Haldeman-Julius "Little Blue Book" Collection

A representative but incomplete collection of the once popular "Little Blue Books," a series of small, very inexpensive staple-bound books that were published by the Haldeman-Julius Publishing Company of Girard, Kansas between 1919 and 1978. They were the project of Emanuel Haldeman-Julius (1889-1951), a socialist reformer and newspaper publisher. The books were extremely popular across the widest possible range of American readers, both educated, sophisticated readers as well as (and more notably) the little-educated working class who could otherwise not afford to read literature. The works covered include many classics of Western literature, but also practical how-to manuals alongside frank writings on controversial or emergent social themes such as homosexuality and atheism. Works of philosophy and politics, too, are represented, including tracts written by Haldeman-Julius himself. The name of the series changed over the first few years, known as the People's Pocket Series, the Appeal Pocket Series and the Ten Cent Pocket Series, before finally attaining the name that persisted, Little Blue Books.