Little Blue Books

Little Blue Books are cheaply-printed books of the classics of literature, published by the Little Blue Book Publishing Company (1919-1978). E. Haldeman-Julius, a socialist reformer and newspaper publisher, and his wife, Marcet, wanted to bring the classics of literature to the masses so they opened a printing house in Girard, Kansas in 1919. Printing these books on cheap pulp paper (similar to pulp magazines), stapled and bound with a (usually) yellow paper cover, they first sold for 5 cents apiece. Everything from Plato to Shakespeare to the Federalist Papers were reprinted and often given lurid and inventive titles in order to drive up sales. They soon became quite popular and many thousands of copies per year were sold. They were frequently bought by the underclass who couldn't afford hardcover prices and were especially popular among the so-called "drifters" of the 1920s to 1950s. They continued to be reprinted and sold after Haldeman-Julius' death in 1951 and only ended with the burning down of the Girard printing plant in 1978.