SPECIAL COLLECTIONS SPOTLIGHT
University in Print Forsyth Library’s special collections house Kansas rebel, Emanual Haldeman-Julius’s Little Blue Books by BRIAN GRIBBEN photos from THE PITTSBURG STATE UNIVERSITY SPECIAL COLLECTIONS
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hat does Forsyth Library’s Special Collections house that aligns with this issue’s theme: “Beyond the Classroom?” After all, most of our collections are oriented toward scholarly endeavors. What about materials that were created to bypass the academy, connect underserved and oft-ignored populations with literature, and offer an escape (both figuratively and literally) from the confines of proletarian drudgery and exploitation. Hyperbolic? Perhaps but hyperbole was undoubtedly the currency of Emanuel Haldeman-Julius (EHJ). His mass-marketed Little Blue Books were advertised to a workingclass audience as a “university in print;”
symbolizing both the democratization of literature and the popularization of knowledge inherent to the radical movements of the early 20th Century. Co-founded in 1919 by Emanuel Julius (a Philadelphia-born journalist who relocated to Girard, Kansas to write for the country’s largest socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason) and his wife Marcet Haldeman, HaldemanJulius Publications was best known for printing the pocket-sized Little Blue Books, a name descriptive of their 3-1/2 by 5-inch dimensions and the coloring of the cheap pulp paper used in their production. These booklets covered a myriad of subjects such as freethought, birth control, and leftist politics. They also offered courses ROAR
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in self-improvement and reprinted philosophical tracts, the Classics, biographies and popular literature in the public domain. Haldeman-Julius, having adopted his wife’s maiden name in a show of solidarity (as well as recognizing that the well-regarded Haldeman name offered some protection against Girard’s reactionary element), initially published the booklets in order to fund Appeal to Reason. He soon discovered not only a sizable readership among the labor and agrarian classes toiling in the strip pits and farmlands of southeastern Kansas, but across the country and internationally as the Little Blue Books would be sold through the mail, in vending machines, and at localized
SPRING/SUMMER 2021
