Lucy Mookerjee

Preceding Simon & Schuster’s paperback imprint ‘Pocket Books’ by two years, ‘Modern Age Books’ was the first large-scale press to publish paperbacks in the United States. Founded in 1937 by Richard Storrs Childs (Yale ’32), and Samuel W. Craig (who, in 1927, created BOMC competitor, The Literary Guild of America), the press released more than 150 titles before closing its doors in 1942.

On the eve of the Second World War, Childs and Craig aimed to democratize reading in the United States by combining innovative illustration, printing, and distribution techniques. They published a low-cost list of progressive titles (including works by Theodore Dreiser, Woody Guthrie, Harry F. Ward, and Erika Mann - daughter of Thomas) with cover art by illustrators such as Lynd Ward, Irving Politzer, and Rosalie Slocum. The books enjoyed initial print runs of 50,000 – 100,000, and retailed for 25 to 50 cents apiece. Books were printed at night by union labor on Reader’s Digest printers in Concord, NH. By distributing the cost of composition, and ensuring accomplished presswork and good management, it was possible to keep the price of the product down. Modern Age also offered a book club service, modeled on Craig’s Literary Guild.

The paperback was already thriving in Western Europe – particularly in France and Germany, but earlier US outfits, among them Dime Books (simply-bound small format sensational novels popular after the Civil War), and the staple-bound series of world literature (Little Blue Books) published by E. Haldeman-Julius (1919 – 1978), were unable to sustain the readership of larger audiences. Determined to repackage reading-for-entertainment or eductaion as “literature-for-the-people”, Modern Age began offering books below magazine prices in drugstores, newsstands, and department stores. The books were sold at tiered prices under the Three Seals imprint: Blue Seal books were 25 cents a copy; anything priced above that was a Gold Seal book; and reprints bore the Red Seal label.

Contemporary newspapers praised the Modern Age “experiment,” extolling the books’ large format, quality paper, and cover art for “ushering in a new era in American publishing.” With a total profit margin of 10 cents a copy, however, the company’s success depended on an enormous volume of sales. By 1941, the press was forced to sell five books for the price of one as the editorial office disappeared to the war effort. In October 1942, Childs announced that Viking had “taken over a large number of Modern Age’s books and author contracts”, and the press officially stopped printing.

Richard Childs was my grandfather. Somehow I carried the family ‘legend’ about his publishing efforts with me for most of my adult life without pausing to probe the backstory. In fact, I had already made a career in books in New York when a move to rural CT, and a chance encounter at the local historical society, prompted me to look more closely at his work: I was evaluating a collection of antiquarian Bibles when the president of the board (by chance, a fellow Grolier member) stopped by; we began to chat. He mentioned his particular passion for the cover art of an erstwhile publishing house he’d recently discovered, known as Modern Age. Modern Age - he had learned – was founded in the 1930s by a young man from the town to which I had recently moved: had I ever heard of him?

To date, the collection consists of 67 (of the 150) Modern Age titles. The initial 40 were discovered quite by accident, tucked under the attic eaves in my grandfather’s study.