De Luxe

One fine spring-fever day in 1929 a high-keyed, hawk-nosed, 28-year-old publisher named George Macy paid a well-plotted call on a Wall Street broker named Jack O. (for nothing) Straus. Publisher Macy was in search of an angel. He outlined for Broker Straus a heavenly publishing scheme: limited editions. "Wait here for me," said Straus. A few minutes later he reappeared, handed Macy a fistful of checks. They were for $1,000 each. To fellow brokers downstairs on the floor of the Stock Exchange he had merely whispered the compelling cantrip of the bulls: "I've got a good thing!"

The most revealing thing that can be said about the fine books of 1929 is that in those brash days even Wall Street believed limited editions a good thing. Once only millionaires and professional bibliophiles collected first editions. By the late 20s, however, even plain readers were buying a few, just as they bought a few stocks. And even printers began publishing de luxe editions. Of the whole lot, only two de luxe publishers survived Depression I: George Macy's Limited Editions Club, and Eugene Virginius Connett Ill's Derrydale Press.

The Limited Editions Club, de luxe adaptation of the Book-of-the-Month Club, mailed its first choice to 1,100 subscribers on Black Wednesday (Oct. 23, 1929). It was a handsomely printed, illustrated edition of Gulliver's Travels, cost $10 C. O.D., $9 to subscribers who paid in advance ($108 a year). Compared with the limited editions of George Macy's rivals, it was a bargain. Later in Depression the bargain seemed less evident, but The Limited Editions Club flourished just the same. The reason was George Macy. A publisher before he was out of Columbia University, Macy had sold 11,000 copies of an anthology of F. P. A.'s light verse, organized his own firm, Macy-Masius. In 1928 he sold out to head the Vanguard Press, his last connection with plain publishing.

The Limited Editions Club is a one-man concern. George Macy writes its prospectuses, selects its books, designs such important ones as the five-volume King James Bible, drives a shrewd bargain with printers and illustrators, runs his swanky Madison Avenue offices like an efficiency expert. Within walking distance is his Park Avenue home, where he lives with the pretty mother of his Linda, 7, his Jonathan, 1. He races to his office before nine, usually eats lunch at his desk, stays long after his 25 employes have gone home. Last year he organized Heritage Club, a subsidiary for mass-production of imitation limited editions at $2.50 a copy. Also last year he bought control of England's famed Nonesuch Press, has now intensified his transatlantic commuting schedule.

Macy's publicity reads as though he were selling some rare, internationally compounded medicine instead of reprinted classics. Printed all over the world, Limited Editions books include such native volumes as The Psalms of David, being printed in Palestine, Oedipus Rex, being printed in Greece. The Analects of Confucius, printed in Shanghai, reads from back to front, is boxed in carved Chinese redwood. In France, "the owner of a paper mill seeks 100,000 chemises (and diapers, and castoff socks)" in order to make a paper which will "give you delight in its appearance and in its feel."

Interesting as exhibits of international bookmaking, Limited Editions publications sometimes (not always) become collectors' items. Significant, however, is the fact that of 109 so far published, one of the most enhanced values (signed copies now quoted at $55) is Joyce's Ulysses, one of the four volumes by living writers.

The Derrydale Press. Offices of The Derrydale Press are a paneled dining room in an old brownstone mansion off Manhattan's Park Avenue. Unforewarned, an old-line author would probably think he had stumbled into the home of some eccentric country gentleman. Like as not he would be sniffed by a bird dog. On the reception table is sometimes a bag of quail. The stenographer keeps her clips and pins in a dry-fly box. The bookkeeper uses a dipsy (sinker) for a paperweight.

But these sporting accessories are as much a part of Derrydale's business as the hard chairs which another publisher provides to tire unwanted callers. Originally Derrydale headquarters was a cluttered print shop in Manhattan's garment centre. After one visit, Derrydale authors flatly refused to go there. "The smells around a print shop," they objected, "are too exciting for my dog."

The only publishing house in the world devoted exclusively to sporting books, The Derrydale Press, like The Limited Editions Club, is a one-man concern. And among publishers, big, affable, 47-year-old Eugene Virginius Connett III, is a rare bird. Until twelve years ago his business was hats. One of the best dry-fly fishermen in the U. S., he is descended from an old New Jersey sporting family which owned one of the oldest U. S. men's hat factories. Publisher Connett liquidated the business during a strike, then sold printing for two years, printed 89 copies of a sporting book on a hand press at home. When he started The Derrydale Press in 1927, that was the sum of his publishing experience. The name Derrydale he got "from a bottle of whiskey and a map of Ireland."

He knew sportsmen like a book. His first publication was a book of sketches, priced at $7.50, which he peddled himself. Booksellers took one look--an unknown publisher, an unknown author, an unheard-of price!--and wrote him off as crazy. Publisher Connett, a serene glitter in his eye, was not crazy at all. For men who paid $500 for a gun, $75 for a fishing rod, $250 for a dog, $1,500 for a horse, said he, Derrydale prices were chicken feed. He was right. Derrydale books sold just as well at $25, $50, $125. Last year Connett sold 44 copies of a book on salmon fishing for $250 each. Even Derrydale's tenth anniversary catalogue is published in a limited edition: 950 copies at $3.50 a copy. A student claims to have worked her way through Vassar speculating on the rise in Derrydale publications.

Like their readers, Derrydale authors are yachtsmen, private preserve owners, dog fanciers, fox hunters, polo players, bankers, judges. Their standards are high, but they are not literary standards. Typical Derrydale authors:

> Nash Buckingham, Derrydale's headline author, is unknown to most plain readers, will probably remain so. But to sportsmen, who buy his sporting tales on sight, this middleaged, powerfully built Tennesseean is famed as the world's greatest long-range duck shot.

> Gordon Grand is a retired lawyer. His most successful Derrydale book was inspired by a visiting English sportsman who told of luring rats to a baited brushpile, potting them as terriers chased them out.

Author Grand developed the idea that here we had a fine method for teaching children the first principles of foxhunting.

>Charles Phair, heir to a Maine starch fortune, wrote Derrydale's most expensive book, Atlantic Salmon Fishing (hand-illustrated, $250). His only literary work, it was mostly rewritten by Publisher Connett. To sportsmen, Charles Phair is a potent name. At 63, he has killed over 5,000 salmon.

Prosperous Publisher Connett wants to publish a full sporting history of the U. S. but his most serious problem is getting his sharpshooting authors to write at all. So urgent is Publisher Connett's search for new authors that he has cut down his own hunting and fishing to two days a week, has resigned from all but three rod & gun clubs, one yacht club.

How much do de luxe publishers contribute to the cause of literature? They give esthetic pleasure to a few genuine book lovers, a big boost to the technique of book design. But mainly they still thrive on snob appeal. There is probably one chance that de luxe publishers may genuinely further the cause of contemporary letters--if The Derrydale Press should discover a writer who writes half as well as he handles guns and fishing rods.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.