Albert & Charles Boni

Albert Boni was born in 1892 in New York City and attended Harvard University. Between the two world wars Albert Boni left a lasting impression on the publishing world, first with Horace Liveright (Boni & Liveright) and then with his brother Charles (Albert & Charles Boni, Inc.). Boni's first publishing venture was The Little Leather Library, which sold abridged classics in a very small format through Woolworth's (1914). After selling the Washington Square Bookshop in 1917, he joined Horace Liveright to form the Boni-Liveright Publishing Company, which started the Modern Library of the World's Best Classics. Modern Library intended to copy the success of the popular British Everyman Series; in 1925, Boni's salesman Bennett Cerf bought the line, and went on to start Random House. With Albert and Charles Boni, Inc., he moved away from repackaging the classics in hopes of publishing exciting contemporary literature. By 1923 Boni and his brother founded Albert and Charles Boni, Incorporated, a firm that introduced Boni Paper Books and sold them by mail-order subscription. Active in both the literary and the political fields, the firm published such controversial and influential writers as Marcel Proust, Colette, D.H. Lawrence, Upton Sinclair, and Leon Trotsky. In the 1940s, Boni's interest in photography and light technologies led him to create the Readex Microprint Corporation. He died on July 13, 1981 in Ormond Beach, Florida.

Biography/History

Albert Boni was born in 1892 in New York City and attended Harvard University. Between the two World Wars Albert Boni left a lasting impression on the publishing world, first with Horace Liveright (Boni & Liveright) and then with his brother Charles (Albert & Charles Boni, Inc.). Boni's first publishing venture was The Little Leather Library, which sold abridged classics in a very small format through Woolworth's (1914). After selling the Washington Square Bookshop in 1917, he joined Horace Liveright to form the Boni-Liveright Publishing Company, which started the Modern Library of the World's Best Classics. Modern Library intended to copy the success of the popular British Everyman Series; in 1925, Boni's salesman Bennett Cerf bought the line, and went on to start Random House. With Albert and Charles Boni, Inc., he moved away from repackaging the classics in hopes of publishing exciting contemporary literature. By 1923 Boni and his brother founded Albert and Charles Boni, Incorporated, a firm that introduced Boni Paper Books and sold them by mail-order subscription. Active in both the literary and the political fields, the firm published such controversial and influential writers as Marcel Proust, Colette, D.H. Lawrence, Upton Sinclair, and Leon Trotsky. In the 1940s, Boni's interest in photography and light technologies led him to create the Readex Microprint Corporation. He died on July 13, 1981 in Ormond Beach, Florida.