J.M. Dent & Sons, book publishers of London, England, was founded in 1888 by Joseph Malaby Dent (1859-1926). The company achieved success by selling cheap editions of the classics to the working class. Dent's first major production, the Temple Shakespeare series, was established in 1894, followed in 1906 by Everyman's Library, a series of 1000 volumes. Eventually, Dent's publishing activities expanded to include textbooks, children's books, educational books, self-help books, and travel guides. Dent remained in the forefront of the publishing field by expanding sales to foreign markets, including Australia, Canada, France, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United States. Records include editorial department correspondence with authors, publishing companies, and literary agents; drafts of manuscripts published by Dent; illustrative material used in Dent publications; editorial reports and recommendations; author contracts; copyright agreements; and royalty payments. There are also directors' files containing editorial and personal correspondence; financial materials, including ledgers containing company accounts, cash books, balance sheets, payroll records, equipment inventories, warehouse stock books, and book sales figures; intra-office, memoranda regarding the production of books; legal correspondence and claim statements; material relating to publishing companies that were either affiliated with or subsidiaries of J.M. Dent & Sons; and other materials, including agreements with non-affiliated organizations, address books, work journals, visitors' books, and photographs of Dent buildings and employees. Author files (nine groupings by author name), Company Files, Editor Files, and Serial Files are cataloged separately. Note that files are incomplete, since many items of significant commercial value were sold piecemeal in the 1980s and some files from later years are held by Weidenfeld and Nicholson, which took over the Dent firm in 1986. AUTHOR FILES ABSTRACT: Author files include correspondence with editorial department staff and with the directors of J.M. Dent & Sons that discusses manuscript proposals and submissions, book acceptance and rejection, editorial recommendations, contracts, copyright agreements, sales figures, royalty payments, legal problems, reprints, and successive editions. Author files also include correspondence regarding illustrations used in Dent publications, correspondence with illustrators, rough drafts of manuscripts, synopses of manuscripts, and photographs of selected authors and illustrators. COMPANY FILES ABSTRACT: Company files include correspondence between members of the J.M. Dent editorial staff and companies involved in the publishing and literary agent businesses. Correspondence addresses a wide range of editorial matters, including manuscript submissions, book acceptance and rejection, editorial recommendations, printing rights, translating rights, copyright agreements, royalty payments, and fees owed to agents. Company files also include records of publishing companies that were either affiliated with or direct subsidiaries of J.M. Dent & Sons. These files contain correspondence, inter-office memoranda, financial reports, balance sheets, sales figures, contracts, agreements, trademark applications, and legal records. EDITOR FILES ABSTRACT: Editor files include inter-office correspondence and memoranda between members of the J.M. Dent editorial department discussing book acceptance and rejection, editorial recommendations, advice on what titles to include in various series, copyright agreements, sales figures, royalty payments, legal problems, reprints, and successive editions. Editorial files also include correspondence with authors and companies that pertains to manuscript proposals and submissions; correspondence with the directors of J.M. Dent & Sons; editorial emendations to rough drafts and illustrative material; and photographs of most editors in the J.M. Dent staff. BOOK SERIES ABSTRACT: Book series titles include correspondence to and from the editors responsible for each series, rough drafts of manuscripts published under each series name, and illustrative material used in these books. Of particular interest are the Everyman's Library files containing trademark applications, financial records, sales figures, legal records, Everyman history files, and letters of commendation from contributing authors.
