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The Modern Library is an American book publishing
imprint Imprint or imprinting may refer to: Entertainment * ''Imprint'' (TV series), Canadian television series * "Imprint" (''Masters of Horror''), episode of TV show ''Masters of Horror'' * ''Imprint'' (film), a 2007 independent drama/thriller film ...
and formerly the parent company of
Random House Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...
. Founded in 1917 by Albert Boni and
Horace Liveright Horace Brisbin Liveright (pronounced "LIVE-right," anglicized by Horace's father from the German ''Liebrecht;'' 10 December 1884 – 24 September 1933) was an American publisher and stage producer. With Albert Boni, he founded the Modern Lib ...
as an imprint of their publishing company
Boni & Liveright Boni & Liveright (pronounced "BONE-eye" and "LIV-right") is an American trade book publisher established in 1917 in New York City by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright. Over the next sixteen years the firm, which changed its name to Horace Live ...
, Modern Library became an independent publishing company in 1925 when Boni & Liveright sold it to
Bennett Cerf Bennett Alfred Cerf (May 25, 1898 – August 27, 1971) was an American writer, publisher, and co-founder of the American publishing firm Random House. Cerf was also known for his own compilations of jokes and puns, for regular personal appearanc ...
and Donald Klopfer. Random House began in 1927 as a subsidiary of the Modern Library and eventually overtook its parent company, with Modern Library becoming an imprint of Random House.


Recent history

The Modern Library originally published only hardbound books. In 1950, it began publishing the Modern Library College Editions, a forerunner of its current series of
paperback A paperback (softcover, softback) book is one with a thick paper or paperboard cover, and often held together with adhesive, glue rather than stitch (textile arts), stitches or Staple (fastener), staples. In contrast, hardcover (hardback) book ...
classics. From 1955 to 1960, the company published a high quality, numbered paperback series, but discontinued it in 1960, when the series was merged into the newly acquired Vintage paperbacks group. The Modern Library homepage states:
In 1992, on the occasion of the Modern Library's seventy-fifth anniversary, Random House embarked on an ambitious project to refurbish the series. We revived the torchbearer emblem that Cerf and Klopfer commissioned in 1925 from
Lucian Bernhard Lucian Bernhard (March 15, 1883 – May 29, 1972) was a German graphic designer, type designer, professor, interior designer, and artist during the first half of the twentieth century. Career He was influential in helping create the design ...
. The Promethean bearer of enlightenment (known informally around the old Modern Library offices as the "dame running away from Bennett Cerf") was redesigned several times over the years, most notably by
Rockwell Kent Rockwell Kent (June 21, 1882 – March 13, 1971) was an American painter, printmaker, illustrator, writer, sailor, adventurer and voyager. Biography Rockwell Kent was born in Tarrytown, New York. Kent was of English descent. He lived much of ...
.
In 1998, novelist
David Ebershoff David Ebershoff is an American writer, editor, and teacher. His debut novel, ''The Danish Girl'', was adapted into an Academy Awards, Academy Award-winning The Danish Girl (film), film of the same name in 2015, while his third novel, ''The 19th ...
became the Modern Library's new Publishing Director. Ebershoff managed the imprint until 2005, when he resigned to concentrate on his own writing and to become editor-at-large at Random House.


Modern Library lists

At its onset the Modern Library identified itself as "The Modern Library of the World's Best Books". In keeping with that brand identity, in 1998 the editors created a list they called the "
Modern Library List of Best 20th-Century Novels Modern Library's 100 Best Novels is a 1998 list of the best English-language novels published during the 20th century, as selected by Modern Library from among 400 novels published by Random House, which owns Modern Library.Jessica Woodbury"Back A ...
", numbering 100 titles selected from books published by Modern Library and its Random House affiliates. They also conducted an internet poll of public opinion, then produced a ''readers list. (The lists were actually restricted to works in English, but titles of the lists do not represent this, and little attention was paid to that fact in publicity for the lists.) The "top ten" of the editors' list is shown here—and the two "100 Best Novels" lists are linked below. According to a ''
New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' article about the list, executives at Random House said they hoped that as the century drew to a close their list would encourage public debate about the greatest works of fiction of the last hundred years, thus both increasing awareness of the Modern Library and stimulating sales of novels the group publishes. Both lists have incurred criticism. Their ranking system concerned many professional scholars and critics. The board members themselves, who did not create the rankings and were unaware of it until the list was published, expressed disappointment and puzzlement. There were also hypotheses that the Modern Library merely made a selection based on its stocklist. A. S. Byatt, the well-known English novelist who was on the board, called the list "typically American". The list was compiled via approval voting, by sending each board member a list of 440 pre-selected books from the Modern Library catalogue and asking each member to place a check beside novels they wished to choose. Then the works with the most votes were ranked the highest, and ties were decided arbitrarily by Random House publishers. This explains surprising results like the No. 5 placement of ''
Brave New World ''Brave New World'' is a dystopian novel by English author Aldous Huxley, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Largely set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hiera ...
'' (1932), which most of the judges agreed belonged ''somewhere'' on the list, but much lower than the very top.
David Ebershoff David Ebershoff is an American writer, editor, and teacher. His debut novel, ''The Danish Girl'', was adapted into an Academy Awards, Academy Award-winning The Danish Girl (film), film of the same name in 2015, while his third novel, ''The 19th ...
, the Modern Library division's publishing director, stated in a follow-up "the people who were drawn to go to the Modern Library Web site and compelled to vote have a certain enthusiasm about books and their favourite books that many people don't, so that the voting population is skewed." In addition, people were allowed to vote repeatedly, once per day, making the poll a measure of how much effort people would put into promoting their favorite books. Others have been more direct in their descriptions of the results; librarian Robert Teeter remarks that the ballot boxes were "stuffed by cultists".


References


Bibliography

*Lise Jaillant
Modernism, Middlebrow and the Literary Canon - the Modern Library Series
(London: Pickering & Chatto, 2014)
Gordon B. Neavill, “The Modern Library Series: Format and Design, 1917-1977,” Printing History 1 (1979): 26-37.Gordon B. Neavill, “The Modern Library Series and American Cultural Life,” Journal of Library History 16 (Spring 1981): 241-52.Gordon B. Neavill, “Publishing in Wartime: The Modern Library Series during the Second World War,” Library Trends 55 (Winter 2007): 583-96.Gordon B. Neavill, “Canonicity, Reprint Publishing, and Copyright,” in The Culture of the Publisher’s Series, vol. 1: Authors, Publishers and the Shaping of Taste, edited by John Spiers (Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 88–105.
*Jay Satterfield, ''The World's Best Books": Taste, Culture, and the Modern Library'' (
University of Massachusetts Press The University of Massachusetts Press is a university press that is part of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The press was founded in 1963, publishing scholarly books and non-fiction. The press imprint is overseen by an interdisciplinar ...
, 2002).


External links

*
Best Books Modern LibraryCNN - 100 best novels list draws heavy dose of criticismCollecting the Modern Library
* ttp://www.bookthink.com/0060/60kam1.htm On the Trail of the Torch Bearer: An Interview with Scot Kamins {{Authority control Bertelsmann subsidiaries Book publishing companies of the United States Series of books Publishing companies established in 1917 1917 establishments in New York City