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I remember, in the early 90s, when I was in college some friends and I (all of us English majors) wondered about the lesser known books from the same time period of the classics we were reading. When we were in school, you would never have a problem finding a copy of Herman Melville's Moby Dick, of course, but just try finding a novel by a contemporary of his from the mid-1800s. Were they even still in print?

Thanks to sites like Project Gutenberg, archive.org and Munseys.com, you can find oodles and oodles of long-forgotten potboiler bestsellers from way back in the day. To dig even deeper, you can go to unz.org and read old issues of magazines that contain book reviews and top-selling novels lists. If you see something you like, all you have to do is go to Amazon or Google Play to download a free copy to your reading device.

A Lady of Quality (so different from The Secret Garden) by Frances Hodgson Burnett is just one example of hundreds and hundreds.

It's very hard to tell from the picture below, but unz.org is a fascinating way to delve into the past, with a wide array of choice in periodicals (even some old Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazines are free!)