E. Haldeman-Julius
E. Haldeman-Julius, né Emanuel Julius, (1889 - 1951) born in Philadelphia the son of a bookbinder. His parents were Jewish emigrants who fled Russia and immigrated to America to escape religious persecution. [1]
As a boy, Emanuel, too, was harassed for being Jewish, resulting in a disdain for all religion as an adult. After leaving school at the age of 15, he worked at a variety of menial jobs. All the while, he read voraciously. Because literature and pamphlets produced by the socialists were inexpensive, Julius read them and became convinced of their truth.[1] He joining the Socialist Party before World War I[1]
He was a social reformer and publisher, most noted as the editor of Appeal to Reason newspaper (a socialist newspaper with a large national circulation that was mentioned, among other places, in the Jack London novel The Iron Heel), and later for publishing the Little Blue Books (mentioned by Louis L'Amour in his autobiography Education of a Wandering Man).
Along with his wife, Marcet (whose last name he adopted in hyphenate), Julius was an activist who published muckraking newspapers until he came upon the idea of publishing cheaply-printed classic literature for the masses. He opened a printing house in Girard, Kansas, and printed these books on cheap pulp paper (similar to that used in pulp magazines), stapled and bound with a plain (usually) yellow paper cover. They were first sold in 1919 for as little as 5 cents. Many titles of classic literature were given lurid titles in order to increase sales. Eventually, many thousands of copies per year were sold and were popular with the so-called "drifters" of the 1920s to the 1950s. Haldeman-Julius and his wife became wealthy from the venture but later divorced.
E. Haldeman-Julius drowned in his swimming pool in 1951. The books continued to be sold from existing stock until the printing house burned down in 1978.
Further reading
- The World of Haldeman-Julius, Emanuel Haldeman-Julius, 1960, published in New York
References
- ^ a b pg 264 of Susan Jacoby's Freethinkers: a history of American secularism, 2004, ISBN-13: 978-0-8050-7776-6, ISBN 0-8050-7776-6. Published by Henry Holt and Company, LLC; cover design John Candell
Burnett, Betty. "Haldeman-Julius, Emanuel." American National Biography. Ed. John A. Garraty, Mark C. Carnes. 24 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999