J. M. Dent and Sons (: 1909- ) J. M. Dent and Company (London: 1888-1909)

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J. M. Dent and Sons has published an impres­ sive list of books by contemporary authors, but it made its mark on publishing history with its inex­ pensive series of classic literature. Everyman's Li­ brary in particular stands as a monument to the firm. It was not the first attempt at a cheap uni­ form edition of the "great books," but no similar series except has ever exceeded it in scope, and none without exception has ever matched the high production standards of the early Everyman volumes. Joseph Malaby Dent, born on 30 August 1849, was one of a dozen children of a Darling­ ton housepainter. He acquired his love of litera­ ture from the autodidact culture that flourished among Victorian artisans and shopkeepers. Dent attended a "Mutual Improvement Society" at a local chapel, where he undertook to write a paper on Samuel Johnson. Reading James Boswell's biography of Johnson, he was aston­ ished that the great men of the period-such as Edmund Burke, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Oliver Goldsmith-"should bow down before this old Juggernaut and allow him to walk over them, in­ sult them, blaze out at them and treat them as if they were his inferiors . . . . At last it dawned on me that it was not the ponderous, clumsy, dirty old man that they worshipped, but the scholar­ ship for which he stood." Boswell's The Life of Sam­ uel Johnson, LL.D. ( 1791) taught Dent that "there JosephMa/,alry Dent (photographlry Frederick H. Evans) was nothing worth living for so much as literature"-and in 1906 it would become the "strict nonconformist," he had become deter­ first book in Everyman's Library . Raised as a mined to serve the religion of literature- 81 J. M. Dent and Sons DLB 112

"though only as a door-keeper of the Temple." tions of the classics. As secretary of the Shake­ Dent became a printer's apprentice but speare Society at Toynbee Hall, the Whitechapel proved so incompetent that he switched to book­ settlement house, he noted that the members had binding-not, however, before he had learned all to rely on a miscellaneous assortment of "second­ aspects of the printer's craft. In 1867 he moved hand editions, quartos, Bowdlerized school edi­ to London, where he set up his own bookbinding tions-no two being the same and all without shop. He often noted that his fine leather bind­ proper machinery for elucidating difficulties. Nei­ ings put to shame the unattractive Victorian typog­ ther type nor pages gave proper help to reading raphy of the sheets they bound. It would be aloud." Dent's response was the Temple Shake­ some years before Dent came to know and ad­ speare, edited by Israel Gollancz: forty volumes mire the work of , T. J. Cobden­ from The Tempest(1894) to The Sonnets (1896). It of­ Sanderson, and the Arts and Crafts Movement; fered great value for a shilling a volume, printed but already he saw a spiritual mission in fine crafts­ on handmade paper, with title pages designed by manship. Walter Crane. Over the next four decades the se­ In 1888 J.M. Dent and Company began pub­ ries sold five million copies-"the largest sale lishing at 69 Great Eastern Street. Its first produc­ made in Shakespeare since the plays were writ­ tion was Charles Lamb's Essays of Eli.a, edited by ten," Dent claimed. Augustine Birrell and with etchings by Herbert Another of Dent's series was inspired by Railton, followed in 1889 by Goldsmith's Poems Toynbee Hall-specifically by the Toynbee Travel­ and Pl,ays, edited by Austin Dobson. Dent chris­ lers' Club, which arranged cheap tours of Eu­ tened the series the Temple Library, ostensibly be­ rope. Dent visited Florence and Siena and was so cause Lamb and Goldsmith had resided at the entranced by their beauty that he conceived the Temple, but perhaps also to suggest the mission­ Mediaeval Towns Series. Margaret Symonds and ary spirit that motivated the enterprise. In for­ Lina Duff-Gordon began the series with The Story mat it resembled Kegan Paul's Parchment Li­ of Perugi.a(1898). These illustrated volumes were brary: the Chiswick Press printed books for both designed to capture the distinctive "personalities" series. The early Temple Library books were pro­ of the old European cities. They also gave Dent duced in limited editions on handmade paper. an excuse for traveling throughout Europe to The eminent antiquarian bookseller Bernard scout out new subjects. Quaritch endorsed them, and they enjoyed some The success of the Temple Shakespeare led commercial success. to two new series in 1896. The Temple Drama­ In 1889 the firm also put out Geoffrey tists began with John Ford's The Broken Heart, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, with twenty-three John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, and Christo­ hand-colored illustrations reproduced from the pher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus; meanwhile, the Ellesmere manuscript, as well as Johnson's Se­ Temple Classics commenced with Robert Sou­ /,ectedEssays and Alfred, Lord Tennyson's Poetical they's Life of Horatio, Lord Nelson, William Words­ Worksand Songs. Dent next turned to collected edi­ worth's The Prelude, and Jonathan Swift's tions of the works of eighteenth- and early­ Gulliver'sTravels. Gollancz edited the Temple Clas­ nineteenth-century novelists: Thomas Love Pea­ sics until editorial conflicts with Dent led to his re­ cock in ten volumes, edited by Richard Garnett placement by Oliphant Smeaton. By 1918 these­ (1891); Jane Austen in ten volumes (1893); the ries would comprise about three hundred Bronte sisters in twelve (1893); Maria Edgeworth volumes. in twelve (1893); and Goldsmith in six (1893). When Dent conceived of producing an illus­ George Saintsbury edited the works of Henry trated edition of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte Fielding (twelve volumes, 1893) and Laurence d'Arthur (1485), Evans introduced him to the Sterne (1894). In 1895 Daniel Defoe's Romances work of a little-known nineteen-year-old artist: Au­ and Narratives was published in sixteen volumes, brey Beardsley. Dent's tastes were hardly avant­ with forty-eight photogravure illustrations by garde, but he at once recognized "a new breath J.B. Yeats. of life in English black-and-white drawing." The In 1893 Dent's friend the bookseller Freder­ Birth Life and Acts of King Arthur, with about three ick H. Evans suggested a series of pocket vol­ hundred Beardsley illustrations, was published umes of the works of William Shakespeare. in monthly parts at two shillings, sixpence Dent's familiarity with autodidact culture made ( 1893-1894) and in a limited three-volume edi­ him aware of the potential demand for cheap edi- tion of eighteen hundred copies (1893-1894) that 82 DLB 112 J. M. Dent and Sons

was snapped up by subscribers. The book did erature, William Macdougall's Physiological Psychol­ much to establish Beardsley as an influential ogy, and Sir William Ramsay's Modern Chemistry. force in English art. The Temple Biographies commenced in An even more ambitious project was 1902 with Mazzini, by Bolton King; they were fol­ Honore de Balzac's ComedieHumaine (1895-1898) lowed by the Temple Autobiographies, starting in forty volumes, edited by George Saintsbury with The Life of Benvenuto Cellini (1903). H. and translated by Ellen Marriage, Clara Bell, Warner Allen edited Les Classiques Fran~ais, James Waring, and R. S. Scott. Although it did which included Fran~ois Antoine-Rene de Cha­ not sell well in Britain, Macmillan made it profit­ teaubriand's Atala (1904). English Men of Sci­ able by marketing a large number of sets in the ence, edited by J. Reynolds Green, began with United States. J. A. Thomson 's Herbert Spencer (1906). G. Lowes In 1889 Dent had bought the bankrupt Dickinson and H. 0 . Meredith edited the Temple Suttaby and Company, a publisher and wholesale Greek and Latin Classics, beginning in 1906 with bookseller. When he reprinted some of Suttaby's Euripides' Medea and Hippolytus, translated by Syd­ devotional books, he used the firm's printer , ney Water low. Turnbull and Spears of Edinburgh . The two Dent continued to turn out collected edi­ firms would work closely and well together on tions: the Temple Edition of the works of Henry the Temple Shakespeare, The Birth Life and Acts of Fielding (1893) in twelve volumes, edited by King Arthur, and many other projects for decades George Saintsbury; The Spectator (1897-1898) in to come. eight volumes, introduced by Austin Dobson; Sir While the classics remained Dent's forte , the Walter Scott's Waverley novels in forty-eight firm began to venture into contemporary litera­ pocket-sized volumes (1897-1898) and the Tem­ ture as well. Maurice Hewlett's Earthwork Out of ple Edition of The Works of Charles Dickens Tuscany and A Masque of Dead Florentines ap­ (1898-1903) in a similar format; Victor Hugo 's peared in 1895, followed the next year by H. G. novels in twenty-eight volumes (1899-1900) ; the Wells's The Wheels of Chance. Henryk Sienkiewicz's Temple Moliere (1900-1902); the works of Wil­ Quo Vadis?was published in 1897 by arrangement liam Makepeace Thackeray in thirty volumes, illus­ with Little, Brown of Boston. In the field of trated by Charles Brock (1901-1903); and the children's books, Kate Greenaway contributed works of William Hazlitt in twelve volumes , intro ­ Almanack and Dwry for 1897 ( 1897) and Edith duced by W. E. Henley (1901-1904). If Dent wor­ Nesbit wrote A Book of Dogs (1898) and Pussy and shiped literature as a religion, he conversely re­ Doggy Tales (1899). vered the Bible as great literature, and it was The firm continued to introduce new series presented as such in the TempleBible ( 1901-1904) . of books. In 1898 Dent undertook to publish Pro­ Edited by Smeaton in thirty-one volumes, its sales fessor Walter Ripman's guides to learning lan­ were disappointing. guages via the "Reform Method. " Over the Dent suffered a far more costly disaster course of forty years the series would expand to with the author who began his publishing career. more than 150 volumes and secure Dent a firm In 1903 he published The Worksof CharlesLamb , in­ beachhead in the domain of educational publish­ cluding some ostensibly unpublished letters he ing. In 1899 Dent scored another success with had purchased for five hundred pounds . He was the Haddon Hall Library . Devoted to the plea­ not aware that some of those letters had already sures of the countryman, it included Sir Edward appeared in a limited edition put out by Macmil­ Grey's Fly Fishing (1899). The series was deco­ lan (1899-1900). Macmillan sued and won both rated by Arthur Rackham and edited by the mar­ the judgment and an appeal; Dent was com­ quess of Granby (Henry John Brinsley Manners) pelled to pay the costs of the suit. The courts and G. A. B. Dewar. held that a person who first published the work Also in 1899 Gollancz suggested producing of a dead author thereby acquired the copy­ English translations of the Sammlung Goschen right-a precedent that would be altered by the (Goschen Collection), a series of German primers 1911 Copyright Act. The Dent firm would not in all academic disciplines. Dent secured the publish a complete edition of Lamb's letters until rights to many of the Goschen volumes and sup­ 1935-1936, and then it would do so jointl y with plemented them with original works produced by Methuen. English authors. In 1900 the Temple Primers Anxious to develop his transatlantic market , were launched with Stopford Brooke's English Lit- Dent visited North America in 1893, 1897, 1901, 83 J. M. Dent and Sons DLB 112

1913, 1915, 1916, and 1918. Up to 1897 Macmil­ George Herbert (1885) for the Newcastle pub­ lan handled most of his publications in the lisher Walter Scott. Rhys went on to edit Scott's United States, but then Dent developed recipro­ Camelot Classics series, advertising it as selling cal arrangements with other American firms. He for "the democratic shilling"-a phrase later acquired the complete novels of Alexandre picked up by Dent. Rhys went to London in 1886 Dumas pere (1893-1897) from Little, Brown, and to pursue a full-time literary career. He wrote that firm in turn published his set of Frederick poems on Welsh themes, and, with T. W. Marryat's novels (1896-1898) in America. The Rolleston and W. B. Yeats, he was a founder of works of Ivan Turgenev (1903-1904) came to the Rhymers' Club. At their home in , Dent from Scribners, which distributed the Tem­ he and his wife Grace would later host Sunday lit­ ple edition of the Waverley novels. erary teas for Yeats, , Ford Madox After only seven years in business Dent had Ford, and D. H. Lawrence. published about three hundred volumes and Rhys·proposed a series of popular classics in paid off all his debts. Then in January 1897 he a letter to Dent in 1905. He was clearly the man was compelled to buy the premises he had leased for the mission. Already he had edited some nov­ at 69 Great Eastern Street and had to borrow els and the Lyric Poets series (begun in 1894) for money again. The previous year he had opened the Dent firm. He knew the working-class a West End office in St. James's Street, only to be autodidact-an important potential buyer-as forced out when the building was demolished. At well as Dent did. Inspired by the Camelot series, the end of 1897 the firm moved its editorial of­ he had spent hours at the British Museum and fices to 29-30 Bedford Street, which had just Dr. Williams's Library sketching out a definitive been vacated by Macmillan-a prestigious but ex­ "world library." And it was Rhys who hit upon the name Everyman's Library, when he recalled pensive address; the bindery remained at 69 the closing lines of a medieval mystery play, Great Eastern Street. No sooner had his staff which would appear at the front of every volume moved into Bedford Street than Dent learned in the series: that 69 Great Eastern Street did not meet fire reg­ ulations. The bindery was therefore moved in Oc­ Everyman, I will go with thee, and be thy guide, tober 1899 to Fleur de Lis Street, Bishopsgate. In thy most need to go by thy side. In 1904, with years of experience in publish­ ing the classics at popular prices, Dent began to Rhys would soon discover that J. M. Dent plan seriously for a project of which he had long was not an easy man to work for. Frank Swinner­ dreamed. Everyman's Library was by no means ton, who worked as a clerk in the firm from 1900 without precedent: Dent cited as models the to 1907, described Dent as dictatorial and temper­ French Bibliotheque Nationale and the Reclam se­ amental, quick to jump on errors and stingy with ries of Leipzig, as well as Henry Bohn's Libraries, praise: "Men and boys scattered before him as the Chandos Classics, Macmillan's Globe Series, street bookies before a policeman." Dent greatly Henry Morley's Universal Library, and Charles underestimated the capital, labor, and warehouse Knight's British Novelists and Cabinet Shake­ space he would need for such a mammoth enter­ speare. But Everyman's Library would far sur­ prise as Everyman's Library. The plan was to pub­ pass all of them in scope and production quality. lish a batch of 50 volumes every few months; an in­ Dent's plan was to publish the greatest non­ credible total of 152 actually appeared in 1906, copyright works of English and world literature the first year. The firm's offices were already in one thousand uniform volumes of about five cramped, and the staff was wholly inadequate to hundred pages, selling for a shilling per volume. cope with the huge demand for the first Every­ The same general idea had occurred inde­ man books. Packers sometimes had to work pendently to Ernest Percival Rhys, who would through the night , Swinnerton recalled: "The edit Everyman's Library from its inception until staff, united ... by the common danger, joked his death in 1946. Born in 1859, Rhys grew up like doomed men," chanting: in Carmarthen, Wales, and worked as a mining en­ gineer in Durham, where he set up a reading "Everyman, I will go with thee and be thy curse, room for the colliers. He invited the miner-poet And at the end will bring thee to thy hearse." to lecture at the reading room; Skipsey introduced Rhys to publishing when he In response to the crisis Dent built a subur­ asked him to edit a volume of the works of ban plant at Letchworth Garden City in 1906. 84 DLB 112 J. M. Dent and Sons

The Temple Press, as it was called, cost a stagger­ ducing such attractive books for a shilling. Every­ ing twenty thousand pounds. When workers com­ man volumes measured about 7 by 4 1/2 inches, plained about the quality of available housing in small enough to fit in a pocket but large enough the area, Dent put up two dozen model homes to look respectable on a bookshelf. Margins were for them. By 1909 the Temple Press had four hun­ narrow, and a new ten-point type was specially dred workers, half of them women, and over the cut to provide maximum legibility while fitting as next three decades it would produce sixty million much text on a page as possible. After some exper­ books. iments a special paper made of esparto grass, To provide warehouse space for Everyman's wood sulfite, and cotton rag was perfected. Partic­ Library, in 1911 Dent built an imposing headquar­ ularly beautiful were the bindings, endpapers , ters at 10-13 Bedford Street. Dent himself author­ and title pages designed by Reginald Knowles in ized the Elizabethan/Queen Anne style of the William Morris style. On the spine a hand­ building, which he called Aldine House. (Al­ lettered title crowned a distinctive floral orna­ though Dent's first printer's device had been the ment, all stamped in gold. For the bindings, thir­ Temple sundial, by this point he had borrowed teen colors were used to identify the various the dolphin and anchor ornament of Aldus Manu­ sections of the library: gray for biography, pale tius, the Venetian printer who pioneered the pro­ green for classics, orange for essays and belles duction of portable volumes of classic literature lettres, carmine for fiction, scarlet for history, at the end of the fifteenth century.) brown for oratory, olive for poetry and drama, Having sunk a huge investment in his physi­ maroon for reference, blue for romance, fawn cal plant, Dent did not pay generous wages or roy­ for science, purple for theology and philosophy, alties. He quarreled over money with Rhys, who dark green for travel and topography , and light complained that his employer seemed to feel that blue for books for young readers. literary men who had the joy and privilege of con­ Dent wanted to impress the book-buying tributing to such a noble enterprise as Every­ public at once with the broad scope of man's Library should not be too insistent on Everyman's Library. In 1906 he published the being paid. Rhys's editorial fees were at first only plays of Aeschylus, Hans Christian Andersen 's three guineas per volume, which he supple­ Fairy Tales, Matthew Arnold's essays, the complete mented by writing 143 introductions to Every­ novels of Jane Austen, Robert Burns 's Poemsand man books. Songs, Joseph Butler's The Analogy of Religion, The entire editorial staff for Everyman's Li­ Thomas Carlyle's The French Revolution, Samuel brary consisted of Rhys, Dent and his son Hugh, Taylor Coleridge's poems and essays, Capt. James and two or three researchers. Rhys recalled that Cook's Voyagesof Discovery,Dinah Mulock Craik's J. M. Dent "would often send by post a list of john Halifax, Gentleman,Charles Darwin's Natural­ twenty authors, known and unknown, famous ist's Voyagein the "Beagle,"Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and obscure, that had been suggested for Every­ in an abridged children's edition, Dumas's The man volumes, which he expected me to read be­ Three Musketeers, Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford, a fore noon, and sum up in a sentence." At the Brit­ Tale (introduced by Dent himself-it was one of ish Museum Rhys would flip through each book his best-loved novels), the three "Breakfast Table" at breakneck speed, ashamed of his superficiality, books of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Thomas while fending off would-be contributors of pref­ Hughes's Tom Brown's SchoolDays, essays by T . H. aces. Each Everyman book was to be introduced Huxley, Lamb's Essaysof Elia and Talesfrom Shake­ by an eminent critic, and the job of getting that speare(the latter illustrated by Arthur Rackham), copy in under deadlines drove Rhys to distrac­ Thomas Babington Macaulay's History of tion. He personally had to go to G. K. in three volumes, Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur, The Chesterton's house to force him to deliver a prom­ GoldenBook of Marcus Aurelius, selected works of ised introduction to Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby John Stuart Mill, the letters of Lady Mary (1907). Wortley Montagu, The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Dent could be quite tough with his printers: speeches of William Pitt the Younger, Plato's Re­ he had one of the first Everyman volumes, public, Charles Reade's The Cloisterand the Hearth Lamb's Essays of Elia (1906), destroyed because (with an appreciation by A. C. Swinburne), the he did not like the look of it. A less demanding complete works of Shakespeare in three volumes, man, however, might not have succeeded in pro- the plays of Sophocles, Swift's Gulliver'sTravels in 85 J. M. Dent and Sons DLB 112 a children's edition illustrated by Rackham, tured to publish Moby-Dick ( 1907), Typee (1907), Tennyson's poems, Izaak Walton's The Compleat and Omoo (1908). Angler (introduced by Andrew Lang), John Continental literature was represented by Wesley's journal in four volumes, Mrs. Henry twelve volumes of the works of Dumas pere ( 1906- Wood's The Channings, and the New Testament 1912), fifteen volumes of the works of Balzac (the Old Testament and Apocrypha followed in (1906-1915), Dante's The Divine Comedy(1908), Jo­ 1907). hann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust ( 1908) and Wil­ To break even, Dent had to sell at least ten helm Meister (1912), Hugo's Les Miserab/,es(1909) thousand copies of each book-twenty thousand and Notre Dame de Paris (1910), three volumes of to thirty thousand in the case of volumes that Michel de Montaigne's Essays (1910), six volumes were more costly to produce, such as Shake­ of the plays of Henrik Ibsen (1910-1921), Jean­ speare's plays. Though desperately short of capi­ jacques Rousseau's Emile and The Social Contract tal, Dent was willing to invest in intimidating and Discourses(1913), Moliere's Comedies (1929), multivolume classics, especially in the field of his­ and Blaise Pascal's Pensees( 1931), with an introduc­ tory. John Lothrop Motley's The Rise of the Dutch tion by T. S. Eliot. Republic (1906) appeared in three volumes; Russian literature had a particularly promi­ George Grote's History of Greece(1907) in twelve; nent place in Everyman's Library. Crime and Pun­ Richard Hakluyt's Voyages( 1907), introduced by ishment ( 1911) and The Brothers Karamazov ( 1927) John Masefield, in eight; Henry Hallam's Constitu­ appeared in the Constance Garnett translations, tional History of Engl.and ( 1907) in three; J. A. along with several other books by Fyodor Froude's History of Engl.and (1909-1912) in ten; Dostoyevski. The standard Russian classics were Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman represented-Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace (1911) in three volumes and Anna Karenina ( 1912) in Empire (1910) in six; Theodor Mommsen's History two, Turgenev's Virgin Soil (1911) and Fathersand of Rome (1911) in four; and Livy's History of Rome Sons (1921), Nicolai Gogol's Dead Souls (1915), (1912-1924) in six. A revised and updated edi­ Aleksandr Pushkin's tales (1933), and Anton tion of J. R. Green's A Short History of the English Chekhov's Pl.aysand Stories (1937). The Dent firm Peopl,e(1915), a mere two volumes, sold twenty­ also took a chance with Russian authors who four thousand sets in its first year. were not yet widely read in England-Maksim Conscious of the market in the United Gorky's Through Russia (1921); Ivan Goncharov's States, where E. P. Dutton distributed Ev­ Oblomov( 1932), just three years after the first En­ eryman's Library, Dent and Rhys allotted a large glish translation had appeared; and Nikolai share of their canon to American literature. Shchedrin's The GolovlyovFamily (1934). They included James Fenimore Cooper's five The Greek and Latin classics were, of Leather-Stocking tales ( 1906-1907), six volumes course, thoroughly represented: the plays of of Nathaniel Hawthorne's works (1906-1911), Euripides in two volumes (1906, 1908); the works three volumes of Washington Irving's (1906- of Virgil (1907), Tacitus (1908), and Cicero 1911), five of Ralph Waldo Emerson's (1906- (1909); the comedies of Aristophanes in two vol­ 1915), speeches and letters of Abraham Lincoln umes (1909, 1911); the works of Epictetus (1907), Louisa May Alcott's Litt/,e Womenand Good (1910), Herodotus (1910), and Thucydides Wives (1907), Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography (1910); Plutarch's Lives from the "Dryden" edi­ ( 1908), four volumes of historical works by Fran­ tion of 1683-1686 (1910); the works of Demos­ cis Parkman ( 1908), the works of Edgar Allan thenes (1911) and Horace (1911); Aristotle's Poe (1908), Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's NicomacheanEthics (1911) and Politics (1912); and Cabin (1909), the works of Henry Wadsworth the works of Xenophon (1914), Lucretius (1921), Longfellow (1909), Henry David Thoreau's Wal­ and Ovid (1939). Oddly, the earl of Derby's den (1910), the works of William Penn (1911), Al­ (Edward George Stanley) 1864 translation of exander Hamilton's The Federalist;or, The New Con­ Homer's Iliad (1910)-hardly the best one-was stitution (1911), the works of Bret Harte (1911), used, along with William Cowper's 1802 transla­ Richard Henry Dana's Two Years before the Mast tion of the Odyssey(1910). The war chronicles of (1912), James Russell Lowell's Among My Books Julius Caesar and Josephus were published in (1912), and 's Leaves of Grass 1915, just after the outbreak of World War I. (1912). At a time when Herman Melville was lit­ Philosophy and theology ran the gamut tle known in England, Everyman's Library ven- from The Confessions of St. Augustine (1907) to 86 DLB 112 J. M. Dent and Sons

Giuseppe Mazzini (1907), Adam Smith's An In ­ quiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Na­ tions (1910), Henry George's Progress and Poverty (1911), and William Cobbett's Rural Rides (1912). Thomas Paine's The Rights of Man (1915) fol­ lowed Edmund Burke's Speechesand Letterson Amer­ icanAffairs ( 1908) and Reflectionson the FrenchRevo­ lution and Other Essays (1910). Dent was decidedly opposed to socialism, but after his death his firm would publish Karl Marx's Capital (1930), trans­ lated by Eden and Cedar Paul, as well as the works of Robert Owen (1927). Feminism was rep­ resented by the writings of George Sand (1911), Elizabeth Blackwell's autobiography Pioneer Work for Women (1914), and Mary Wollstonecraft's "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" in a volume with "The Subjection of Women," by John Stuart Mill (1929). Reflecting Rhys's Welsh literary interests, Everyman's Library published The Mabinogion in 1906. In a similar folkish vein, the series would later feature Icelandic literature , including The Story of Burnt Njal (1911), The Saga of Grettir the Strong (1914), and Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla (1915, 1930). The Finnish epic Kalevala appeared in 1907, The Fall of the Niebelungs in 1908, and Adam Mickewicz's Polish classic Pan Tadeusz in The building at 29-30 Bedford Street, London, where]. M. 1930. Everyman's Library made a real effort to Dent and Companymoved at the end of 1897 be a world library, with some representation of Eastern literature: Shakuntala ( 1907) and other works by the Sanskrit author Kalidasa; the Koran Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince ( 1908), and in­ (1909); The Ramayana and the Mahabharata (1910); cluded Richard Hooker's Of the Laws of Ecclesiasti­ Hindu Scriptures (1938), introduced by Rabin­ cal Polity (1907); four volumes by Emanuel Swe­ dranath Tagore; and the anthology ChinesePhiloso ­ denborg (1909, 1912, 1913, 1933); Benedict de phy in ClassicalTimes (1942). Spinoza's Ethics and "De Intellectus Emendatione" Everyman's Library was dominated by the (1910), introduced by George Santayana; the classics of English literature, starting with The works of George Berkeley (1910) and David Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (1912). Needless to say, Hume (1911); John Keble's The Christian Year Everyman ( 1909) was published (in a volume with (1914); Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan (1914); and other miracle plays), as were William Langland's Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra Piers Plowman ( 1907) and Chaucer's Canterbury (1933). The library also included seminal works Tales (1908). The works of Shakespeare were of science that, in the twentieth century, are joined by those of Marlowe ( 1909), Ben Jonson hardly ever read: Sir Francis Gallon's Inquiries (1910), and Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher into Human Facultyand Its Development( 1907), Rob­ (1911), as well as the two-volume Minor Elizabe­ ert Boyle's The ScepticalChymist ( 1911), Michael Far­ than Drama (1910). The poetry of John Keats aday's Experimental Researchesin Electricity (1912), (1906), Percy Bysshe Shelley ( 1907), William Sir Charles Lyell's The GeologicalEvidence of the An­ Wordsworth (1907, 1908), Robert Herrick (1908), tiquity of Man (1914), Thomas Malthus's An Essay John Milton (1909), and Thomas Gray (1912) on the Principle of Population (1914), and Darwin's was represented, as was The Spectator (four vol­ The Origi.nof Species( 1928). umes, 1907), Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield A thoroughgoing liberal, Dent included ( 1908), Fanny Burney's Evelina (1909), Henry four volumes of Hazlitt's works (1906-1910), Fielding's The History of TomJones ( 1909), Thomas John Bright's speeches ( 1907), the writings of Love Peacock's Headlong Hall and Nightmare Abbey 87 J. M. Dent and Sons DLB 112

(1910), and Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy thing else. On the other hand, the postwar atmo­ (1912). sphere of sexual freedom did permit the publica­ Among the Victorians, the complete works tion of Tobias Smollett's Roderick Random (1927); of Dickens were published in twenty-two volumes Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary (1928), trans­ (1906-1921) introduced by Chesterton. John Rus­ lated by Eleanor Marx-Aveling; Fran~ois Rabe­ kin was allotted sixteen volumes (1907-1914), in­ lais's The Heroic Deeds of Gargantua and Pantagruel cluding five for Modern Painters (1907) and three (1929); Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders (1930); for The Stones of Venice( 1907). There were twenty­ Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron (1930); and eight volumes for Sir Walter Scott (1906-1911), Rousseau's Confessions(1931). All were unexpur­ ten for Thackeray (1906-1914), nine for Charles gated, although one story in The Decameronwas Kingsley (1906-1927), and two for his brother printed in Italian . Henry (1906, 1909), as well as Anthony Trol­ Copyright law allowed anyone to publish a lope's six Barsetshire novels ( 1906-1909). By book twenty-five years after the author's death 1914 the works of all the Bronte sisters had been for a 10 percent royalty payment to the estate; published, along with the romances of William Dent took advantage of this option to publish Morris (1907), Benjamin Disraeli's Coningsby more recent classics, among them seven volumes (1911), and works by John Henry Newman of Robert Louis Stevenson's works in 1925. But (1912) and Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1912). the real breakthrough into modern literature Within a few years of its triumphant launch, came in 1935 with the publication of Arnold however, the momentum of Everyman's Library Bennett's The 01.d Wives' Tak; Joseph Conrad's would be broken by two unforeseeable obstacles. Lord Jim, introduced by R. B. Cunninghame Gra­ When the series began, copyright protection ex­ ham; John Galsworthy's The Country House; pired forty-two years after publication or seven Henry James's The Turn of the Screw and The years after the death of the author, whichever Aspern Papers; D. H. Lawrence's The White Pea­ came later. That allowed Dent to publish the cock; and Wells's The Time Machine; and, The great Victorians-Dickens, Tennyson, Ruskin, Wheels of Chance. They were followed by antholo­ Huxley, George Eliot-whose copyrights conve­ gies of works by Aldous Huxley (1937), Thomas niently lapsed around the turn of the century. Mann (1940), and J.M. Synge (1941), as well as a The Copyright Act of 1911, however, extended revised edition of The Georgian Literary Scene protection to fifty years after the author's death. (1938), by Dent's old office boy, Swinnerton. Vir­ As a result, Robert Browning's work up to 1869 ginia Woolf entered Everyman's Library with To was published in Everyman's Library by 1911, the Lighthouse in 1938, E. M. Forster with A Pas­ but the final two volumes, covering 1871 to 1890, sage to India in 1942; but Bernard Shaw's plays were delayed until 1940. Wilkie Collins's The were not published until 1960, and Thomas Woman in White came out in 1910, whereas The Hardy's Storiesand Poemshad to wait until 1970. Moonstone (introduced by Dorothy L. Sayers) did In March 1935 the format of the Everyman not appear until 1944. Six books by George Eliot volumes was modernized. The floral designs on were published between 1906 and 1910, but the spine, title page, frontispiece , and endpapers Middlemarch (introduced by Leslie Stephen) was were abandoned in favor of simpler abstract orna­ held up until 1930. ments designed by Eric Ravilious, while a bio­ The impact of World War I was even more graphical note on the author was added facing devastating. Volume seven hundred had been the title page. The smooth-finish cloth bindings put out in 1914, but within a few years the publica­ were replaced with rougher natural-grain cloths, tion of additional Everyman books had ground in seven colors rather than thirteen . Tidings were to a halt. In 1921 new titles began to appear set in Eric Gill's Perpetua Roman, which was re­ again, but only in a slow trickle. Wartime infla­ placed by Albertus in 1953 and Fournier in 1962. tion forced the price of each volume up to two shil­ The page size was enlarged slightly in 1953 to lings, sixpence by 1920, when the gold leaf on 7 1/8 by 4 5/8 inches. the spine was replaced by imitation gold. The From 1933 to 1936 thirty Everyman books price came down to two shillings in 1922, and in originally published in two volumes were repub­ 1927 genuine gold leaf was restored, though the lished in one-volume editions-"Dent's Double­ spine ornamentation was severely truncated. Volumes"-at five shillings each. Everyman's Ref­ The war had literally taken the glitter from erence Library was launched in 1951, though Everyman's Library.just as it had tarnished every- reference works had long been a part of the Every- 88 DLB 112 J. M. Dent and Sons

Rapluulite Writing (1973), edited by Derek Stan­ ford, and Pressure Groups in Britain: A Reader (1974), edited by Richard Kimber and J. J. Rich­ ardson. Critics have questioned whether Everyman's Library fully represents the best that is known and thought in the world; Hugh Kenner, for ex­ ample, had a hearty laugh over the inclusion of Adelaide A. Procter (1906), the early-Victorian poet who is remembered today only for writing "The Lost Chord" (1858). In 1956 E. F. Bozman, Dent's editorial director, conceded that some of the Victorian novelists, historians, and philoso­ ;:. phers were already looking like relics. In select­ ~ ing books, Rhys and the Dents had been guided i by sales potential and by advice from British, American, and Canadian academics, and their choices were not always deathless. Everyman's Li­ brary set aside many volumes for the likes of Harri­ son Ainsworth, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, and R. D. Blackmore-though Blackmore's Lorna Doane , ' ( 1908) proved to be among the top sellers of the I. entire series. Some readers, moreover, were put / . off by the sanctimonious air that surrounded Everyman's approach to literature-or, as J. M. Ernest Rhys, editorof Dent'sEveryman's Library from its incep­ Dent pronounced it, "litterchah." tion until his death in 1946 (drawing by W. H. Caffyn; Against such criticisms have to be set the mil­ from Ernest Rhys, Everyman Remembers, 1931) lions of readers who were delighted to spend their shillings on Everyman volumes-among man series. Everyman's Encycloj)

( 1909), Ruskin's Pre-Raphaelitism( 1907), George company was formed in April 1935, with Button Herbert's The Temp/,eand A Priest to the Temple and Hugh Dent on the board of directors. (1908), Thackeray's Roundabout Papers (1914), In 1913 Everyman's Library was supple­ Balzac's The Country Parson (1914), and The Poems mented by the Wayfarers' Library, devoted to of CharlesKings/,ey ( 1927). modern literature. The company continued to Of course, the Dent firm had other publish­ publish works by important contemporary au­ ing activities besides Everyman's Library. In the thors, including A SienesePainter of the Franciscan fall of 1904 Dent inaugurated the Temple Classics Legend (1909), by Bernhard Berenson, whom Magazine to supplement the series, but it only J.M. Dent had met in Florence; The South Coun­ lasted for five issues. He tried again with Every­ try (1909), by Edward Thomas; The Street of To­ man, a penny literary weekly designed "to foster day (1911), by John Masefield; Notes on Novelists a taste for books among the proletariat." The (1914), by Henry James; A Boy in Eirinn (1915), editor was Dr. Charles Sarolea, chairman of by Padraic Colum; Egotism in German Philosophy the French department at the University of (1916), by Santayana; and Mary Webb's Cordial of Edinburgh. The first issue, for 12 October 1912, Earth (1916) and The Spring of Joy (1917). In 1917 sold 150,000 copies on the strength of contribu­ Henri Barbusse's Prix Goncourt novel Le Feu tions by Chesterton, Alfred Russel Wallace, Nor­ (1916) appeared in translation as Under Fire; for man Angell, and Saintsbury, as well as articles on J . M. Dent, who had lost two sons in combat, it J. M. Synge, Oscar Wilde, Tolstoy, George Mere­ told the horrifying truth about the war. Other ven­ dith, and Bennett. The magazine later published tures into Continental literature included two vol­ contributions by Shaw, Wells, Beatrice Webb, umes of plays by Luigi Pirandello (1923, 1925) John Masefield, John Middleton Murry, J. C. and Dostoevsky,by Andre Gide (1925). Squire, Richard Aldington, and Lawrence; never­ Dent published the late works of W. H. Hud­ son, including his autobiographical Far Away and theless, circulation fell off. Sarolea also edited Long Ago (1918), Birds in Town and Vil/,age(1919), Dent's Collection Gallia, a series of French clas­ Dead Man's Pluck; and An Old Thorn ( l 920), Birds sics begun in 1913; he seriously overextended him­ of La P/,ata ( 1920), and A Traveller in Litt/,e Things self between his editing, teaching, and journal­ (1921). The company also took over earlier ism, and there was growing friction between books by Hudson, though they did not sell well. Dent and Sarolea until the latter purchased Every­ In 1922 author and publisher argued over royal­ man in 1914. It ceased publication in 1920. ties, with Dent pointing out that Hudson's works In 1925 the Dent firm began publishing the had earned only about six hundred pounds for Bookmark as a threepenny quarterly devoted the firm. Nevertheless, Dent offered one thou­ mainly to publicizing the firm's new books. Every­ sand pounds for Hudson's last book, A Hind in man, edited by C. B. Purdom, was revived as a two­ RichmondPark (1922). penny weekly on 31 January 1929; but again it Dent published Conrad's 'Twixt Land and was a financial failure, and Sir Robert Donald Sea Tales (1912) after it had been rejected by Me­ bought it in January 1932. When Everyman closed thuen. Dent would also put out Conrad's Within down again in 1935, the Dent company renamed the Tides (1915), The Shadow-Line (1917), The Res­ its house organ the Bookmark and Everyman and cue (1920), Notes on Life and Letters (1921), Sus­ continued to publish it until 1938. pense (1925), Last Essays(1926), and a uniform edi­ In 1913 Dent began distributing French­ tion of his works ( 1923-1928). language books in France, first through an agent The company expanded its activities in edu­ and then (from December 1915) through its own cational publishing with the Kings' Treasuries of Paris office. Marketing of the Collection Gallia Literature, begun in 1920. Sir Arthur Quiller­ and the Collection Shakespeare (translations of Couch edited these school anthologies of the writ­ the bard's works into French) was fraught with dif­ ings of great authors; one of the first volumes ficulties, including employees who embezzled was A ShakespeareProgress ( 1920), compiled by funds. A Toronto branch of the firm was set up J. M. Dent himself. The firm ventured into sci­ in 1913 under the management of Henry But­ ence texts in 1928, history in 1931, and geogra­ ton, but it did not become profitable until the phy in 1931. 1920s. A Canadian Aldine House was opened J. M. Dent died on 9 May 1926; he had re­ in 1926 at 224 Bloor Street West, opposite tired from a managerial role in the business two McMaster University. An independent Canadian years earlier. His sons Hugh and Jack , and Jack's 90 DLB 112 J. M. Dent and Sons

A/dine House, builtfor]. M . Dent and Sons in 1911 (drawingby the architect,E . KeynesPurchase; from The Memoirs of J.M . Dent, 1849-1926, 1928) son F. J. Martin Dent, had, together with the well as Everyman's Library and Penguin paper­ founder, constituted the board of directors; the backs. firm had been known as J. M. Dent and Sons Phoenix was in turn the parent company of since 1909. Jack had joined the company in 1915 the Readers Union, a book club founded in and had supervised the Temple Press; Martin 1937. It published books by Joyce Cary, Winston had come in 1924 and directed the production de­ Churchill, Forster, Ernest Hemingway, Aldous partment. After the death of J. M. Dent the Huxley, W. Somerset Maugham, Sean O'Casey, board was expanded to include W. G. Taylor, Bertrand Russell, John Steinbeck, Dylan Thomas, who had been secretary of the firm since 1916; James Thurber, , Wells, and Woolf Bozman, editorial director from 1926; and But­ at two shillings, sixpence per volume. The early years were a struggle, but the general book hun­ ton. In 1934 A. J. Hoppe, head of sales and public­ ger during World War II gave the club a boost. ity since 1925, and H. W. March, chief of the edu­ By 1947 it had distributed almost two hundred ti­ cational department, joined the board. Hugh R. tles and was selling more than four hundred thou­ Dent served as chairman from 1926 to 1938, fol­ sand books a year, and by the early 1950s member­ lowed by Taylor from 1938 to 1963; Taylor was ship was almost forty thousand. In 1970 the also managing director from 1934 to 1955. Readers Union was sold to the firm of David and Taylor's two posts were taken over by F. J. Mar­ Charles. The Phoenix Book Company faded tin Dent. When Rhys died in 1946 the direction away during World War II, but in 1947 it was re­ of Everyman's Library was assumed by Bozman, vived as Phoenix House, a general publishing im­ who retired in 1965. print. J. M. Dent and Sons founded the Phoenix In 1932 Dent founded the Open-Air Li­ Book Company in 1928 to sell books on the install­ brary, which republished the works of Hudson , ment plan. Headed by Hugh Dent, the subsidiary Edward Thomas, and other observers of country began with sets of works of Dumas pere, Dick­ life. During World War I the firm had virtually ens, and Scott, and later marketed The Encyclopae­ given up publishing children's books, but in 1935 dia Britannica and The CambridgeAncient History as M. C. Carey of the Junior Book Club was hired 91 J. M. Dent and Sons DLB 112

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First page of a letterfrom Dylan Thomasto E. F. Bozman,editorial director of]. M. Dent and Sons, written lessthan a month be­ fore Thomas'sdeath (Sothel,y'sauction catalogue, 23 and 24 July 1987)

92 DLB 112 J. M. Dent and Sons to build up a juvenile list. Among the books she the Skin Trade was rejected by Dent's readers as "a published were Noel Streatfield's Ballet Shoes fragment of frolicksome dirt." The firm scarcely (1936) and Tennis Shoes (1937). The Aldine Li­ earned any profits from Thomas during his life­ brary, a series of inexpensive reprints of modern time: advances were paid out for books that lost books, was begun in 1938. money or were never written. In one of his last let­ To keep pace with modern scholarship the ters ( 11 September 1953) Thomas effusively New Temple Shakespeare was introduced to re­ thanked Bozman for taking on Under Milk Wood place the old series in 1934. It was edited by (1954) and tried to borrow another advance with­ M. R. Ridley, with wood engravings and layout out the knowledge of his agent, David Higham by Eric Gill. On Gill's suggestion Dent published (Bozman refused). a fine four-volume edition of the New Testament Dent was able to take advantage of the enor­ (1934-1936), edited by M. R. James. Hand type­ mous posthumous interest in Thomas. It pub­ set by the firm of Hague and Gill, it was illus­ lished his Quite Early One Morning (1954); A Pros­ trated with Gill's woodcuts. Sales were not suf­ pect of the Sea and Other Stories and Prose Writings ficient to warrant proceeding with the Old Testa­ (1955); Letters to Vernon Watkins (1957); Miscel/,any: ment. In 1936 Dent bought a share of Hague Poems Stories Broadcasts(1963); an Everyman edi­ and Gill, moved its workshop from Piggots to tion of his CollectedPoems ( 1966); SelectedLetters of High Wycombe, and supplied it with steady com­ Dyl,an Thomas (1966), edited by Constantine position work. Fitzgibbon; Andrew Sinclair's dramatization of Ad­ Dent published Henry Green's first novel, ventures in the Skin Trade (1967); A Child's Christ­ Blindness ( 1926), as well as the literary history mas in Wales ( 1968), illustrated by Edward and criticism of Van Wyck Brooks. In addition to Ardizzone; The Notebooksof Dy/,an Thomas (1968); producing books for the masses, the company Dylan Thomas: Early Prose Writings (1971); Dylan built up a strong list of proletarian writers, includ­ Thomas: The Poems (1971); The Outing (1971); The ing Thomas Okey, a basket weaver who became Collected Stories ( 1983); A Visit to Grandpa's and professor of Italian at Cambridge University; the Other Stories (1984); The CollectedLetters of Dylan collier-novelists F. C. Boden and Roger Dataller; Thomas (1985), edited by Paul Ferris; The Notebook the farm laborer Fred Kitchen; the journalist Poems 1930-34 (1988), edited by Ralph Maud; Rowland Kenney; and Labour party politicians James Griffiths and Henry Snell. Dent was also and a new edition of CollectedPoems 1934-1953 the British publisher of three works by the black (1988), edited by Walford Davies and Maud. American author Zora Neale Hurston: Their Eyes Dent also put out critical, biographical, and biblio­ Were WatchingGod ( 1938), VoodooGods ( 1939), and graphical studies of the poet, including The Life The Man of the Mountain (1941). of Dylan Thomas (1965), by Fitzgibbon. In 1935 Richard Church, Dent's poetry edi­ In the 1970s new fiction gradually faded tor, was introduced to the work of Dylan from Dent's list. Everyman Fiction was begun in Thomas. Church was at once fascinated and re­ 1983 as a series of paperback reprints of twentieth­ pelled by Thomas. He was willing to take a century literature, among them Joyce Carol chance on the young and difficult Welshman, Oates's Unholy Lives (1983), J. G. Ballard's The though he found Thomas's poetry surrealistic Drowned World (1983), and Aharon Appelfeld's (which Thomas indignantly denied), too sexual, Badenheim 1939 (1984). Also in 1983 another and often incomprehensible. (Thomas privately paperback series, Classic Thrillers, was launched vilified Church as "a cliche-riddled humbug and with Sapper's (Herman Cyril McNeile) Bulldog pie-fingering hack.") Thomas had a contract with Drummond and John Buchan's Castle Gay. Dent by 1936, when Twenty-five Poems appeared J. M. Dent and Sons was purchased by in a first impression of 730 copies; there were Weidenfeld and Nicolson in January 1988, and three more printings by 1944. Church suggested the Dent Staff was moved to Weidenfeld's offices that he write about his childhood, and the result at 91 Clapham High Street, London. was Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog ( 1940). Dent also put out The Map of Love (1939), Deaths References: and Entrances (1946), and Collected Poems J. M. Dent, The House of Dent 1888-1938 (Lon­ 1934-1952 (1952), though the firm clearly felt don: Dent, 1938); more comfortable publishing the verse of Ogden Dent, The Memoirs of]. M. Dent 1849-1926 (Lon­ Nash. An early draft of the novel Adventures in don & Toronto: Dent, 1928); 93 J. M. Dent and Sons DLB 112

Paul Ferris, Dylan Thomas (London: Hodder & Frank Swinnerton, Swinnerton: An Autobiography Stoughton, 1977); (London: Hutchinson, 1937); A. J. Hoppe, A Talk on Everyman's Library (Lon­ Dylan Thomas, The Collected Letters of Dylan don: Dent, 1938); Thomas, edited by Paul Ferris (London: Frederick R. Karl, Joseph Conrad: The Three Lives Dent, 1985); (London: Faber & Faber, 1979); James Thornton, A Tour of the TemplePress (Lon­ Hugh Kenner, A Sinking Island: The Modern En­ don: Dent, 1935); glish Writers (London: Barrie & Jenkins, Ruth Tomalin, W. H. Hudson: A Biography (Lon- 1988); don: Faber & Faber, 1982). Ralph Maud, Dylan Thomasin Print: A Bibliographi­ cal History (London: Dent, 1970); Papers: Ernest Rhys, Everyman Remembers(London: Dent, The Charles Sarolen papers, which deal with 1931; New York: Cosmopolitan, 1931); Everyman magazine, are at Edinburgh University Rhys, WalesEngland Wed (London: Dent, 1940); Library. Some J. M. Dent records are held by J.Kimberley Roberts, ErnestRhys (Cardiff: Univer­ Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London. sity of Wales Press, 1983); Donald Armstrong Ross, ed., The Reader's Guide -Jonathan Rose to Everyman's Library, fourth edition (Lon­ don: Dent, 1976);

94 Andre Deutsch Limited (London: 1951- ) GB

Andre Deutsch was one of several Central Assisted by his friends Jack Newth, presi­ European refugees (others included George dent of the Publishers' Association, and Edmond Weidenfeld, Walter Neurath, Paul Hamlyn, and Seagrave, editor of the Bookseller, he set up the Ernest Hecht) who brought a new spirit of enter­ firm of Andre Deutsch Limited in 1951 with of­ prise to postwar British publishing. Born in Hun­ fices at 12 Thayer Street and about sixty-five hun­ gary on 15 November 1917, the son of a Jewish dred pounds in capital. Athill and Nicolas Bent­ dentist, he was educated in Budapest, , ley joined Deutsch as directors; Fred Kendall was and Zurich and acquired degrees in economics added to the board later to provide financial ex­ and political science. His love of English litera­ pertise. The company published four books that ture, together with the reactionary and anti­ autumn, including two notable successes: a sympo­ Semitic political climate in Hungary, induced him sium titled Books Are Essential, by Sir Norman to immigrate to London in 1939, just before the Birkett and others, and Leah W. Leonard's Jewish outbreak of World War II. In 1941 he was in­ Cookery. The following year the firm put out terned for three months on the Isle of Man; twenty-two books, two of them best-sellers: the there he met a fellow Hungarian, the publisher memoirs of Franz von Papen and the Reader's Di­ Ferenc Aldor, who introduced him to the publish­ gest Omnibus,the latter selling eighty thousand cop­ ing business. From 1942 to 1945 Deutsch worked ies within a year. Deutsch did, however, miss an for the firm of Nicholson and Watson. When his opportunity to acquire a modern classic: the firm boss, John Roberts, turned down the manuscript rejected the manuscript of William Golding's for 's Animal Farm, Deutsch re­ Lord of the Flies, which was published by Faber solved to become a publisher on his own. Orwell and Faber in 1954. then offered Animal Farm to Deutsch, but he was In 1955 Deutsch took over the Derek not yet ready to take it on; it was published in Verschoyle list and moved to that firm's offices at 1945 by Secker and Warburg. 12-14 Carlisle Street. He picked up from In late 1945 Deutsch established the firm of Verschoyle the illustrator and children's author Allan Wingate at cramped offices in Great Cum­ Ludwig Bemelmans and went on to publish sev­ berland Street. He had only one-fifth of the fif­ eral of Bemelmans's "Madeline" books. In 1961 teen thousand pounds then considered to be the Andre Deutsch Limited relocated to 105 Great minimum capital needed to start a new publish­ Russell Street and bought Graf ton Books, which ing house. He succeeded because of two early best­ published textbooks on librarianship; it would be sellers: How to Be an Alien (1946), by his Hungar­ sold to Gower Publishing in 1981. Time/Life In­ ian friend George Mikes, and Norman Mailer's corporated bought a 40 percent share of the The Naked and the Dead (1949). Deutsch firm in 1969, but Deutsch found the part­ Throughout his career as a publisher nership irksome and soon bought back his eq­ Deutsch was closely assisted by Diana Athill in uity. He remained an independent-something in­ what she described as a "fraternal" relationship. creasingly rare in the British publishing industry. There was, however, increasing friction with the Deutsch renewed his connection with other directors of Allan Wingate (Athill called it Mailer, publishing Advertisementsfor Myself (1961), "guerrilla warfare"), and they compelled him to Deathsfor the Ladies and Other Disasters(1962), The resign in August 1950. Presidential Papers (1964), An American Dream 95