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Albatross Verlag

World War II-era Armed Services Editions boosted troop morale and fostered a new generation of readers

February 3, 2015 - Richard Oram

Cover of Armed Services Edition of John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath."

The book, When Books Went to War: The Stories That Helped Us Win World War II by Molly Guptill Manning, celebrates the importance of the Armed Services Editions. Published between 1943 and 1947, these inexpensive paperback editions were given to servicemen on the frontlines. As Manning points out, not only did the editions achieve their principal purpose of raising morale, they encouraged a whole generation of readers who retained their appetite for reading when they returned home. Possibly a few stopped bullets or shrapnel. It’s necessary to remember that the cheap paperback edition was still a novelty at the beginning of the war, having been pioneered by Penguin Books in England and Albatross Books in Germany during the 1930s.

Armed Services Editions were made possible by a group of publishers called the Council of Books in Wartime. This group collaborated by eliminating royalty payments and arranging for the production and distribution of paperbacks in the most inexpensive possible formats. The Ransom Center has a couple of connections with these books. Although there are larger collections at the University of Virginia and the Library of Congress, we own more than 1,400 of the books, most of them shelved together as a discrete collection in the stacks, while some are kept with other editions of our major authors, such as John Steinbeck. Because they were printed on poor-quality wartime paper that is now brittle and brown, each is protected in a simple acid-free enclosure, invented by the Center’s Conservation department in the 1980s, and called a “tuxedo case.” Students of publishing history can use the collection to study which books were most successful (Manning concludes that books with a touch of nostalgia or sex were particularly popular with soldiers, and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby was one of the best-selling titles, even though it was considered a flop when first published in hardback during the 1920s). The books were generally published in an oblong format, with the cover notation “This is the complete book—not a digest.” In all, some 125 million copies were produced.

Among the founding members of the Council of Books in Wartime was Alfred A. Knopf, the eminent literary publisher (the massive Knopf, Inc. archive is here at the Center). Ironically, Knopf was famous for encouraging high production values in his own trade books, but he immediately recognized the importance of encouraging reading and raising morale and contributed a number of series titles by familiar authors in the Knopf stable, including thrillers by James M. Cain and Raymond Chandler and more literary works by Thomas Mann and Sigrid Undset.

In the postwar era, a number of paperback reprint publishers capitalized on increased demand for books, the availability of new outlets for cheap editions, such as chain department stores and drugstores, and Americans’ newly enhanced disposable income. Pocket Books debuted in 1939 and became well known after the war for its lurid covers, which, as Louis Menand points out in an illustrated recent New Yorker piece, graced not only the unabashed pulp of Mickey Spillane but also higher-toned works by William Faulkner and James Joyce. Ballantine and Bantam editions flourished, and the era of the mass market paperback had arrived. Nearly every prominent American hardback publisher developed a line of paperback books. Oddly, Knopf, Inc. was a holdout, arriving late to the game with Vintage Books in 1956.  But it was the Armed Services Editions that gave the American paperback its big push.

Please click on thumbnails below to view larger images.

Cover of Armed Services Edition of John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath."
Cover of Armed Services Edition of John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath.”
Shelves of Armed Services Editions wrapped in protective "tuxedo boxes." Photo by Alicia Dietrich.
Shelves of Armed Services Editions wrapped in protective “tuxedo boxes.” Photo by Alicia Dietrich.
Shelves of Armed Services Editions wrapped in protective "tuxedo boxes." Photo by Alicia Dietrich.
Shelves of Armed Services Editions wrapped in protective “tuxedo boxes.” Photo by Alicia Dietrich.
Shelves of Armed Services Editions wrapped in protective "tuxedo boxes." Photo by Alicia Dietrich.
Shelves of Armed Services Editions wrapped in protective “tuxedo boxes.” Photo by Alicia Dietrich.

Filed Under: Books + Manuscripts Tagged With: Albatross Verlag, Alfred A. Knopf, Armed Services Editions, Ballantine, Bantam, Council of Books in Wartime, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James M. Cain, Knopf Inc., Molly Guptill Manning, paperback, Penguin Books, Publishing, Raymond Chandler, Sigrid Undset, The Great Gatsby, Thomas Mann, Vintage Books, When Books Went to War: The Stories That Helped Us Win World War II, World War II

Penguin and the Paperback Revolution

August 9, 2012 - Jean Cannon

Click on the four-way arrow in the bottom right-hand corner of the slideshow to convert into full-screen mode.

According to popular mythology, the publisher Allen Lane, founder of Penguin Books, formulated his idea for a press dedicated exclusively to paperbacks while visiting a railway station. Having spent the weekend visiting his friend Agatha Christie, the famed author of Murder on the Orient Express, Lane arrived at the Exeter railway station and realized he had forgotten his book. Frustrated and facing the boredom of a long train trip, Lane tried to buy a novel at the station but found that there was nothing available that he felt worth reading. Bookless for the next few hours, he sat on the train and planned a new line of cheap, pocket-sized, and travel-worthy books, which could be sold at railway stations, grocers, and department stores. Penguin Books—and the paperback revolution—were born.

While this version of Allen Lane’s epiphany may be slightly romanticized, there is no doubt that Penguin Books, launched in 1935, sparked a new phase of publishing that would change the printing industry irrevocably. Mass marketing of paperbacks not only brought classics to a wider audience but also brought pulp fiction—previously published in magazines—to the forefront of the book trade.

The Ransom Center’s book collection is known for first editions, many of them lush volumes with elaborate bindings. Perhaps lesser known is the fact that the Ransom Center also houses multiple volumes that illuminate the development of the paperback book trade in both America and Britain. Alongside important editions of Lane’s Penguins, the Center also houses Tauchnitz editions of paperbacks that pre-date Penguin, as well as the “penny dreadfuls” and dime novels that slowly developed into modern pulp fiction. This slideshow exhibits numerous items from the library’s collections that represent landmarks in the history of the paperback book trade.

"What Maisie Knew" by Henry James. Book cover design by Edward Gorey. 1954.
"What Maisie Knew" by Henry James. Book cover design by Edward Gorey. 1954.

Filed Under: Books + Manuscripts Tagged With: A Farewell to Arms, Agatha Christie, Albatross Verlag, Aldine Press, Aldus Manutius, Allen Ginsberg, Allen Lane, Anchor Books, Armed Services Editions Collection, Charles Dickens, City Lights Pocket Bookshop, D. H. Lawrence, Dante Alighieri, dime novels, E.O. Lorimer, Edith Sitwell, Edward Gorey, Erle Stanley Gardner, Ernest Hemingway, George Bernard Shaw, George Sala, Gold Medal Books, Golden Cockerell Press, Have Gat—Will Travel, Henry David Thoreau, Henry James, Howl and Other Poems, J. Dicks, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Le terze rime di Dante, Malaeska the Indian Wife of the White Hunter, Mrs. Ann Stephens, Murder on the Orient Express, Oliver Twist, paperbacks, Penguin Books, Penguin Illustrated Classics, penny dreadfuls, Pocket Books, Publishing, pulp fiction, Richard S. Pranther, Robert Gibbings, Tauchnitz, Terrible Tales, The Case of the Velvet Claws, The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism Capitalism Sovietism & Fascism, The Pickwick Club, Walden, What Hitler Wants, What Maisie Knew

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