Information, Medium & Society: Eighteenth International Conference on Publishing Studies

Abstract

R. Alton Lee argues that in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s “the literary and publishing Mecca of the United States” and “the international center for Western civilization” was not located in New York City or even Chicago. Rather, it was in the small town of Girard located in the tri-state region of southeastern Kansas. For it was here that the progressive published Emanuel Haldeman-Julius produced the Little Blue Books that came to be distributed and read all over the world. These Little Blue Books would come to revolutionize the book-publishing industry and sold 500 million copies of the 2,580 titles that Haldeman-Julius’s published in this small Kansas town. This total was second only to the U.S. Government Printing Office in terms of quantity of publications. This paper discusses the legacy of this remarkable publisher within the context of the history of progressive publishing in America. In our time of religious fanaticism and denial of many beliefs in spite of the preponderance of evidence in their favor, a look back to a publisher who supported the work of the freethinkers and heretics of the last century arguably provides a measure of courage and some lessons for contemporary writers and publishers pursuing their own work in the post-truth era.