Tag: Mid 1900s

1941: Avon Books is established…

Here are the NEW, Fast Sedlling Avon Pocket size Book. Photocopy of a newspaper add from 1941.
Avon Books is established by New York businessman Joseph Meyers in association with Edna B. Williams. Now renowned for widely popularizing the historical romance category, the publisher originally begins with a focus on paperback reprints. More

Barometer Rising

Barometer Rising
The first novel by MacLennan, one of Canada’s most significant novelists of the mid-twentieth century. More

Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451
Though set in a dystopian world without books, Bradbury’s most famous work has never gone out of print. More

To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird
Much-loved Pulitzer Prize–winning classic, voted by librarians across America as the best novel of the twentieth century. More

A Bear Called Paddington

An early cover layout for A Bear Called Paddington by Michael Bond, published by Collins in 1958.
In 1958, an editor at Collins named Barbara Ker Wilson received a manuscript submission about a talking bear, which she opened with “initial suspicion” —as the publisher had received many other proposals featuring humanized animals that “are invariably either whimsy-whamsy, written down, or filled with adult innuendoes.” More

Goodnight Moon

Goodnight Moon
Every child’s must-have bedtime classic; beloved by generations of readers and listeners. More

Original contract for Thorn-Apple Tree

Original contract for Thorn-Apple Tree
Grace Campbell’s debut novel, Thorn-Apple Tree, was one of the earliest works of fiction written by a Canadian to be published by William Collins Sons & Co. Canada Ltd. More

Profiles in Courage

New York Times advertisement for Profiles in Courage from May 19, 1957.
Harper & Brothers helped groom the image of a future president when it agreed in the mid-1950s to work with a young senator on a collection of biographical sketches about courageous American lawmakers. More

Little Bear

Little Bear by Else Holmelund Minarik. Pictures bt Maurice Sendak. an I CAN READ book. (Cover)
The very first I Can Read! book has sold more than one million copies. More

Ariel

Ariel
Plath’s landmark poetry collection; includes “Ariel,” “Daddy,” and “Lady Lazarus.” More

Letter from “Padington”

Letter from “Padington”
Signed with a paw print, this letter from “Padington” (circa 1966) was sent to Australian booksellers and sales staff, encouraging them to sell the latest Paddington title. More

How Harlequin Became Romance

The Hospital in Buwambo by Anne Vinton, Harlequin’s first reprint (1957) of a Mills & Boon romance.
When Richard H.G. Bonnycastle, a former Arctic explorer with the Hudson Bay Company, launched Harlequin Books in Winnipeg in 1948, he had little interest in building a publishing empire around romance novels. More