ABSTRACT
The cheap classic series is a product of an explosion in the numbers of literate people with money to spend on books, of a new emphasis on the middle-class home as a display case and reading as a key to social advancement. The books had to be inoffensive to the lower- and middle-class family reader. As late as 1907, Oxford University Press's warehouse publication The Periodical was referring to it, proudly announcing that 32 of Lord Avebury's list were represented in the World's Classics series. The take-over of a classics series, especially in the early part of the twentieth century when 'classics' had shaken off the taint of the bookstall, established themselves in clusters and made respectability a defining feature, was tailor-made to fit both criteria. The World's Classics walked a curiously fine line between the edifying and scholarly and the generally acceptable, Henry Frowde declining to reprint certain books in the series.
