Description
The
Little Leather Library Collection consists of 101 books, 3-1/4" x 4," published by the
Little Leather Library Corporation of New York. The miniature books are brownish green in color, of imitation leather, and characteristic
of the Redcroft edition published between 1920-1924. There were over 100 miniature book titles published in the various editions
of the
Little Leather Library, but it is not known if all of these titles were included in the Redcroft edition. The collection was donated in
2008.
Background
The
Little
Leather Library Corporation of New York was the first company to mass-market inexpensive books in the United States. The corporation,
founded in 1916 by Albert Boni, Harry Scherman and Maxwell Sackheim, made available a wide variety of classics by authors
including Rudyard Kipling, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Morris, William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Louis
Stevenson, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Henry James, Leo Tolstoy, Oscar Wilde and William Butler Yeats in miniature editions. The
101 books in this collection are brownish green in color, bound in imitation leather, and characteristic of the Redcroft edition
published between 1920-1924. Only the first two editions were bound in real
leather.
Extent
The
Little Leather Library Collection consists of 101 books, 3-1/4" x 4," and is housed in two flat boxes.
Restrictions
In order to reproduce, publish, broadcast, exhibit, and/or quote from this material, researchers must submit a written request
and obtain formal permission from Special Collections, Cal Poly, as the owner of the physical collection.