The Importance of Being Ernest Hemingway: Measuring Literary Popularity and Impact with WorldCat Data

Ernest Hemingway is the most famous 20^th-century American novelist, according to a recent article in The Economist. What is the evidence? Among other things, the article cites Wikipedia traffic data, noting that Hemingway’s page has accumulated more than 30 million views over the past 10 years (the second-ranked author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, attracted less than half that total). But is this truly the most reliable data source for understanding an author’s popularity, and can library catalog data offer us a more complete picture?

Popularity, fame, or general interest can be measured in many ways, but for authors and their literary works, library catalog data should not be overlooked. Libraries collect the world’s published output, and their collecting decisions, taken in aggregate, provide unique insight into the enduring relevance and even popularity of works and authors.

A library catalog records one library’s collection development decisions. But thousands of library catalogs, taken together, form a window into the published record. When a publication—book, periodical, film, or other format—becomes available, chances are good that at least one library somewhere will acquire it. Moreover, when a publication is added to a library’s collection, chances are also good that it will be registered in OCLC’s WorldCat database, the world’s most comprehensive source of information about what libraries around the world hold in their collections. WorldCat contains bibliographic information on more than 600 million distinct publications, representing more than 3.5 billion library holdings worldwide.  

Let’s return to Hemingway. The first tab of the interactive figure below reproduces the Wikipedia page view totals between 2015 and 2025 reported by the Economist for Hemingway and a selection of 20^th-century American authors.

What does Wikipedia traffic tell us here? It plausibly suggests both a strong overall interest in Hemingway (roughly 3.2 million page views per year) and a stronger interest relative to the other authors included in the ranking, whose totals range from about 700,000 to 1.5 million views per year.

Moving to the second tab of the figure, we see a ranking of the same authors by total holdings of their respective works in library collections around the world, as represented in WorldCat.

What do total library holdings tell us? A library holding represents a decision by a library to include a particular work—more specifically, a particular publication of a work—in its collection. Each holding affirms that the work is important enough to be included and maintained in the collection.

From this perspective, Ernest Hemingway still comes out on top, although his lead over the next-ranked competitor narrows considerably. Moreover, the ranking order following Hemingway has shifted significantly relative to the Wikipedia traffic totals. For example, Steinbeck, rather than Fitzgerald, now has the second-highest total. Sylvia Plath, ranked third for Wikipedia traffic, drops to the bottom of the list in terms of global holdings of her works.

Rankings of authors by total global holdings of their works can be biased toward authors with larger bodies of work. Another way to gauge interest in authors from library data is to aggregate the total holdings of works about each author—including biographies, films, literary analyses, and so on.

The number of holdings of works about an author offers a different signal about the author’s significance. While Wikipedia traffic may reflect temporary interest in the author (sparked by, say, an anniversary of a celebrated work’s publication) or even more sustained general interest in a compelling public figure, total holdings of works about an author could suggest a deeper impact on the cultural record. This could include a strong influence on other writers, recognition of their work as part of an accepted literary canon, or even controversy surrounding their writings.

These factors could inspire scholars to write literary critiques, historians to write biographies, and filmmakers to produce movies centered on the author and their works.

In this sense, global library holdings of works about an author may be an exceptionally robust signal of an author’s influence on the cultural record, even more so than Wikipedia traffic or even global library holdings of the author’s works. This shift in perspective reshapes the rankings, as shown in the third tab of the figure: in contrast to the first two measures, Hemingway falls to second place, Faulkner rises to first, and Morrison climbs up the rankings to third place.

A few years ago, OCLC released the Library 100—a ranked list of the most widely held novels in library collections around the world. The list was based on WorldCat data, and Don Quixote ended up holding the top position as the most widely held novel.

How many works by Hemingway and the other authors on our list made the Library 100 ranking? The fourth tab in the figure gives us the answer. Fitzgerald tops the list with the highest-ranked novel (#34 The Great Gatsby) among the authors in our list. Steinbeck has the second-highest entry (#41 The Grapes of Wrath), while Hemingway has the third-highest entry (#50, The Old Man and the Sea). No other author in our list placed a novel in the Library 100, although Steinbeck had a total of two entries, and Hemingway appeared three times.

Competition for a spot in the Library 100 is stiff, given that the pool of potential entries includes works from all time and authors of all nationalities, compared to our original list of selected 20^th-century American authors. Along with the Library 100, OCLC also compiled the Complete 500, which expands the ranking to the top 500 most widely held novels in library collections. With this broader list, Faulkner and Morrison (#105 and #121) narrowly miss the cut for the top 100, and the highest entries for the remaining authors are scattered between entries #162 and #314.

For some additional insight, make sure to explore the fifth tab in the figure, which presents an overall score computed by averaging all of the individual metrics together (Hemingway does come out on top!), as well as functionality that allows adjustment of the weighting of one or more metrics in the computation of the average score.

So, is Hemingway the most famous 20^th-century American author, as the original Economist ranking suggests?

Hemingway is indeed widely recognized by many measures. However, library data adds nuance to the question of whether Hemingway is the most famous.

As we have seen, Hemingway has the highest total global library holdings for his works among the authors considered, reinforcing the Economist’s original conclusion that Hemingway is the most famous. Library holdings of an author's works reflect a sustained popularity over time. The number of library holdings is a mark of the continued value of retaining an author's works in contemporary library collections—the more libraries that make this choice, the more an author's continued relevance is affirmed.

However, this metric represents only one dimension of literary importance. Holdings of works about an author signal deep cultural influence and scholarly engagement—by this measure, William Faulkner is the most famous in the group. The Library 100 rankings, on the other hand, place Hemingway’s works and those of the other 20^th-century American authors in a much broader temporal and geographical context. Here, F. Scott Fitzgerald tops the group with the highest entry in this list, as the author of the work appearing most frequently in global library collections among all of the works created by this group of 20^th-century American authors.

Each of these metrics is important in its own right, offering a distinct perspective on the nature of an author's legacy. Collectively, they speak to the richness of WorldCat, specifically, and of library data, generally, as a window into our shared cultural heritage.

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Lavoie, Brian. 2026. The Importance of Being Ernest Hemingway: Measuring Literary Popularity and Impact with WorldCat Data. Dublin, OH: OCLC Research. https://doi.org/10.25333/kmgy-c621