Book League of America

Book League of America

Type	Private
Industry	Book publishing/Bookselling
Founded	1930
Defunct	1950s
Headquarters	New York City, New York, USA
Area served	United States
Key people	Lawrence W. Lamm
Products	Contemporary and world classic books
Services	Mail order book sales club
Owner	Doubleday, 1936

The Book League of America, Inc. was a US book publisher and mail order book sales club. It was established in 1930, a few years after the Book of the Month Club.^[1] Its founder was Lawrence Lamm, previously an editor at Macmillan.^[1] The company was located at 100 Fifth Avenue, New York City, New York^[2] in a 240,000-square-foot (22,000 m²) office building that was constructed in 1906.^[3] It printed and distributed a variety of volumes in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. A victim of the Great Depression,^[1] the Book League of America was purchased by Doubleday in 1936.

Products

Book League of America printed and published contemporary and classic books. The clothbound hardcover was commonly a dark navy-blue, though sometimes red or black. There was an embossed logo on the front. Depending upon a variety of exposure conditions and perhaps publishing years, the spine cloth faded differently, with some of the spines remaining dark navy, while others turned purple or navy-green. The spine featured book title and author in gold or silver gilt lettering, along with decorative scrolling, sometimes in an art deco motif.

Most of the pages were smooth-cut on the top and bottom edges, and deckled on the outer edge. Some books contained the note: "This book is standard length, complete and unabridged. Manufactured under wartime conditions in conformity with all government regulations controlling the use of paper and other materials." This explains the yellowed or tanning paper condition, more noticeable in some books than others. Some books were illustrated. Many of the books did not include a publish date. Dust jackets were not included.

Services

Approximately 5,000 subscribers received monthly fliers that offered a selection from a variety of contemporary and world classic literature choices.^[1]

"The famous Board of Editors selects for you 2 books each month: the best new book -AND- one of the greatest classics. The Book League of America supplies these 2 books each month at 1/3 of the usual cost!^[4]

Some books, published by other companies but carrying the Book League of America imprint, were included in the club sales offerings. These publishers included:

• A. S. Barnes & Company, New York
• Bartholomew House, Inc., New York
• Blakiston Company, Philadelphia
• Caxton House Inc., New York
• Doubleday, Doran and Company, Inc., New York
• E. M. Hale and Company, Wisconsin
• Everybody's Vacation Publishing Company, New York
• Literary Classics Inc., New York
• Puritan Publishing Company, Chicago & Philadelphia
• William H. Wise & Co., New York

There was no membership fee to join the plan.^[5] The subscription cost $16.68 and entitled the subscriber to twelve books each year.^[6]

Partial list

A—G

• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, by Mark Twain, 1917
• Across the Frontiers, by Sir Philip Gibbs, 1938
• A History of New York & The Sketch Book, by Washington Irving
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll, 1941
• All Night Long, a Novel of Guerilla Warfare in Russia, by Erskine Caldwell, 1942
• All that glitters, by Frances Parkinson Keyes, 1941
• America Visited, by Dickens, Thackeray and Others; arranged by Edith I. Coombs, 1937
• Areopagitica and Other Prose Writings, by John Milton; editor William Haller, 1929
• A Tale of Two Cities & Christmas Carol & The Chimes, by Charles Dickens
• At the Sign of the Reine Pedauque, by Anatole France, 1931
• A Time Will Come, by Rachel McBrayer Varble, 1940
• A Woman is Witness, a Paris Diary, by Ernst Lothar, 1941
• Ben-Hur, a Tale of the Christ, by Lew Wallace
• Bernard Shaw, by Frank Harris, 1931
• Beyond Horizons, by Lincoln Ellsworth, 1938
• Camille, by Alexandre Dumas, 1937
• Captain Courageous, by Rudyard Kipling
• Caravan for China, by Frank Stuart, 1941
• Chance, a Tale in Two Parks, by Joseph Conrad, 1921
• Cimarron, by Edna Ferber
• Cities of Refuge, a Novel, by Philip Gibbs, 1937
• Comedies of Oscar Wilde, by Oscar Wilde
• Comedies of Molière, selected by John Gassner; translation by Baker & Miller, 1946
• Conquest of Mexico, by William H. Prescott, 1934
• Conquest of Peru, by William H. Prescott
• Crocus, a Novel, by Neil Bell (pen name for Stephen Southwold), 1937
• Cyrano de Bergerac, by Edmond Rostand
• Death of a Peer, by Ngaio Marsh, 1940
• Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes; translation by Richard Emery Roberts
• Dr. Krasinski's Secret, by M. P. Shiel, 1929
• Edgar Wallace, the Biography of a Phenomenon, by Margaret Lane, 1939
• English Comedies, edited by John Gassner
• Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, by Ralph Waldo Emerson
• False Witness, by Irving Stone, 1903
• Famous French Novels, Seven Modern Condensations, editor Cameron Hyde
• Fathers and Sons, by Ivan Turgenev
• Favorite Works of Sir Walter Scott, by Sir Walter Scott, 1942
• Flamenco, by Lady Eleanor Smith, 1931
• For My Great Folly, a Novel, by Thomas B. Costain, 1942
• Gladiator, by Philip Gordon Wylie, 1930
• Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens
• Great Novels of Anatole France by Anatole France, 1918
• Green Mansions, by William Henry Hudson
• Gulliver's Travels, by Jonathan Swift, 1937

H—S

• Hunchback of Notre Dame, by Victor Hugo
• Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë, 1940
• Jefferson's Letters, arranged by Willson Whitman
• John Brown's Cousin, by Jane Hutchens, 1940
• Kotto, Being Japanese Curios, by Lafcadio Hearn, 1929
• Lavengro & the Romany Rye, by George Borrow
• Les Misérables, by Victor Hugo, 1943
• Living Biographies of Famous Novelists, by Henry Thomas & Dana Lee Thomas, 1943
• Lorna Doone, a Romance of Exmoor, by Richard Blackmore
• Love in the Sun, by Leo Walmsley, 1940
• Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert, 1937
• Mary Lavelle, by Kate O'Brien, 1936
• Meet Mr. Fortune, by H. C. Bailey, 1942
• Mexican Maze, by Carleton Beals, 1931 with Illustrations by Diego Rivera
• Michael Strogoff, by Jules Verne, 1940
• Mikado and Other Operas, by W. S. Gilbert, 1929
• Moby Dick, by Herman Melville, 1940
• Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins
• Nana, by Émile Zola, 1937
• O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1941, edited by Herschell Brickell, 1941
• Plays of the Greek Dramatists, selections from Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes
• Poems and Tales of Edgar Allan Poe, by Edgar Allan Poe
• Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, 1937
• Quo Vadis, a Narrative of the Time of Nero, by Henryk Sienkiewicz; translation from the Polish by Jeremiah Curtin, 1925
• Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier, 1938
• Road to Endor, by Esther Barstow Hammond, 1940
• Rob Roy and Selected Poems, by Sir Walter Scott
• Romola, by George Eliot
• Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam
• Samuel Pepys, by Arthur Ponsonby, 1929
• Sapho, by Alphonse Daudet, 1932
• Science of Life, by H. G. Wells, Julian Huxley, G. P. Wells, 1936
• Selected Stories of Bret Harte, by Bret Harte
• Selected Writings of Thomas Paine, by Thomas Paine
• Selections from the Arabian Nights, translation by Sir Richard Burton
• Sense and Sensibility & Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen
• Short Stories of de Maupassant, by Guy de Maupassant, 1941
• Show Boat, by Edna Ferber, 1926
• Signed with Their Honor, by James Aldridge, 1942
• Six Famous French Novels, edited by Cameron Hyde, 1943
• So Big, by Edna Ferber

T—Z

• Tales from the Decameron, by Giovanni Boccaccio, 1930
• Tales of Mystery and Imagination, by Edgar Allan Poe, 1940
• That Lofty Sky, by Henry Beetle Hough, 1941
• That None Should Die, by Frank G. Slaughter, 1941
• The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
• The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, 1937
• The Best Known Works of Daniel Defoe, by Daniel Defoe, 1942
• The Best Known Works of Elizabeth & Robert Browning, by Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1942
• The Best Known Works of Émile Zola, by Émile Zola, 1941
• The Best Known Works of Gustave Flaubert, by Gustave Flaubert, 1941
• The Best Known Works of Ibsen, by Henrik Ibsen, 1941
• The Best Known Works of Ivan Turgenev, by Ivan Turgenev
• The Best Known Works of James Fenimore Cooper, by James Fenimore Cooper, 1942
• The Best Known Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• The Best Known Works of Oscar Wilde, by Oscar Wilde, 1940
• The Best Known Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, by Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1941
• The Best Known Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, by Robert Louis Stevenson, 1941
• The Best Known Works of Thomas Carlyle, by Thomas Carlyle, 1942
• The Best Known Works of Voltaire, by François-Marie Arouet de Voltaire
• The Best Known Works of Washington Irving, by Washington Irving, 1942
• The Book of Ser Marco Polo, the Venetian, by Marco Polo, 1929
• The Chuckling Fingers, by Mabel Seeley, 1941
• The Clairvoyant, by Ernst Lothar, 1932
• The Cloister and the Hearth, by Charles Reade
• The Collected Poems of Walt Whitman, edited by Emory Holloway
• The Complete Works of Horace, edited by Casper J. Kraemer, Jr., 1938
• The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas, père
• The Countryman's Year, by David Grayson, 1936
• The Crime of Sylvester Bonnard, by Anatole France, 1937
• The Crime Wave at Blandings, by P. G. Wodehouse, 1937
• The Dance of Life, by Havelock Ellis, 1929
• The Death of Lord Haw Haw, by Brett Rutledge (pen name of Elliot Paul), 1940
• The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon
• The Diary of Samuel Pepys, edited by Isabel Ely Lord
• The Droll Stories of Honoré de Balzac, by Honoré de Balzac
• The Education of Henry Adams, by Henry Adams, 1928
• The Egoist, a Comedy in Narrative, by George Meredith, 1941
• The Essays of Elia, by Charles Lamb, 1929
• The Favorite Works of Charles Dickens, by Charles Dickens, 1942
• The 4 Georges, by William Makepeace Thackeray, 1937
• The Hangman's Whip, by Mignon G. Eberhart, 1940
• The Happy Harvest, by Jeffery Farnol, 1940
• The History of Henry Esmond, by William Makepeace Thackeray
• The History of Tom Jones, by Henry Fielding
• The Hunchback of Notre Dame, by Victor Hugo
• The Lady Who Came to Stay, by Robin Edgerton Spencer, 1931
• The Last Days of Pompeii, by Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
• The Life and Letters of Benjamin Franklin, by Benjamin Franklin
• The Love Books of Ovid, 1937
• The Lyric South, an Anthology of Recent Poetry from the South, by Addison Hibbard, 1929
• The Master of Ballantrae, by Robert Louis Stevenson, 1931
• The Mill on the Floss, by George Eliot, 1932
• The Mixture as Before, by William Somerset Maugham, 1940
• The Moon and Sixpence, by W. Somerset Maugham
• The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins
• The Origin of the Species, by Charles Darwin
• The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde
• The Pilgrim's Progress & The Holy War, by John Bunyan
• The Plays of Anton Chekhov, by Anton Chekhov
• The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James
• The Red Lily, by Anatole France, 1937
• The Rest of Your Life, by Leo Cherne
• The Return of the Native, by Thomas Hardy, 1937
• The Selected Works of William Makepeace Thakeray, by William Makepeace Thackeray, 1942
• The Seven that were Hanged, by Leonid Andreyev, 1931
• The Shadow Catcher, by Donald Sloan
• The Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant, by Guy de Maupassant
• The Ship and the Shore, by Vicki Baum, 1941
• The Temptation of St. Anthony, by Gustave Flaubert, 1936
• The Two Wives, a Tale in Four Parts, by Frank Arthur Swinnerton, 1940
• The Unvanquished, by Howard Fast, 1942
• The Vicar of Wakefield, by Oliver Goldsmith, 1939
• The Virginians, by William Makepeace Thackeray
• The Warden & Barchester Towers, by Anthony Trollope
• The Way of All Flesh, by Samuel Butler, 1937
• The Weather Tree, by Maristan Chapman, 1932
• The World's Great Speeches, edited by Lewis Copeland, 1942
• They Stooped to Folly, by Ellen Glasgow, 1929
• They Tell No Tales, by Manning Coles, 1942
• Three Great Novels of Robert Louis Stevenson, by Robert Louis Stevenson
• Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas, père, 1940
• Tom Sawyer and Other Sketches by Clemens, by Mark Twain
• Travellers' Tales, arranged by Jay Du Bois
• Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea', by Jules Verne, 1940
• Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero, by William Makepeace Thackeray
• War And Peace, by Leo Tolstoy
• Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë, 1940

References

1. Van Gelder, Lawrence (1995-08-30). "Lawrence Lamm, 99, Pioneer in Book Packaging". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-08-06.
2. "Book Clubs". Profitfrog.com. Retrieved 2008-08-06.
3. "Atlas flips 100 Fifth Avenue for $152M". therealdeal.com (The Real Deal Online). February 21, 2008. Retrieved 28 November 2009.
4. "1930s - The Book league of America ad". tias.com. Retrieved 2008-08-06.
5. "1948 Book League of America Club Ad". adsvintageads.com. Retrieved 2008-08-06.
6. Welky, David (2008-05-02). Everything Was Better in America: Print Culture in the Great Depression (History of Communication). University of Illinois Press. p. 157. ISBN 0-252-07504-8.

External links

• Book League of America at worldcat.org
  • Dzwonkoski, P. (1986). American literary publishing houses, 1900-1980. Trade and paperback. Dictionary of literary biography, v. 46. Detroit, Mich: Gale Research Co.
  • Book League of America, Inc. Book League review. Garden City: The Book League of America.
  • Young, A. (1920). A choice of book plates by one of America's leading artists, Art Young: offered to a select group by the Book League of America in place of the 12 books of established reputation which constitute a part of a Book League Membership. New York: Book League of America.