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This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held in the Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in our reading room, and not digitally available through the World Wide Web. See the FAQ section for more information.
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Collection Overview
| Size | 150.0 feet of linear shelf space (approximately 210000 items) |
| Abstract | 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. |
| Creator | J.M. Dent & Sons. |
| Language | English |
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Information For Users
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Subject Headings
The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.
Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.
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Historical Information
Joseph Malaby Dent (1849-1926), founder of J.M. Dent & Sons, was born in Darlington, England, the tenth child of George Dent, a housepainter. Dent received an elementary education at a local grammar school that emphasized reading and writing skills. According to J.M. Dent's Memoirs, "When I was about ten or eleven years old ... I formed the habit of reading which has never since been broken." By the time he was thirteen, Dent was apprenticed to a printer; shortly thereafter, he turned to bookbinding. In 1867, he moved to London, where he set up his own bookbinding shop. Dent quickly gained a reputation for fine craftsmanship; he often noted that his fine leather bindings put to shame the unattractive Victorian typography of the sheets they bound.
In 1888, Dent founded the firm of J.M. Dent and Company (the name was changed to J.M. Dent & Sons in 1909) and began publishing at 69 Great Eastern Street, London. Dent's first production, Charles Lamb's Essays of Elia, was edited by Augustine Birrell and illustrated by Herbert Railton, followed in 1889 by Goldsmith's Poems and Plays. Works by Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Geoffrey Chaucer, Daniel Defoe, Maria Edgeworth, Henry Fielding, Samuel Johnson, Lord Tennyson, and W. B. Yeats followed between 1889 and 1894. These early editions were produced in limited quantities on handmade paper and enjoyed some commercial success.
In 1893, the bookseller Frederick Evans suggested that Dent publish a series of pocket volumes of William Shakespeare's works. Recognizing the potential demand for cheap editions of the classics, Dent established the Temple Shakespeare series in 1894 and appointed Israel Gollancz chief editor. The series eventually included forty volumes that were sold for one shilling a volume. Over the next four decades, the series sold over five million copies, "the largest sale made in Shakespeare since the plays were written," Dent claimed.
Dent also published titles under the Mediaeval Towns series, the Temple Dramatists series, the Lyric Poets series, and the Temple Biographies. By 1895, Dent had published about three hundred volumes and paid off all his debts. Then, in January 1897, he moved the administrative offices of J.M. Dent & Co. to 29-30 Bedford Street, London, leaving 69 Great Eastern Street to function exclusively as Dent's bindery.
In 1904, with years of experience publishing the classics at popular prices, Dent began to plan for Everyman's Library, a series of one thousand classics that would be sold at an affordable price (one shilling a volume). Dent hired Ernest Percival Rhys to function as the chief editor of Everyman's Library, and he built the Temple Press, a suburban plant that employed over four hundred workers, to produce the books. Production began in 1906 and 152 titles were issued by the end of that year. Public demand for books in Everyman's Library was high.
Within a few years of its triumphant launch, however, the momentum of Everyman's Library was broken by two unforeseeable obstacles. When the series began, copyright protection expired 42 years after publication or seven years after the death of an author, whichever came later. That allowed Dent to publish the works of Victorian writers such as Dickens, Tennyson, Ruskin, Huxley, and George Eliot, whose copyrights conveniently expired around the turn of the century. The Copyright Act of 1911, however, extended protection to fifty years after an author's death. As a result, Robert Browning's work up to 1869 was published in Everyman's Library by 1911, but the new law postponed publication of the final two Browning volumes until 1944.
The impact of World War I was even more devastating to Dent. Volume 700 of Everyman's Library had been reached in 1914, but within a few years the publication of additional volumes came to a halt. Wartime inflation and shortages of supplies forced the price of each volume up to two shillings, sixpence by 1920. In 1921, new titles began to appear again, but only in a slow trickle.
Dent responded to the setbacks of the 1910s by expanding book sales to international markets. In 1914, Dent established a French subsidiary, J.M. Dent & Fils; they distributed Everyman books in France, translated the classics into French, and published various French titles in the Collection Gallia series. Dent expanded international distribution to North America by setting up a Canadian subsidiary in 1913 and by allowing E. P. Dutton & Co. to distribute Everyman titles throughout the United States. In addition, Dent hired agents to sell Everyman titles in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and most of continental Europe.
Everyman's Library finally reached volume 1,000 on its golden jubilee, with the publication of Aristotle's Metaphysics on 29 March 1956. In 1960, Everyman Paperbacks were introduced. By 1975, 1,239 titles had been published in Everyman's Library, with total sales in excess of 60 million.
Of course, the Dent firm had publishing activities besides Everyman's Library. In the fall of 1904, Dent inaugurated the Temple Classics Magazine to supplement the Temple Classics series, but it only lasted five issues. He tried again with Everyman, a penny literary weekly designed "to foster a taste for books among the proletariat." The first issue, for 12 October 1912, sold 150,000 copies on the strength of contributions by G. K. Chesterton, Alfred Russel Wallace, Norman Angell, and Saintsbury. Unfortunately, circulation slowly fell off, and publication ceased in 1920.
In 1925, the Dent firm began publishing the Bookmark as a three-penny quarterly devoted mainly to publicizing the firm's new books. Everyman was revived as a two-penny weekly on 31 January 1929 but again it was a financial failure, and Sir Robert Donald bought it in January 1932. When Everyman closed down again in 1935, the Dent company renamed its house journal the Bookmark and Everyman and continued to publish it until 1938.
In 1913, Everyman's Library was supplemented by the Wayfarer's Library, a series of books devoted to modern literature. The company continued to publish works by important contemporary authors, among them Ogden Nash and Dylan Thomas. The company also expanded its activities in educational publishing with the Kings' Treasuries of Literature series, begun in 1920. The firm ventured into science texts in 1928, history in 1931, and geography in 1931.
J.M. Dent, his sons Hugh and Jack, and Jack's son F. J. Martin Dent, constituted the board of directors in the 1920s. Hugh joined the company in 1909 and functioned as an editor for Everyman's Library; Jack joined the company in 1915 and supervised the Temple Press; Martin came in 1924 and directed the production department. After J.M. Dent's death on 9 May 1926, the board was expanded to include W. G. Taylor, who had been secretary of the firm since 1916. Hugh R. Dent served as chairman from 1926 to 1938, followed by Taylor from 1938 to 1963; Taylor was also managing director from 1934 to 1955. Taylor's two posts were taken over by F. J. Martin Dent.
J.M. Dent & Sons was purchased by Weidenfeld and Nicholson in January 1988, and the Dent staff was moved to Weidenfeld's offices at 91 Clapham Street, London.
(Adapted from information in The Dictionary of Literary Biography, Hugh Dent's The House of Dent, 1888-1938 (London, 1928), and J.M. Dent's The Memoirs of J.M. Dent (London, 1928)
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Scope and Content
The material in this collection documents the publishing history of J.M. Dent & Sons and of the Dent family's involvement with the company. The collection consists of correspondence files of the editorial department; drafts of manuscripts published by Dent; illustrative material used in Dent publications; correspondence generated by the directors of J.M. Dent & Sons; administrative files; files from companies affiliated with or subsidiaries of Dent; and photographs of Dent's buildings and staff.
Although the papers include material from the early-18th century through to the company's sale to Weidenfeld and Nicholson in 1986, the bulk of the material dates from 1909 to the 1950s.
Every attempt was made during processing to preserve or reconstruct the original order of these files. When possible, original folder titles have been preserved, and the original order of items within folders has been maintained. The arrangement of Series 2, Series 4, Series 5, and Series 6 closely reflects the organizational filing system as received by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Series 1 and Series 3, however, were received in disarray. This material has been organized into series and subseries chiefly according to the subject matter, and, within each series and subseries, in alphabetical order according to the original folder titles.
Researchers should note that when the J.M. Dent & Sons Records were received by the University, most files were marked "Pruned." Letters and illustrations of significant commercial value (e.g., correspondence with Jospeh Conrad, Dylan Thomas, and Virginia Woolf, and Aubrey Beardsley's woodcuts for La Morte d'Arthur) had been removed and sold. It is impossible to determine how many items were culled, but scattered correspondence with canonical authors still remains in the collection.
Editorial department files (Series 1) include intra-office memoranda, as well as correspondence between members of the J.M. Dent editorial department, prospective authors, publishing companies, and literary agencies. Correspondence discusses manuscript proposals and submissions, book acceptance and rejection, editorial reports and recommendations, contracts, copyright agreements, book orders, sales figures, royalty payments, legal problems, reprints, successive editions, and translation and printing rights.
Canonical authors represented in the editorial department files include: Lord Balfour, Max Beerbohm, Hilaire Belloc, G. K. Chesterton, Winston Churchill, Lawrence Durrell, Albert Einstein, T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, John Galsworthy, W. E. Gladstone, Aldous Huxley, C. S. Lewis, D. B. Wyndham Lewis, Somerset Maugham, Edwin Muir, V. S. Pritchett, Dorothy Richardson, V. Sackville-West, Bernard Shaw, J. R. R. Tolkien, Hugh Walpole, P. G. Wodehouse, Virginia Woolf, and William Butler Yeats.
Book materials (Series 2) contain files concerning individual books published by Dent and illustrative material used in them. Book files contain drafts of manuscripts published by Dent, editorial amendments to those manuscripts, and intra-office communications regarding the production of these books. The illustrative material consists of photographs, drawings, and prints that were used or considered for use by Dent; roughly half of the illustrative material is loose and the rest is organized in scrapbooks. Book titles represented in Series 2 tend to be popular literature, textbooks, cookbooks, biographies, travel guides, etc.; as a result, few of the authors are well known.
Directors' correspondence files (Series 3) contain mostly correspondence to and from the directors of J.M. Dent & Sons. As of 1986, only four men had served as director of J.M. Dent & Sons: J.M. Dent (1888-1926), Hugh Dent (1926-1938), W. G. Taylor (1938-1963), and F. J. Martin Dent (1963-1986). About half of the correspondence discusses business and editorial matters, including editorial recommendations, contracts, copyright agreements, the cost of producing books, sales figures, royalty payments, marketing issues, and legal problems. The other half addresses issues relating to the directors' personal lives, including personal finance, purchasing and maintaining property, medical advice, correspondence with family members, letters of congratulations and condolence, holiday cards, and correspondence with lawyers regarding wills and estates.
Canonical writers represented in Series 3 include G. K. Chesterton, Joseph Conrad, John Drinkwater, John Galsworthy, Robert Gibbings, Edmund Gosse, W. H. Hudson, Henry James, Margaret Kennedy, Oliver Lodge, Henry Newbolt, Margaret Oliphant, Ezra Pound, J. B. Priestley, Arthur Quiller-Couch, George Saintsbury, Bernard Shaw, Frank Swinnerton, Dylan Thomas, G. M. Trevelyan, and Mortimer Wheeler.
Administrative files (Series 4) deal with the overall operation of J.M. Dent & Sons and were chiefly generated by Dent's administrative headquarters on Bedford Street, London. Administrative files consist of four types of material: financial material, legal records, personnel files, and general administrative files. Financial materials consist of correspondence, intra-office memoranda, receipts, ledgers, equipment inventories, and agreements pertaining to the company's income, operating expenses, and long-term assets. Legal records consist of correspondence, claim statements, affidavits, and other material regarding libel suits, trademark applications, and general legal advice. Personnel files consist of correspondence, agreements, and contracts between J.M. Dent's personnel department and staff of the editorial, book production, and sales departments pertaining to job offers, contract negotiations and renewals, promotions, leave of absence requests, and retirement notices. General administrative files contain address books, agreements with non-affiliated organizations, catalogs of books published by Dent, exhibit material, lists, and a visitors' log.
Subsidiaries/Affiliated Organizations (Series 5) contain file records of six publishing companies that were either affiliated with or direct subsidiaries of J.M. Dent & Sons: E. P. Dutton & Co., Everyman Publishing Co., Galley Press, Ltd., J.M. Dent & Fils, J.M. Dent & Sons (Canada), and Phoenix Book Co. The files contain a wide variety of material, including correspondence, inter-office memoranda, financial reports, balance sheets, sales figures, contracts, agreements, trademark applications, and legal records. Material pertains to all administrative, editorial, financial, legal, book production, and marketing issues of Dent's subsidiaries and affiliated organizations.
Photographic material (Series 6) contains photographs of J.M. Dent staff; relatives of Dent employees; selected authors published by Dent; Dent's offices in London, Paris, and Canada; the Temple Press at Letchworth, Dent's bindery and printing house; and group photos from important company social occasions.
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Series Quick Links
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Series 1. Editorial Department Files, 1909-1941.
Mostly correspondence to and from members of the J.M. Dent editorial department concerning prospective publications. There are equal numbers of incoming and outgoing letters.
This correspondence has been divided into three subseries: "Author Files," "Company Files," and "Staff Files." The author files in Subseries 1.1, which comprise roughly 70% of this series, consist of correspondence between Dent editors and prospective authors. The company files in Subseries 1.2, which comprise roughly 20% of this series, consist of correspondence between Dent editors and companies involved in the publishing industry. Finally, the staff files in Subseries 1.3 consist of intra-office communications between members of the Dent editorial staff. The material in each subseries has been arranged by author, company, or editor respectively.
Much additional editorial correspondence can be found elsewhere in the collection. In particular, J.M. Dent and Hugh Dent functioned as part-time editors; much of their personal correspondence in Subseries 3.1 and 3.2 discusses editorial concerns. In addition, Subseries 2.1, "Book Files," includes some editorial correspondence; note that the book files differ from Series 1 in that they largely date from the 1950s and 1960s.
At the end of this inventory, there is a comprehensive index to the J.M. Dent & Sons Records. The index is based largely on the correspondence in Series 1 and 3, and it should assist researchers in locating editorial correspondence in other portions of the papers. A note preceding the index provides further information on its scope and use.
Researchers should also note that letters of significant commercial value (e.g., correspondence with Joseph Conrad, Dylan Thomas, and Virginia Woolf) were removed and sold before the records were acquired by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It is impossible to determine how many documents were culled in this way, but some scattered "famous author" letters still remain in Series 1.
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Subseries 1.1. Author Files, 1919-1939.
Arrangement: alphabetical by author name.
Correspondence between members of the J.M. Dent editorial department and authors whose manuscripts were considered for publication. About half of the correspondence discusses manuscript proposals and submissions; the other half addresses a wide range of editorial matters, including book acceptance and rejection, editorial reports and recommendations, contracts, copyright agreements, sales figures, royalty payments, legal problems, reprints, and successive editions. About 5,000 authors are represented.
Subseries 1.1 is organized in three categories: "Individual Author Files," "Other Authors," and "Correspondent Unknown." First, individual files were created for authors represented by five or more pieces of correspondence. These individual author files, which comprise roughly 80% of the subseries, are arranged in alphabetical order. The individual author files are followed by "Other Authors," an alphabetical arrangement of correspondence with individuals represented by less than five pieces of correspondence each. Finally, correspondence that cannot be attributed to an author has been placed at the end of the subseries as "Correspondent Unknown."
Although many letters were removed before the J.M. Dent records were acquired by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, some scattered "famous author" material remains in Subseries 1.1. Canonical authors represented here include Lord Balfour, Max Beerbohm, Hilaire Belloc, G. K. Chesterton, Winston Churchill, Lawrence Durrell, Albert Einstein, E. M. Forster, John Galsworthy, W. E. Gladstone, Aldous Huxley, C. S. Lewis, D. B. Wyndham Lewis, Somerset Maugham, Edwin Muir, V. S. Pritchett, Dorothy Richardson, V. Sackville-West, Bernard Shaw, J. R. R. Tolkien, Hugh Walpole, P. G. Wodehouse, Virginia Woolf, and William Butler Yeats. Consult the index at the end of the inventory for a more complete list of author material.
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Subseries 1.1.1. Individual Author Files