Modern Library Gift Sets

Modern Library created gift sets starting very early in the Cerf/Klopfer period. The first ones were in standard dust jackets and bindings but housed in special boxes. But later sets had special bindings and/or jackets that distinguished them from the ordinary. 1926 "standard" gift sets 1928 keratol gift sets 1929 specially jacketed gift sets 1926 "Standard" Gift Sets There were ten gift sets in 1926. Each had five titles, all in the standard typographical dust jackets and bindings of the period but in gift boxes. They were priced at $4.75 — a substantial amount of dough for the period! Boni & Liveright advertised the sets heavily with full page ads in Publisher's Weekly. (Click the advertisements below for enlarged views.) No one has reported having an original box, but here are the titles in each set: Masterpieces of French Romance Books of Modern Thought Dumas, Camille Ellis, New Spirit Flaubert, Madame Bovary James, Philosophy of William James France, Red Lily Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra Gautier, Mlle de Maupin Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism Maupassant, Une Vie Van Teslaar, Outline of Psychoanalysis Great English Novels Great Modern Poetry Bronte, Wuthering Heights Blake, Poems Butler, Way of All Flesh Dowson, Poems and Prose Hardy, Return of the Native Swinburne, Poems Hudson, Green Mansions Whitman, Poems Meredith, Diana of the Crossways Wilde, Poems Modern Drama Five Great Juveniles Ibsen, A Doll's House, etc. Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, etc. O'Neill, Moon of the Caribbees Stevenson, Treasure Island Schnitzler, Anatol, etc. Van Loon, Ancient Man Tolstoy, Redemption & Two Other Plays Wilde, Fairy Tales and Poems in Prose Wilde, Salomé, etc. Yeats, Irish Fairy & Folk Tales Short Stories Belle Lettres Balzac, Short Stories Art of Aubrey Beardsley Best Ghost Stories Lewisohn, Modern Book of Criticism Best Russian Short Stories Moore, Confessions of a Young Man Kipling, Soldiers Three Pater, The Renaissance Maupassant, Love & Other Stories Pepys, Diary Leading American Writers Leading English Authors of Today Anderson, Poor White Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson Cabell, Beyond Life Douglas, South Wind Dreiser, Free and Other Stories George, Bed of Roses James, Daisy Miller & Interna. Episode Lawrence, Sons & Lovers Melville, Moby Dick Shaw, Unsocial Socialist 1928 Keratol Set The 1928 gift set, called "Great Renaissance Romances," was bound in keratol, a material also used to cover musical instrument cases. Each volume had a geometric pattern to it and was bound in a different color. The dust jackets that covered the books were graced with the first pictorial designs of the series. Originally priced at $2.85, the set below sold for just over $500 on June 25, 2005:

In The Gift Box
Note the horizontal printing on the spines.

Even the backs of the dust jackets were custom. They fall between a Toledano type c and type d:

        1929 Great Modern Novels Gift Set

	A copy of this title alone (NOT the entire set) in this DJ sold for $474.99 on eBay on March 19 2006. Several of the highest bids—including the winning bid—came from extremely knowledgeable collectors.

 

      1929 Great French Romances Gift Set

Gift sets were available into the early 30's as evidenced by a notation on the reverse of this receipt laid in to a copy of Balzac ordered directly from Modern Library in May of 1932. For a more detailed discussion of the gift book sets, see Barry Neavill's article in issue #41 of Alan Oestreich's Modern Library Collector fanzine, reviewed elsewhere on ModernLib. Thanks to Amy Comeau for suggesting this article and, along with Sharon Biederman, Henry Toledano, and Ron Holl, for supplying scans. And a tip of the ModernLib hat goes to Barry Miller who told us about the 1929 "Great Renaissance Romances" set and to Ed Postal for sending in the 1929 Leonardo image.