THE MODERN LIBRARY – RANDOM HOUSE I
n 1917, two young men from immigrant families took on the might of the conservative family-run American publishing establishment. Albert Boni and Horace Liveright believed that ‘good’ literature would be read by the masses if priced suitably. Naming their Greenwich Village based company The Modern Library, they began to publish reprints, initially largely of European classics, of authors with an edge, such as Ibsen, Wilde and Nietsche. Although their venture proved a success they were ill-matched as partners, Boni a quiet bookseller, Liveright a foppish chancer, and it was the latter who took over the firm. However he soon found himself in financial trouble and was relieved when he sold out to Donald Klopfer and Bennett Cerf in 1925. Klopfer and Cerf were both bibliophiles and businessmen, and, treating their reprints as commodities, set about using every which way to hype and distribute their burgeoning list, by the late 1920s consisting of well over a hundred titles. The slogan ‘The World’s Best Books’ was a considerable pull and with mail-order,
Opposite and above: Invisible Man, 1952, Ralph Ellison’s award winning debut novel which focusses on the social and intellectual issues faced by African Americans in the early twentieth century. The eye is one of Kauffer’s repertoire of visual symbols that includes hands, clouds and stars. 51
