ABSTRACT
The Modern Library’s inaugural volumes garnered praise for their clear
type and attractive format, but attention to detail was lax at Boni & Live-
right, and over time the appearance o f the series suffered. The imitation-
leather covers “ smelled like the inside of a taxi-cab” and had the “un-
pleasant habit o f sticking to each other.” 1 Casual inattention to physical
uniformity, a key element tying a disparate selection o f titles into a unified
series, led to a “bewildering variety and combination o f printing and binding styles from 1917 to 1925.” Surveying the Liveright period, bibli-
ographers George Andes and Helen Kelly found: “No less than five ma-
jor styles o f title-page combine with two types o f endpapers and three
bindings in nine so-far-discovered combinations. Eight early titles have
been found each showing four o f these combinations by itself. Tw o more
minor (one unique) title-page styles create two additional combinations.”2
