Danielle Steel, queen of gold-embossed romantic novels, and Janet and Allan Ahlberg, the writer-illustrators of The Jolly Postman and other children’s classics, are the only writers to have featured in the Top Ten Most Borrowed Authors list every year for the past decade.

They have emerged as perennial favourites with the British public, despite a shift towards gritty crime novels and thrillers, according to a decade of data on public library borrowing published yesterday.

The statistics, spanning the years from 1996 to 2006 and released by the Public Lending Right (PLR), offer a fascinating glimpse into the nation’s library reading habits.

While Steel’s 68 novels have sold an astonishing 560 million copies worldwide since 1981, they have also been borrowed from British libraries 18 million times in the past ten years.

The 37 books of the Ahlbergs, whose work was inspired by folk and nursery tales and whose partnership was cut short by Janet's death in 1994, have sold 11 million copies in Britain. Their library lendings over the past decade have exceeded 12 million.

The statistics also show that in 2006 Jacqueline Wilson, the children’s laureate, was the most borrowed author for the fourth year in succession, a position that had been held for a record 17 years by the late Catherine Cookson. Cookson tops the overall lists for the decade, pushing Wilson into fifth place.

Steel and the Ahlbergs also have a long way to go to equal Cookson’s cumulative total of 25 million loans over the past decade. Despite dropping down the chart, Cookson’s books are still recording more than half a million loans annually.

Wilson is also a publishing phenomenon. In 2002, not one of her titles made the Top Ten. Over the past year, however, books such as The Story of Tracy Beaker - about a girl who lives in a children’s home and dreams of a real home with a real family - were borrowed almost two million times. Children are taking to books that address controversial topics, such as domestic violence.

Ten years ago the top children’s author was R. L. Stine, an American whose tales have an emphasis on the supernatural.

Wilson’s nearest rivals in the latest annual chart were the adult novelists, James Patterson, Josephine Cox, Steel and Ian Rankin. When it comes to the adult fiction borrowed from libraries, an obsession with the darker side of life prevails over love and romance. The American thriller writer James Patterson is the second most borrowed author, consigning romantic novelists Josephine Cox and Steel to third and fourth places respectively.

Figures for individual fiction titles produced some new, if not wholly surprising, names. Dan Brown took first and fourth place in the Most Borrowed Titles list with The Da Vinci Code and Digital Fortress, while J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince was the second most borrowed book nationally - as well as the most borrowed children’s fiction title of the year, ahead of Wilson’s Clean Break.

The authors who do best in libraries have long backlists. Wilson has written more than a hundred books.

Ten years ago, romantic fiction dominated the list of the Most Borrowed Adult Fiction titles. In recent years, however, there has been a rise in the popularity of gritty crime novels and thrillers by authors such as Patricia Cornwell, Ian Rankin and James Patterson - with the result that only three romantic novels made the Top Ten between 2005 and 2006.

Over the decade, the figures show, we have become increasingly obsessed with who we are and what we look like.

While the Top Ten in 1996/97 featured Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time and Jung Chang’s Wild Swans, the Top Ten for 2005-06 are dominated by titles such as You Are What You Eat by Gillian McKeith, and by Paul McKenna. After 30 years of campaigning by authors, the right to remuneration for the loan of their books by public libraries became law when the Public Lending Right Act came into being in 1979.

The PLR collates the data and distributes the money it receives from the Government directly to writers. This month, it will be distributing £6.81 million to 23,869 authors at a record rate per loan of 5.98p for each book borrowed during the past year.

The income is invaluable to the nation’s writers - 75 per cent of whom earn less than half the national average wage.

Authors are eligible for payment if their PLR earnings reach a minimum of £1. There is a maximum payment threshold of £6,600 for the top-lending authors.

Seldom left on the shelf

Top 10 Most Borrowed Authors
1996-06

1 Catherine Cookson
25 million loans
2 Danielle Steel
18 million loans
3 R L Stine
18 million loans
4 Josephine Cox
15 million loans
5 Jacqueline Wilson
13 million loans
6 Janet & Allan Ahlberg
12 million loans
7 Dick Francis
12 million loans
8 Roald Dahl
10 million loans
9 Agatha Christie
10 million loans
10 Jack Higgins
10 million

Top 10 Most Borrowed Authors
Today: 2005-06

1 Jacqueline Wilson
2 James Patterson
3 Josephine Cox
4 Danielle Steel
5 Ian Rankin
6 Janet & Allan Ahlberg
7 Mick Inkpen
8 Roald Dahl
9 John Grisham
10 Nora Roberts

10 years ago: 1996-97

1 Catherine Cookson
2 R L Stine
3 Danielle Steel
4 Dick Francis
5 Janet & Allan Ahlberg
6 Roald Dahl
7 Ruth Rendell
8 Ann M Martin
9 Agatha Christie
10 Enid Blyton

Top 10 Most Borrowed Adult Fiction Titles
Today: 2005/6

1 Dan Brown The Da Vinci Code
2 Maeve Binchy Nights of Rain and Stars
3 Dan Brown Digital Fortress
4 Patricia Cornwell Trace
5 James Patterson & Howard Roughan Honeymoon
6 James Patterson & Maxine Paetro 4th of July
7 John Grisham The Broker
8 Josephine Cox The Journey
9 Ian Rankin Fleshmarket Close
10 Josephine Cox Live the Dream

10 Years Ago: 1996/7

1 Catherine Cookson A Ruthless Need
2 Catherine Cookson Justice is a Woman
3 Catherine Cookson The Year of the Virgins
4 Catherine Cookson The Obsession
5 Catherine Cookson The Upstart
6 Catherine Cookson The Tinker’s Girl
7 Catherine Cookson The Rag Nymph
8 Catherine Cookson The House of Women
9 Dick Francis Come to Grief
10 Catherine Cookson The Golden Straw

Top 10 Most Borrowed Nonfiction Titles
Today: 2005/6

1 Gillian McKeith You Are What You Eat
2 Sheila Hancock The Two of Us: My Life with John Thaw
3 Gillian McKeith You Are What You Eat Cookbook
4 Paul McKenna Change Your Life in Seven Days
5 Paul McKenna I Can Make You Thin
6 Maura Murphy Don’t Wake me at Doyles
7 Jamie Oliver Jamie’s Dinners
8 Bill Bryson A Short History of Nearly Everything
9 Dan Waddell Who Do You Think You Are?
10 Antony Worrall Thompson Antony Worrall Thompson’s GI Diet

10 Years Ago: 1996/7

1 Andy McNab Immediate Action
2 Delia Smith Delia Smith’s Winter Collection
3 Jung Chang Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China
4 Simon James Eyewitness Guide: Ancient Rome
5 Delia Smith Delia Smith’s Summer Collection
6 Stephen Hawking A Brief History of Time
7 Driving Standard Agency The Complete Theory Test for Cars and Motorcycles ~
8 Angela Wilkes The Children’s Step-by-Step Cook Book
9 Driving Standards Agency Driving Manual
10 Andy McNab Bravo Two Zero

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