The Modern Library and Everyman's Library

"How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book."

Henry David Thoreau
American Dervish

I would like to take a moment to acknowledge the debt of gratitude I owe to the publishing ventures known as The Modern Library and Everyman's Library. Over the years, I have accumulated god knows how many volumes of Modern Library and Everyman's Library editions. Two in particular (one from each series) achieved canonical status in my affections: Walden and Other Writings (Thoreau, The Modern Library) and The Plague, The Fall, Exile and the Kingdom, and Selected Essays (Albert Camus, Everyman's Library).

Part of the experience of reading is irreducibly aesthetic: the look of a book, the way it feels in one's hand, the heft of the pages, the typeface, the solid stitching of the spine--these qualities (and more) contribute to the way in which a book's contents will be received by a reader.

Both The Modern Library and Everyman's Library produce books that a reader wants to pick up, to hold, to mull over and, over the long term, to cherish. The very look and feel of their editions persuade us that, as Thoreau mused,

"The book exists for us perchance which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones."

In this (as in most things he mused about) Thoreau was unquestionably correct; but had the book as it presented itself to us not intimated this truth by its very appearance, we might never have ventured to peruse its pages. Our miracles, then, would have gone unexplained, and new ones never revealed.

Whoever said "Don't judge a book by its cover" was only partially right. No doubt, covers may (and often do) deceive us; but they also invite us into territory that we would not have explored had the initial invitation not been extended.