Timeline

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. On November 29, the first 12 Avon Pocket-Size Books hit the newsstands—all reprints, including William Faulkner’s Mosquitoes and Sinclair Lewis’s Elmer Gantry.