E. Haldeman-Julius

E. Haldeman-Julius (né Emanuel Julius) (1889–1951) was a Jewish-American socialist writer, atheist thinker, social reformer and publisher. He is best remembered as the head of Haldeman-Julius Publications, the creator of a series of pamphlets known as "Little Blue Books," total sales of which ran into the hundreds of millions of copies.

Biography

Early years

Emanuel Julius was born July 30, 1889, in Philadelphia on the son of a bookbinder. His parents were Jewish emigrants who fled Russia and immigrated to America to escape religious persecution.

As a boy, Emanuel read voraciously. Because literature and pamphlets produced by the socialists were inexpensive, Julius read them and became convinced of their truth. He joined the Socialist Party before World War I.

Career

Haldeman-Julius is most noted as the editor of Appeal to Reason, a socialist newspaper with a large national circulation that was mentioned, among other places, in the Jack London novel The Iron Heel, and later for publishing the Little Blue Books (mentioned by Louis L'Amour in his autobiography Education of a Wandering Man).

Along with his first wife, Marcet Haldeman (whose last name he adopted in hyphenate), After purchasing the printing operation of the "Appeal to Reason" in Girard, Kansas, Haldeman-Julius began printing 3.5" x 5" pocket books on cheap pulp paper (similar to that used in pulp magazines), stapled in paper cover. They were first were called The Appeal's Pocket Series and sold in 1919 for 25 cents. The covers were either red or yellow. Over the next several years Haldeman-Julius changed the name successively to The People's Pocket Series, Appeal Pocket Series, Ten Cent Pocket Series, Five Cent Pocket Series, Pocket Series and finally in 1923, Little Blue Books. The five cent price of the books remained in place for many years. Many titles of classic literature were given lurid titles in order to increase sales. Eventually, millions of copies per year were sold in the late 1920's.

The couple had two children: Alice Haldeman-Julius Deloach (b. 1917 - d. 1991) and Henry Haldeman-Julius (b. 1919) (who later changed his name to Henry Julius Haldeman). They adopted Josephine Haldeman-Julius Roselle (b. 1910).

Marcet and Emanuel legally separated in 1934. Marcet died in 1941, and a year later Haldeman-Julius married Susan Haney, an employee. Henry continued the business after Emanuel's death.

Death and legacy

Haldeman-Julius drowned in his swimming pool July 31, 1951. His son Henry took over his father's publishing efforts, and the books continued to be sold until the printing house burned down on July 4, 1978.

Haldeman-Julius' papers are held at Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, Kansas, a few miles down the road from Girard in the southeastern corner of the state.

Selected works

• The Militant Agnostic. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1995. (Orig. pub. 1926.)
• My First Twenty-Five Years. Girard, KS: Haldeman-Julius Publications, 1949.
• My Second Twenty-Five Years. Girard, KS: Haldeman-Julius Publications, 1949.
• The World of Haldeman-Julius. Compiled by Albert Mordell. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1960.

Further reading

• Burnett, Betty. "Haldeman-Julius, Emanuel." American National Biography. Ed. John A. Garraty, Mark C. Carnes. 24 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
• Tim Davenport, "The Appeal to Reason: Forerunner of Haldeman-Julius Publications", Big Blue Newsletter No. 3 (2004). Retrieved November 16, 2009.

External links

• Works by E. Haldeman-Julius at Project Gutenberg
• More on Haldeman-Julius from the Axe Library
• Haldeman-Julius Family Tree on haldeman-julius.org
• [3]

Rolf Potts on E. Haldeman-Julius in The Believer