J.M. Dent & Sons, Ltd (London, UK)
Series Dates: 1938-1940
Size: 5.5″ x 8″
Dent is best known for the Everyman’s Library series but published many other series during the 20th century. One of the more significant series was the Wayfarer’s Library, which included modern fiction and non-fiction not suitably classic enough for Everyman’s Library. The Wayfarer’s series was phased out in the 1930s. The Aldine Library was a short-lived, pre-WW2 series of modern non-fiction, much of it from Dent’s back catalog, possibly an attempt to revive a more modern series of reprints, akin to Wayfarer’s Library (which faded away in the mid-1930s). The blurb on the back jacket flap explains the goals of the series:
The books in the Aldine Library were significantly larger than those in Everyman’s Library. The jackets are common in design, with Dent’s toothy dolphin and anchor colophon (adapted from the Venetian printer, Aldus Manutius).
Eighteen titles were included in the series:
1. Henry Irving, by Edward Gordon Craig (1938)
2. Health and a Day, by Lord Horder (1938)
3. English Panorama, by Thomas Sharp (1938)
4· A Portrait of Dickens, by Ralph Straus (1938)
s. Richard Jefferies, by Edward Thomas (1938)
6. Karl Marx, by Edward Hallett Carr (1938)
7. Letters of Mozart (1938)
8. Men, Movements & Myself, by Lord Snell (1938)
9. The Other Half, by John Worby (1939)
10. Now I’m Sixteen, by Douglas Pope (1938)
11. Seventy Years a Showman, by ‘Lord’ George Sanger
12. The South Country, by Edward Thomas (1938)
13. Marriage, Past and Present, by Margaret Cole (1939)
14. I Chose Teaching, by Ronald Gurner (1939)
15. The Life of Jesus, by Conrad Noel (1939)
16. The Mistletoe Child, by Herbert E. Palmer (1939)
17. Berlioz, by W.J. Turner (1939)
18. So What? A Young Man’s Odyssey, Charles Landery (1940)
