Untitled [Set of 81 Little Leather Library "Redcroft Edition" Miniature Books published between 1920-1924]
Very rare, nearly complete collection of 81 miniature volumes of the Little Leather Library Redcroft Edition Books published between 1920-1924.
This Little Leather Library Collection consists of 81 of 100 books, each book measuring approximately 10 x 7.8 cm published by the Little Leather Library Corporation of New York. It is very rare to see such a complete run and in such remarkable shape.
The miniature books are brownish green in colour, of imitation leather, and characteristic of the Redcroft edition published between 1920 and 1924, which the company switched to at the onset of World War I. Pre-World War I genuine leather copies bound in red leather are quite uncommon, in contrast to the present lot which is the Post-World War I brownish green in colour, imitation leather copies.
There were over 100 miniature book titles published in the various editions of the Little Leather Library, but it is not known if all these titles were included in the Redcroft edition. Only the first two editions were bound in real leather. The production of the Little Leather Library enabled the masses to read inexpensive classics. The imitation leather Redcroft edition, published between 1920 and 1924, appears to have been a take-off on the well-crafted books published by Elbert Hubbard’s Roycroft Press.
The Little Leather Library Corporation of New York was the first company to mass-market inexpensive books in the United States. The corporation, founded in 1916 by Albert Boni, Harry Scherman, and Maxwell Sackheim, made available a wide variety of classics by authors including Rudyard Kipling, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Morris, William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Henry James, Leo Tolstoy, Oscar Wilde, and William Butler Yeats in miniature editions.
When first published, the little books were sold at the Woolworth's chain. By the early 1920s, the books were advertised in popular magazines, selling in National Geographic from 1922 to 1924. Sometimes a miniature classic may have appeared in a cereal box as a promotion.
Elbert Hubbard, who was inspired by William Morris’ Arts and Crafts movement in England, became an important reformist in the United States, beginning the Roycroft movement and community in East Aurora, New York, in 1895.
Hubbard’s Roycroft Press was modelled after Morris’ Kelmscott Press. Books made from handmade paper were printed on the Roycrofter’s Golding Pearl letterpress. There is a marked difference between the finely bound, hand-crafted Roycroft volumes of Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson and Coleridge and their Redcroft edition counterparts.
Although the Arts and Crafts Movement was a reaction to the mechanization of the Industrial Revolution, there were those in the movement who felt that objects should be affordable.
Roycrofters supported those who did fine personal work in all endeavours, including design work in factories, but it is doubtful that the Roycroft seal would be applied to the volumes of the Little Leather Library. The volumes of the Little Leather Library are stored in one box.
Robert K. Hass, Inc., Publishers took control of the Little Leather Library Corporation in 1924. Boni later established Modern Library Publishing Company, of which Random House Publishers would become a subsidiary company. Scherman and Sackheim as well as Hass were later involved in the establishment of the Book of the Month Club.
The collection includes:
Volume 1 - Fifty Best Poems of America
Volume 2 - Fifty Best Poems of England
Volume 3 - Mother Goose Rhymes
Volume 4 - Words of Jesus, Volume I
Volume 5 - Words of Jesus, Volume II
Volume 6 - James Allen- As a Man Thinketh
Volume 7 - Hans Christian Andersen- Fairy Tales
Volume 8 - Honore' de Balzac- Christ in Flanders and Other Stories
Volume 9 - J.M. Barrie- A Tillyloss Scandal
Volume 10 - Elizabeth Barrett Browning- Sonnets from the Portuguese
Volume 11 - Robert Browning - Pippa Passes
Volume 12 - Robert Browning- Poems and Plays
Volume 13 - Robert Burns- The Poems and Songs of Robert Burns
Volume 18 - Samuel Taylor Coleridge- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Other Poems
Volume 21 - Thomas De Quincy - Confessions of an Opium Eater, Volume I
Volume 22 - Thomas De Quincy- Confessions of an Opium Eater, Volume II
Volume 23 - Charles Dickens- A Christmas Carol
Volume 25 - Henry Drummond- The Greatest Thing in the World
Volume 26 - Alexandre Dumas- The Comtesse de Saint-Geran
Volume 27 - Ralph Waldo Emerson - Essays
Volume 28 - Ralph Waldo Emerson- Uses of Great Men
Volume 29 - Edward Firz Gerald - The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Volume 30 - W.S. Gilbert - The "Bab" Ballads
Volume 31 - Edward Hale- Man Without a Country
Volume 32 - Elbert Hubbard- A Message to Garcia
Volume 33 - Victor Hugo- Last Days of a Condemned Man
Volume 34 - Henrik Ibsen - A Doll's House
Volume 35 - Henrik Ibsen- Ghosts
Volume 36 - Washington Irving - Old Christmas
Volume 37 - Washington Irving- Rip Van Winkle
Volume 39 - Rudyard Kipling - At the End of the Passage and The Mutiny of the Mavericks
Volume 41 - Rudyard Kipling - City of Dreadful Night and Other Stories
Volume 42 - Rudyard Kipling - Finest Story in the World
Volume 45 - Rudyard Kipling - Mulvanney Stories
Volume 46 - Rudyard Kipling - The Phantom Rickshaw and My Own True Ghost Story
Volume 47 - Rudyard Kipling - The Vampire and Other Verses
Volume 48 - Rudyard Kipling- Without Benefit of Clergy
Volume 49 - Charles Lamb - Dream Children
Volume 50 - Abraham Lincoln- Speeches and Addresses
Volume 52 - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - Hiawatha, Volume I
Volume 53 - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - Hiawatha, Volume II
Volume 54 - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow- The Courtship of Miles Standish
Volume 55 - Thomas Macaulay- Lays of Ancient Rome
Volume 56 - Maurice Maeterlinck- Pelleas and Melisande
Volume 58 - Prosper Merimee- Carmen
Volume 59 - Thomas Moore- Irish Melodies
Volume 60 - William Morris- A Dream of John Ball
Volume 62 - Edgar Allen Poe - The Gold Bug
Volume 63 - Edgar Allen Poe - The Murders in the Rue Morgue
Volume 64 - Edgar Allen Poe- The Raven and Other Poems
Volume 65 - Olive Schreiner - Dreams
Volume 66 - William Shakespeare - As You Like It
Volume 67 - William Shakespeare - A Comedy of Errors
Volume 68 - William Shakespeare - Hamlet
Volume 69 - William Shakespeare - Julius Caesar
Volume 70 - William Shakespeare - King Lear
Volume 72 - William Shakespeare - Merchant of Venice
Volume 73 - William Shakespeare - Merry Wives of Windsor
Volume 74 - William Shakespeare - Midsummer Night’s Dream
Volume 75 - Shakespeare, William - Othello
Volume 76 - William Shakespeare - Romeo and Juliet
Volume 76 - William Shakespeare - Sonnets
Volume 78 - William Shakespeare - The Taming of the Shrew
Volume 79 - William Shakespeare- The Tempest
Volume 80 - William Shakespeare- Twelfth Night
Volume 81 - George Bernard Shaw- On Going to Church
Volume 83 - Robert Louis Stevenson - A Child's Garden of Verses
Volume 84 - Robert Louis Stevenson - The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Volume 85 - Robert Louis Stevenson- Will O' the Mill and Markheim
Volume 87 - Alfred Tennyson- Enoch Arden
Volume 90 - Henry David Thoreau- Friendship and Other Essays
Volume 91 - Leo Tolstoy- The Bear Hunt and Other Stories
Volume 93 - Abraham Lincoln - Speeches and Letters
Volume 94 - Walt Whitman- Memories of President Lincoln
Volume 95 - John Greenleaf Whittier- Snow-Bound and Other Poems
Volume 96 - Oscar Wilde- Ballad of Reading Gaol and Other Poems
Volume 97 - Oscar Wilde- The Happy Prince
Volume 98 - Oscar Wilde- The Importance of Being Earnest
Volume 99 - Oscar Wilde- Lady Windermere's Fan
Volume 100 - Oscar Wilde- Salome
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