Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 7, 1992 TAG: 9202070381
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAXTON DAVIS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A HANDY FAVORITE RETURNS
A LIFELONG passion for small books may be an eccentricity, but it remains one I apparently am going to hold until I reach the Great Beyond; and I was reminded of it again last week."Small books:" I mean books physically compressed, to the extent possible, in bindings small enough and thin enough to fit comfortably into the pocket or tote bag, so that they can be carried easily on trips, even if the trip is no farther than the doctor's or dentist's waiting room. Who wants to read old copies of People or Field and Stream?
No doubt I always had a bent for books in such a format, but it was enhanced during World War II when I found, like everyone else, that being weighted down with excess possessions was a problem in more ways than one.
Armed Forces Editions helped. These were paperback reprints that slipped into the pocket of a fatigue jacket. A fresh array of choices was issued each month, and they saw many a soldier or sailor to a happier view of things.
Paperback reprints had led the way to them a few years sooner: In Britain with Penguins, shortly afterward in the United States with Pocket Books. Both, offering reprints of popular and classic works in a cheap format, were mostly sold at drugstores; and both led to widespread imitation. A "paperback revolution" in publishing was the result, and it continues today.
But I am not speaking here primarily of paperbacks, though they offer a welcome alternative to hardcover editions even if their prices now rival those of the originals. I speak instead of hardbound books, sturdily sewn and bound, that can become permanent features of a personal library.
Again, there were precursors. Loeb Classics provided texts of Latin and Greek works few could have gone through graduate school a few years ago without using. Nelson issued handy hardcovers of most standard texts in English literature. The most popular lines, however, were Britain's Everyman's Library, published there by Dent, in America by Dutton; and the Modern Library, published by Random House.
All of them gave the avid reader good texts, handsomely printed and assembled, he could carry at ease and at a modest price. I bought a number of them in Calcutta at the end of the war and have them still, not to mention dozens of classic texts I acquired while in college.
An interest in small books led almost automatically to an interest in short works, for long works can be hard to fit into small space. Eventually I found myself preferring short novels to long, collections of historical essays and massive historical works; and that too has remained.
In recent years, alas, small books have not been popular with publishers, who prefer blockbusters and expensive paperbacks in the same format as the originals; and with a few exceptions, notably Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, they have shunned small works.
It was a pleasant surprise, then, to discover an advertisement a few weeks ago for a new version of Everyman's Library, this one published by Knopf. I do not know whether the older Everyman's had gone out of print, but I hadn't seen any in years, so the Knopf announcement was wonderful.
Even more wonderful was my first acquisition, the new Everyman's version of Guiseppe di Lempedusa's "The Prince." This short novel is one of the masterpieces of the century, which I'd never owned except in paperback. The new edition bears both a translator's and a biographer's forewords. Best of all is that the printing and binding are beautifully up to the finest standards. Who'd want a paperback when this hardcover is available, and at hardly a dollar or two more?
Paxton Davis is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.