Everyman's Library

• 1. Introduction

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  Everyman's Library opened in 1906 with a copy of James Boswell's Life of Johnson. The title page of that first volume carried a quotation from the works of John Milton. Milton had written: "A good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured upon purpose to a life beyond life." That book sold for one shilling. For its time, that price was strikingly low. A London publisher named Joseph Malaby Dent had conceived the project the year before. His goal was a library of a thousand volumes drawn from world literature. It would be affordable for students, the working classes, and the cultural elite alike. What drove Dent to that vision? Where did the name Everyman's Library come from? And how did a venture started in 1905 eventually grow into a series with Harold Bloom and Toni Morrison on its editorial committee?

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• 2. A Name From Medieval Drama

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  Ernest Rhys, a poet and editor, was appointed head editor of the new series by Dent. He was given a specific task: find a name broad enough to encompass everything the series stood for. Rhys considered and rejected many ideas before recalling a quotation from the medieval morality play Everyman. In that play, the character of Knowledge addresses the main figure directly: "Everyman, / I will go with thee, / and be thy guide, / In thy most need / to go by thy side." The name fit everything Dent was trying to build. That passage now appears on the title page of every volume of Everyman's Library and every Everyman Paperback. Dent had also designed the books as pocket-sized hardcovers. Settling on a visual language for those volumes would take years of deliberate effort.

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• 3. Designing the Page

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  William Morris and his Kelmscott Press established the design principles that Dent followed for Everyman's Library. To make those principles work at scale, Dent commissioned the Monotype corporation to create a new typeface. The result was called Veronese, a remake of a foundry face Dent had used previously. A second typeface, Series 59, followed in 1912. It drew on the style of Morris's Golden Type but featured sharper slab serifs and cleaner lines. Series 59 also gave Dent the ability to produce texts by machine, freeing the process from the handcraft constraints that Morris's methods had required. In 1935, Eric Ravilious replaced the old style with an entirely new set of designs. The original US distribution rights for the series were granted to E. P. Dutton, a New York City publisher. That arrangement brought Everyman's Library to American readers from the very beginning.

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• 4. Everyman's Encyclopaedia

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  In 1913, Everyman's Library added a companion publication to its range: a multi-volume encyclopaedia. Unlike the main series, the encyclopaedia was set up so that individual volumes could be purchased separately. Readers could build up the set gradually over time. The fifth edition, published in 1967, ran to 12 volumes and contained 7,763 pages. Each volume was printed in 8-point type on pages measuring 9 by 5 inches. A single volume weighed about 1.25 kilograms. That weight made each volume easy enough for children to handle. Alongside the encyclopaedia's expansion, the main series had been crossing its own milestones: five hundred volumes had appeared under the Everyman name by 1910.

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• 5. Counting the Volumes

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  Aristotle's Metaphysics was selected as the thousandth volume of Everyman's Library and published in 1956. The volumes in the series were arranged under eleven genre headings. These were Fiction, Theology and Philosophy, History, Classical, For Young People, Essays, Oratory, Poetry and Drama, Biography, Reference, and Romance. The appropriate genre was printed inside each book. Publishers also released updated lists periodically to help readers track the range. By 1975, the collection had grown to 994 titles across 1,239 volumes. Publication of new titles ceased in the 1970s, pausing a series that had been running continuously since 1906.

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• 6. Revival and New Stewardship

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  The hardback rights to Everyman's Library were sold in 1991 to the newly formed David Campbell Publishers. Random House supported the UK relaunch, while Alfred A. Knopf handled the United States. Knopf had been part of the Random House group since 1960. The relaunch drew praise from many notable authors. In 2002, control of Everyman's Library passed entirely to US-based Random House, which continues to publish it under the Knopf imprint in America. On the paperback side, J. M. Dent and Sons had been acquired by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in 1988. That company was itself purchased by the Orion Publishing Group in 1991, and both now sit within Hachette Livre in the UK. Orion continues to publish Everyman Paperbacks under the J. M. Dent imprint, with US distribution through Charles E. Tuttle Co. The series' Honorary Editorial Committee now includes Henry Louis Gates Jr., Cynthia Ozick, and Simon Schama. Harold Bloom and Toni Morrison served as former members of the committee.

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