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Dissertation Information for Gordon Barrick Neavill

NAME:
- Gordon Barrick Neavill

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- Library and Information Science

SCHOOL:
- University of Chicago (USA) (1984)

ADVISORS:
- Howard W. Winger

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- Zena Sutherland
- Edward Benjamin Shils

MPACT Status: Fully Complete

Title: THE MODERN LIBRARY SERIES

Abstract:
The Modern Library series, established in 1917, played a
significant role in American cultural life for half a century. It
was the leading American series of hardbound reprints of important
works of literature and thought. Its small, inexpensive volumes were
stocked at vi rtua 11 y every bookstore and major department store in
the country. The Modern Library, more than any other publishing
enterprise prior to the advent of quality paperbacks in the mid-
1950's, made the establis hed classics of world literature, together
with important modern works, readily available to American readers.
The Modern Library was conceived by Albert Boni, a young
Greenwich Village bookseller and occasional publisher. The firm
Boni & Liveright, which became one of the most important literary
publishers of the 19205, was established to publish the series.
In its early years, the Modern Li brary--as, its name impl ied--was
inseparable from the modernist movement and the revolt against
Victorian culture. The books Boni included in the series were
primarily by post-Victorian British and Continental writers. There
were very fev, books by American authors . The only pre-nineteenth
century works were by authors like Pran~ois Vil10n and Voltaire
whom the modernists claimed as spiritual forebears.

Boni IS involvement with the Modern Library ended in the
summer of 1918, when he left the firm after a series of disagreements
with Horace Liveright. In 1925, Liveright, who was more interested
in publishing new writers than in reprint publishing, sold the Modern
Library to Bennett Cerf, a young Boni & Liveright vice-president who
wanted to go into publishing for himself.
Cerf establ ished the Modern Library, Inc., in partnership
with Donald S. Klopfer. Two years later, they established Random
House as a subsidiary of the Modern Library to publish other books;
in 1936 the Nodern Library became a subsidiary of Random House.
Cerf and Klopfer set out to i nvi gorate and expand the Modern Li brary.
They added more American authors, and, while maintaining a generalJy
modern emphasis, began to include older classics as well. In 1931
they establi.shed .Modern Library Giants, whose larger format enabled
them to include longer works and omnibus volumes. Also in the 1930s
they began systematically discontinuing slower-selling titles. By
the end of that decade only about one-third of the titles from the
Boni & Liveright series remained in the Modern Library.
During the years of American involvement in World War II,
publishers had to contend with increased demand for books at a time
when paper rationing made that demand difficult to satisfy. The
Modern Library was unable to keep all its titles continuously in
print. Despite wartime conditions, a new series, the Illustrated
t~odern Library, was launched in 1943, but because Random House
lacked the paper to print the volumes, it was l egally published
by A. S. Barnes & Co . and reverted to Random House after the war.

The burgeoning importance of the college market after the
war led to the increasing academization of the Modern Library.
Modern Library College Editions, a paperbound series intended for
classroom use, began in 1950. Older introductions were gradually
discarded in favor of new introductions commissioned f'rom and directed
toward the academi c community. .Al so in the 1 ~50s the Modern Library
began to face serious competition for the first time. Several of the
best titles in the series were withdrawn by their original publishers
who wanted to include them in reprint series of their own . With the
advent of quality paperbacks, the Moder·n Library's audience
increasingly had the option of buying paper-back editions of titles
that previously had been availabl e only in the Modern Library.
Attempts in the 1960s to enable the Modern Library to
compete more effectively with pa perbacks were unsuccessful , and in
1970 a decision was made to cease adding new titles to the series.
Thereafter, many of the less profitabl e titles were remaindered or
allowed to go out of print. Then, as the prices of both paperback
and hardbound books escalated, Random House began to hope that
there might again be a market for comparatively inexpensive hardbound
editions of classics. In the spring of 1977 thirty-two
Modern Library titles were reissued in newly designed jackets and
bindings. Each publishing season since has seen an increase in
the number of Modern Library reissues in print.
The study is based primarily on the Random House archives
and other archival collections . It seeks to explain the Modern
Library's success and eventual decline at three levels: the social
and intellectual context in which the Modern Library existed, the
prevailing institutional patterns of the book industry and the
economics of the book trade over the course of the Modern Library's
existence, and the internal history of the series itself.

MPACT Scores for Gordon Barrick Neavill

A = 0
C = 0
A+C = 0
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2008-01-31 06:15:20

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