# What are the best selling "classic" authors?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-best-selling-classic-authors/798895>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [October 15, 2017, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-best-selling-classic-authors/798895 "2017-10-15T03:21:59Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 2

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\
**Post date:** [October 16, 2017, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-best-selling-classic-authors/798895/21 "2017-10-16T14:17:02Z")

</div>

Jane Austen suffers from not having a large body of work. Since this is “most popular author” not “most popular book”, having a large output helps immensely.

Homer even worse, of course

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\
**Post date:** [October 16, 2017, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-best-selling-classic-authors/798895/22 "2017-10-16T14:58:13Z")

</div>

> [@Aspidistra](#):
>
> Homer even worse, of course

D’oh!

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\
**Post date:** [October 16, 2017, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-best-selling-classic-authors/798895/23 "2017-10-16T15:05:55Z")

</div>

> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#):
>
> Here’s another article:
> 
> [List of best-selling books - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books)

Another thing about that list: IIUC, it’s supposed to be cumulative: total number of books sold all-time, as opposed to in a given year, which is what the OP asked.

If we are going by all-time total sales, I’d expect older works to have an advantage: Homer, Virgil, Euclid, Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, Herodotus, Dante, and of course the authors of world’s primary religious texts.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\
**Post date:** [October 16, 2017, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-best-selling-classic-authors/798895/24 "2017-10-16T15:34:20Z")

</div>

Hm, I didn’t even notice that the OP stipulated “in a given year”. That’s going to hurt a lot of the big names, because nobody needs to go out and buy, say, a copy of Shakespeare, if they already have it. I know that in the Shakespeare class I took in college, I just brought in the copy I already had, rather than buying the one the professor officially listed and put in the bookstore. Given that, the answer just might be “whichever ones just had a movie”, as **Thudlow Boink** suggested.

[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-best-selling-classic-authors/798895.md?page=1)