Random House Unabridged Dictionary

Everyman's Library

Everyman's Library was founded on 15th February 1906 with the publication by Joseph Dent (1849-1926) of fifty titles. Dent, a master bookbinder turned publisher, was a classic Victorian autodidact. The tenth child of a Darlington house-painter, he had left school at thirteen, and arrived in London with a half crown in his pocket. He promised to publish new and beautiful editions of the world's classics at one shilling a volume, 'to appeal to every kind of reader: the worker, the student, the cultured man, the child, the man and the woman' so that 'for a few shillings the reader may have a whole bookshelf of the immortals for five pounds (which will procure him a hundred volumes) a man may be intellectually rich for life'. 'Infinite riches in a little room', as he also put it.