Modern Library

The Modern Library is a publishing company. Founded in 1917 by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright as an imprint of their publishing company Boni & Liveright, it was purchased in 1925 by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer. Random House began in 1927 as a subsidiary of the Modern Library, but eventually became the parent company.

Recent history

The Modern Library originally published only hardbound books.^[1] In 1950, it began publishing the Modern Library College Editions, a forerunner of its current series of paperback classics. From 1955 to 1960, the company published a quality numbered paperback series, but discontinued it in 1960, when the series was folded into the newly acquired Vintage paperbacks group. The Modern Library homepage says:

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. 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.^[2]

In 1998, novelist David Ebershoff became the Modern Library's new Publishing Director. Ebershoff ran the imprint until 2005, stepping down to concentrate on his own writing and to become editor-at-large at Random House.

In September 2000, the Modern Library launched a newly designed Paperback Classics series. Six new titles are published in the series on the second Tuesday of each month.

Modern Library lists

Main article: Modern Library 100 Best Novels

The Modern Library identified itself at its onset as "The Modern Library of the World's Best Books". In trying to keep with that identity, in 1998 they made a list of 100 novels called "Modern Library List of Best 20th-Century Novels"; an unscientific web poll to gather public opinion on the same was also conducted. The list was actually restricted to works in English, but the title of the list was not modified to reflect this, and little attention was paid to the fact in publicity for the list. The top ten books from both lists in each category are shown below. According to an article about the list in the New York Times,

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.^[3]

The lists have drawn heavy 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.^[4] There are only eight or nine women on the list, some highly influential works are ranked below works of questionable literary merit, and the works of major writers from many English-speaking countries apart from the USA and England - such as Australia, India, Canada, Sri Lanka and South Africa - have been ignored.^{[citation needed]} There were also hypotheses that the Modern Library merely made a selection based on its stocklist.^{[citation needed]} 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 broken arbitrarily by Random House publishers. This explains surprising results like the #5 placement of Brave New World, which most of the judges agreed belonged somewhere on the list, but much lower than the very top.

David Ebershoff, 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."^[5] 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." ^[6] (The Reader's List in a way criticizes itself, with the inclusion of Darrell Huff's How to Lie with Statistics in the best non-fiction category.)

References

1. ^ Gidding, Gary. "Why I Carry a Torch for the Modern Library" The New York Times. December 6, 1992. Retrieved May 23, 2011.
2. ^ Randomhouse.com
3. ^ July 20, 1998 article in the NYT: "'Ulysses' on Top Among 100 Best Novels"
4. ^ The Lowdown on the Literary List by David Streitfeld
5. ^ CAJ.ca
6. ^ Interleaves.org

• Modern Library Collector's FAQ

External links

• The Modern Library
• Modern Library: 100 Best Novels
• Modern Library: 100 Best Nonfiction
• CNN - 100 best novels list draws heavy dose of criticism
• Collecting the Modern Library
• History of the Modern Library (speech) by Henry Toledano
• On the Trail of the Torch Bearer: An Interview with Henry Toledano
• On the Trail of the Torch Bearer: An Interview with Scot Kamins