Little Blue Books
Encyclopedia
Little Blue Books are a series of small staple-bound books published by the Haldeman-Julius Publishing Company of Girard, Kansas
(1919–1978). They were extremely popular, and achieved a total of more than 300 million booklets sold over the series' lifetime. A Big Blue Book range was also published.
, an atheist-Jew, socialist, and newspaper
publisher, and his wife, Marcet
, set out to publish small low price paperback pocketbooks that were intended to sweep the ranks of the working class as well as the "educated" class. Their goal was to get works of literature
, a wide range of ideas, common sense knowledge and various points of view out to as large an audience as possible. These books, at approximately 3½ by 5 inches (8½ by 12¾ cm) easily fit into a working man's back pocket or shirt pocket. The inspiration for the series were cheap ten cent paperback editions of various classic works that Haldeman-Julius had purchased as a 15 year old (the Ballad of Reading Gaol being especially enthralling). He would later write:
They purchased a publishing house in Girard, Kansas
, in 1919 from their employer Appeal to Reason (newspaper), a socialist weekly which had seen better days and that Haldeman-Julius edited. Though the Appeal to Reason was not the influential newspaper it had been, its printing presses (and more importantly the 175,000 names on its subscriber lists) would prove to be crucial. Haldeman-Julius, before anything had even been printed, sent an appeal to the Appeal to Reason' s subscribers to send him a prepayment of $5; at 10 cents a pamphlet, he would then send them at staggered intervals 50 pamphlets which he would be able to print with the advanced monies. Things went very well:
They began printing these works in 1919 (at a rate of 24,000 a day) in a series called Appeal's Pocket Series on cheap pulp paper, stapled and bound with a red stiff paper cover for 25 cents apiece. The name changed over the first few years (as did the color of the binding), at times known as the People's Pocket Series, the Appeal Pocket Series, the Ten Cent Pocket Series, the Five Cent Pocket Series, and finally the one that took, Little Blue Books in 1923. The price remained at five cents/copy for many years.
of literature". Amongst the better known names of the day to support the Little Blue Books were Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia
, Admiral Richard Byrd
, who took along a set to the South Pole
, and Franklin P. Adams of Information, Please!
Many bookstores kept a book rack stocked with many Little Blue Book titles, and their small size and low price made them especially popular with travelers and transient working people. Louis L'Amour
cites the Little Blue Books as a major source of his own early reading in his autobiography, Education of a Wandering Man. Other writers who recall reading the series in their youth include Saul Bellow
, Harlan Ellison
, Jack Conroy
, Ralph Ellison
, and Studs Terkel
.
The works covered were frequently classics of Western literature
: Goethe and Shakespeare were well represented, as were the works of the Ancient Greeks, and more modern writers like Voltaire
, Emile Zola
, H. G. Wells
. Some of the topics the Little Blue Books covered were on the cutting edge of societal norms. Alongside books on making candy
(#518 - "How to Make All Kinds of Candy" by Helene Paquin) and classic literature (#246 - Hamlet
by William Shakespeare
) were ones exploring homosexuality
(#692 - "Homo-Sexual Life" by William J Fielding) and agnostic viewpoints (#1500 - "Why I Am an Agnostic: Including Expressions of Faith from a Protestant a Catholic and a Jew" by Clarence Darrow
). Shorter works from many popular authors such as Jack London
and Henry David Thoreau
were published, as were a number of political tracts written by Robert Ingersoll
or Haldeman-Julius himself. A young Will Durant
wrote a series of Blue Books on philosophy which were republished in 1926 by Simon & Schuster
as The Story of Philosophy
, a popular work that remains in print today.
, the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover
viewed the Little Blue Books' inclusion of such subjects as socialism, atheism, and frank treatment of sexuality as a threat and put Haldeman-Julius on their enemies list. This caused a rapid decline in the number of bookstores carrying the Little Blue Books, and they slowly sank into obscurity by the 1950s, although still well remembered by older people who had read them in the 1920s and 1930s.
The works continued to be reprinted after Haldeman-Julius' drowning in 1951 and were sold by mail order
by his son until the Girard printing plant and warehouse was destroyed by fire
in 1978.
Several complete collections are known to exist including one at Pittsburg State University
's Leonard H Axe Library.
Girard, Kansas
Girard is a city in and the county seat of Crawford County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 2,789.- History :...
(1919–1978). They were extremely popular, and achieved a total of more than 300 million booklets sold over the series' lifetime. A Big Blue Book range was also published.
Origins
Emanuel Haldeman-JuliusE. Haldeman-Julius
E. Haldeman-Julius was a Jewish-American socialist writer, atheist thinker, social reformer and publisher. He is best remembered as the head of Haldeman-Julius Publications, the creator of a series of pamphlets known as "Little Blue Books," total sales of which ran into the hundreds of millions...
, an atheist-Jew, socialist, and newspaper
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
publisher, and his wife, Marcet
Anna Marcet Haldeman
Anna Marcet Haldeman was an American feminist, playwright, editor, author, and bank president.-Biography:She was born in Girard, Kansas, the daughter of physician Henry Winfield Haldeman and his wife Alice. Alice was the sister of social activist Jane Addams. Anna Haldeman was the wife of activist...
, set out to publish small low price paperback pocketbooks that were intended to sweep the ranks of the working class as well as the "educated" class. Their goal was to get works of literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
, a wide range of ideas, common sense knowledge and various points of view out to as large an audience as possible. These books, at approximately 3½ by 5 inches (8½ by 12¾ cm) easily fit into a working man's back pocket or shirt pocket. The inspiration for the series were cheap ten cent paperback editions of various classic works that Haldeman-Julius had purchased as a 15 year old (the Ballad of Reading Gaol being especially enthralling). He would later write:
They purchased a publishing house in Girard, Kansas
Girard, Kansas
Girard is a city in and the county seat of Crawford County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 2,789.- History :...
, in 1919 from their employer Appeal to Reason (newspaper), a socialist weekly which had seen better days and that Haldeman-Julius edited. Though the Appeal to Reason was not the influential newspaper it had been, its printing presses (and more importantly the 175,000 names on its subscriber lists) would prove to be crucial. Haldeman-Julius, before anything had even been printed, sent an appeal to the Appeal to Reason
They began printing these works in 1919 (at a rate of 24,000 a day) in a series called Appeal's Pocket Series on cheap pulp paper, stapled and bound with a red stiff paper cover for 25 cents apiece. The name changed over the first few years (as did the color of the binding), at times known as the People's Pocket Series, the Appeal Pocket Series, the Ten Cent Pocket Series, the Five Cent Pocket Series, and finally the one that took, Little Blue Books in 1923. The price remained at five cents/copy for many years.
Popularity
In just nine years the idea caught on all around the globe. The Little Blue Books were finding their ways into the pockets of laborers, scholars and the average citizen alike. The St. Louis Dispatch called Haldeman-Julius "the Henry FordHenry Ford
Henry Ford was an American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry...
of literature". Amongst the better known names of the day to support the Little Blue Books were Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia
Ethiopia
Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...
, Admiral Richard Byrd
Richard Byrd
Richard Byrd is the name of:*Richard C. Byrd , American politician*Richard Evelyn Byrd , admiral, polar explorer, aviator*Richard Byrd , American Olympic athlete...
, who took along a set to the South Pole
South Pole
The South Pole, also known as the Geographic South Pole or Terrestrial South Pole, is one of the two points where the Earth's axis of rotation intersects its surface. It is the southernmost point on the surface of the Earth and lies on the opposite side of the Earth from the North Pole...
, and Franklin P. Adams of Information, Please!
Many bookstores kept a book rack stocked with many Little Blue Book titles, and their small size and low price made them especially popular with travelers and transient working people. Louis L'Amour
Louis L'Amour
Louis Dearborn L'Amour was an American author. His books consisted primarily of Western fiction novels , however he also wrote historical fiction , science fiction , nonfiction , as well as poetry and short-story collections. Many of his stories were made into movies...
cites the Little Blue Books as a major source of his own early reading in his autobiography, Education of a Wandering Man. Other writers who recall reading the series in their youth include Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow was a Canadian-born Jewish American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts...
, Harlan Ellison
Harlan Ellison
Harlan Jay Ellison is an American writer. His principal genre is speculative fiction.His published works include over 1,700 short stories, novellas, screenplays, teleplays, essays, a wide range of criticism covering literature, film, television, and print media...
, Jack Conroy
Jack Conroy
Jack Conroy a leftist American writer, also known as a Worker-Writer, and was best known for his contributions to “proletarian literature,” fiction and nonfiction about the life of American workers during the early decades of the 20th century.-Background:He was born John Wesley Conroy to Irish...
, Ralph Ellison
Ralph Ellison
Ralph Waldo Ellison was an American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer. He was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Ellison is best known for his novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953...
, and Studs Terkel
Studs Terkel
Louis "Studs" Terkel was an American author, historian, actor, and broadcaster. He received the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1985 for The Good War, and is best remembered for his oral histories of common Americans, and for hosting a long-running radio show in Chicago.-Early...
.
The works covered were frequently classics of Western literature
Western literature
Western literature refers to the literature written in the languages of Europe, including the ones belonging to the Indo-European language family as well as several geographically or historically related languages such as Basque, Hungarian, and so forth...
: Goethe and Shakespeare were well represented, as were the works of the Ancient Greeks, and more modern writers like Voltaire
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state...
, Emile Zola
Émile Zola
Émile François Zola was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism...
, H. G. Wells
H. G. Wells
Herbert George Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games...
. Some of the topics the Little Blue Books covered were on the cutting edge of societal norms. Alongside books on making candy
Candy
Candy, specifically sugar candy, is a confection made from a concentrated solution of sugar in water, to which flavorings and colorants are added...
(#518 - "How to Make All Kinds of Candy" by Helene Paquin) and classic literature (#246 - Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
by William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
) were ones exploring homosexuality
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
(#692 - "Homo-Sexual Life" by William J Fielding) and agnostic viewpoints (#1500 - "Why I Am an Agnostic: Including Expressions of Faith from a Protestant a Catholic and a Jew" by Clarence Darrow
Clarence Darrow
Clarence Seward Darrow was an American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union, best known for defending teenage thrill killers Leopold and Loeb in their trial for murdering 14-year-old Robert "Bobby" Franks and defending John T...
). Shorter works from many popular authors such as Jack London
Jack London
John Griffith "Jack" London was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone...
and Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...
were published, as were a number of political tracts written by Robert Ingersoll
Robert G. Ingersoll
Robert Green "Bob" Ingersoll was a Civil War veteran, American political leader, and orator during the Golden Age of Freethought, noted for his broad range of culture and his defense of agnosticism. He was nicknamed "The Great Agnostic."-Life and career:Robert Ingersoll was born in Dresden, New York...
or Haldeman-Julius himself. A young Will Durant
Will Durant
William James Durant was a prolific American writer, historian, and philosopher. He is best known for The Story of Civilization, 11 volumes written in collaboration with his wife Ariel Durant and published between 1935 and 1975...
wrote a series of Blue Books on philosophy which were republished in 1926 by Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster, Inc., a division of CBS Corporation, is a publisher founded in New York City in 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. It is one of the four largest English-language publishers, alongside Random House, Penguin and HarperCollins...
as The Story of Philosophy
The Story of Philosophy
The Story of Philosophy: the Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers is a book by Will Durant that profiles several prominent Western philosophers and their ideas, beginning with Plato and on through Friedrich Nietzsche...
, a popular work that remains in print today.
Decline in popularity
Following World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover
J. Edgar Hoover
John Edgar Hoover was the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States. Appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation—predecessor to the FBI—in 1924, he was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director until his death in 1972...
viewed the Little Blue Books' inclusion of such subjects as socialism, atheism, and frank treatment of sexuality as a threat and put Haldeman-Julius on their enemies list. This caused a rapid decline in the number of bookstores carrying the Little Blue Books, and they slowly sank into obscurity by the 1950s, although still well remembered by older people who had read them in the 1920s and 1930s.
The works continued to be reprinted after Haldeman-Julius' drowning in 1951 and were sold by mail order
Mail order
Mail order is a term which describes the buying of goods or services by mail delivery. The buyer places an order for the desired products with the merchant through some remote method such as through a telephone call or web site. Then, the products are delivered to the customer...
by his son until the Girard printing plant and warehouse was destroyed by fire
Fire
Fire is the rapid oxidation of a material in the chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction products. Slower oxidative processes like rusting or digestion are not included by this definition....
in 1978.
Several complete collections are known to exist including one at Pittsburg State University
Pittsburg State University
Pittsburg State University, also called Pitt State or PSU, is a public university with approximately 7,100 students located in Pittsburg, Kansas, United States. A large percentage of the student population consists of residents within the Pittsburg region; the gender proportion is relatively equal...
's Leonard H Axe Library.
Further reading
- The World of Haldeman-Julius, Emanuel Haldeman-Julius, 1960, published in New York