Library Special Collections

Biography

The Avon Books Collection (Coll. 427) was begun by Special Collections in earnest in 1960, after the Hearst Corporation took over the Avon imprint. Collecting continued at least through 1969, with help, at least in part, from the publishers themselves. The collection also includes a number of Avon Books acquired from other sources prior to 1960, some as early as the 1930s. The alpha-numeric list below represents Avon's attempts to make discrete "series" through means of an alpha-numeric code, even though the nature of the coding is not always clear (in the early days, it was thought that the "G" stood for "giant"; indeed, the books with this alpha-prefix are indeed somewhat more serious than the general Avon content). All of the books have now been individually cataloged on Voyager, on Bib ID 4232705.