.B. Ellis, manufacturer and capitalist of this city, was this morning sentenced to serve four months on the county roads in each of two cases charging him with criminal libel, the sentences to run concurrent. The judgment, rendered in the municipal court, was appealed from and bond was fixed at $500.

The cases charging Mr. Ellis with libel grew out of the issuing over a period of several years pamphlets in which the character of various local men were attacked. The specific warrants were issued on the strength of pamphlets recently gotten out, in both of which he charged that certain attorneys perjured themselves on the witness stand in the case wherein several local attorneys and attorneys from out of town were suing Ellis for a $15,000 fee which he refused to pay them for their appearance for him in a case last year.

The character of the attorneys appearing for him last year, numbering several local and prominent lawyers, is also ridiculed in the pamphlets.

From page 4 of The Concord Daily Tribune, Thursday, June 17, 1926

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Unable to Face Second Crop Failure, Henry Hutchen, 58, Kills Himself, June 16, 1926

Fearing Failure of Crop, Yadkin Farmer Ends Life

Elkin, June 14—the funeral of Henry Hutchens, aged 58, who committed suicide by hanging himself in his barn at his home near Boonville, was conducted yesterday from Forbus Friend’s Church in Yadkin.

No motive for the deed other than worry over the outlook of a second crop failure on account of drought, could be suggested.

The funeral was conducted with honors from the Junior O.U.A.M. The attendance was estimated at 3,000.

From page 4 of The Concord Daily Tribune, June 16, 1926

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Convicted Murderer Allowed to Sit at Side of Dying Child, June 16, 1926

Paroled to Go to See Sick Child

Raleigh, June 15—Some may maintain that “there ain’t no such animal” when it comes to tender hearted or sympathetically included State officials, especially when it concerns the question of paroles. But in North Carolina things are done different, because things are different here.

Today T.K. Smith is at his little home in Anson county at the bedside of one of his sick children. Smith is serving a sentence of 10 years in State prison here for homicide, and has already completed about four years’ time. Yesterday he was informed that one of his children weas very ill and might not live. H. Hoyle Sink was advised of the facts of the case, and he was granted a parole until Thursday at 6 p.m. And today is back with his family, the first time in four years. No officer went with him, but he will be back at the prison Thursday afternoon.

Yes, it is different in North Carolina.

From page 4 of The Concord Daily Tribune, June 16, 1926

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