Popular Library
Encyclopedia
Popular Library was a New York paperback
Paperback
Paperback, softback or softcover describe and refer to a book by the nature of its binding. The covers of such books are usually made of paper or paperboard, and are usually held together with glue rather than stitches or staples...

 book company established in 1942 by Leo Margulies
Leo Margulies
Leo Margulies was an American editor and publisher of science fiction and fantasy pulp magazines.- Career :...

 and Ned Pines
Ned Pines
Ned L. Pines was a New York publisher. He died in Paris, and lived in Paris, Manhattan and East Hampton NY. He was married to the former Maxine Firestone, has two daughters, two stepsons, and one granddaughter....

, who at the time was a major pulp magazine
Pulp magazine
Pulp magazines , also collectively known as pulp fiction, refers to inexpensive fiction magazines published from 1896 through the 1950s. The typical pulp magazine was seven inches wide by ten inches high, half an inch thick, and 128 pages long...

, newspapers and magazine publishers. The company's logo of a pine tree was a tribute to Pines, and another Popular Library signature visual was a reduced black-and-white copy of the front cover on the title page.

A native of Malden, Massachusetts, Pines became the president of Pines Publications in 1928 and continued to lead the company until 1961. He was the president of Popular Library from 1942 to 1966 and its chairman from 1966 to 1968. Retiring in 1971, he continued to work as a consultant.

History

Popular Library was founded in 1942 as a detective story reprint paperback
Paperback
Paperback, softback or softcover describe and refer to a book by the nature of its binding. The covers of such books are usually made of paper or paperboard, and are usually held together with glue rather than stitches or staples...

 book company. Popular expand to publish most genre. Perfect Film and Chemical Corporation
Cadence Industries
Cadence Industries Corporation, formerly Perfect Film & Chemical Corporation, was an American conglomerate owned by Martin "Marty" S. Ackerman. From 1968 through 1986, Perfect/Cadence was the parent company of the publisher of Marvel Comics....

 purchased Popular Library in 1968. The company, which also had the Curtis Books imprint, was sold in 1970 to Fawcett Publications
Fawcett Publications
Fawcett Publications was an American publishing company founded in 1919 in Robbinsdale, Minnesota by Wilford Hamilton "Captain Billy" Fawcett . At the age of 16, Fawcett ran away from home to join the Army, and the Spanish-American War took him to the Philippines. Back in Minnesota, he became a...

.

Popular won in 1976 the Carey Thomas Award for distinguished fiction in mass-market publishing under editorial director Patrick O'Connor. In 1977, CBS Publications purchased Popular Library and Fawcett Books. CBS then renewed the copyright of in the Standard/Better/Nedor
Standard Comics
Standard Comics was a comic book imprint of American publisher Ned Pines, who also published pulp magazines under a variety of company names that he also used for the comics...

/Popular 1950s pulps library and the various Captain Marvel titles
Marvel Family
The Marvel Family is a group of fictional characters, a team of superheroes in the Fawcett Comics and DC Comics universes. Created in 1942 by writer Otto Binder and Fawcett artists C. C...

.

In 1982, CBS Publications sold off Popular Library to Warner Communications
Warner Communications
Warner Communications or Warner Communications, Inc. was established in 1971 when Kinney National Company spun off its non-entertainment assets, due to a financial scandal over its parking operations and changed its name....

. In April 1985, Warner Books relaunched Popular Library starting out with five other books plus the reprint of Question of Upbringing continuing each month with the follow volumes from A Dance to the Music of Time
A Dance to the Music of Time
A Dance to the Music of Time is a twelve-volume cycle of novels by Anthony Powell, inspired by the painting of the same name by Nicolas Poussin. One of the longest works of fiction in literature, it was published between 1951 and 1975 to critical acclaim...

series by Anthony Powell
Anthony Powell
Anthony Dymoke Powell CH, CBE was an English novelist best known for his twelve-volume work A Dance to the Music of Time, published between 1951 and 1975....

. Additional, two books would be issued per month from Popular's new imprint, Questar, for science fiction.

Writers and illustrators

Although Popular Library embraced all genres, it was notable for publishing a wide variety of mystery authors. The line-up of Popular Library novelists included Mary Roberts Rinehart
Mary Roberts Rinehart
Mary Roberts Rinehart was an American writer, often called the American Agatha Christie. She is considered the source of the phrase "The butler did it", although she did not actually use the phrase. She is considered to have invented the "Had-I-But-Known" school of mystery writing...

, John Dickson Carr
John Dickson Carr
John Dickson Carr was an American author of detective stories, who also published under the pen names Carter Dickson, Carr Dickson and Roger Fairbairn....

, Anthony Powell
Anthony Powell
Anthony Dymoke Powell CH, CBE was an English novelist best known for his twelve-volume work A Dance to the Music of Time, published between 1951 and 1975....

, P. D. James, Harper Lee, Helen Van Slyke, Margaret Atwood, Margaret Drabble, Jean Rhys, Ann Beattie, Taylor Caldwell, Anne Tyler,
Craig Rice, Cornell Woolrich
Cornell Woolrich
Cornell George Hopley-Woolrich was an American novelist and short story writer who sometimes wrote under the pseudonyms William Irish and George Hopley....

 Sam Cherry, Octavus Roy Cohen, Mignon G. Eberhart, Ernest Haycox, Rufus King, Arthur Miller and John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American writer. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden and the novella Of Mice and Men...

. Popular Library’s first 100 covers were all by the same artists, H. Lawrence Hoffman and Sol Immerman. The cover art became more eye-catching and vivid with the addition of illustrators Rudolph Belarski, Earle K. Bergey
Earle K. Bergey
Earle K. Bergey was an American illustrator who painted cover art for a wide diversity of magazines and paperback books...

 and Rafael DeSoto. John Erskine's The Private Life of Helen of Troy is an early Popular Library title with conspicuous cover art and blurb ("Her lust caused the Trojan War") which made it eagerly sought by collectors.

See also

  • Standard Comics
    Standard Comics
    Standard Comics was a comic book imprint of American publisher Ned Pines, who also published pulp magazines under a variety of company names that he also used for the comics...

     - Pine's comic book company
  • Thrilling Publications
    Thrilling Publications
    Thrilling Publications, aka Beacon Magazines , Better Publications and Standard Magazines , was a pulp magazine publisher run by Ned Pines, publishing such titles as Startling Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories.A native of Malden, Massachusetts, Pines became the president of Pines Publications...

    - Pine's pulp magazine company

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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