Emanuel Haldeman-Julius letter

The son of Jewish emigrants fleeing Russia, Emanuel Julius was born in Philadelphia in 1889. A voracious reader of socialist literature, Julius found several jobs as a correspondent for socialist newspapers such as the Social Democrat, Sunday Call, and Western Comrade. In 1915, Julius was offered a poistion to write for Appeal to Reason, the largest socialist periodical in the country, and he moved to Girard, Kansas.

While living in Girad, Julius married Anna Marcet Haldeman, and the couple combined their surnames as a show of equality in their partnership. The Haldeman-Juliuses would go on to purchase Appeal to Reason and its printing plant in 1919, renaming it the Haldeman-Julius Publishing Company. Through this publishing company, the Haldeman-Juliuses created the popular and profilic Little Blue Books, a series of small, staple-bound books created as a low cost way for the working class to access summarized classical works of literature, educational media, and philosophical thought. The series would sell hundreds of millions of copies in over 6,000 different titles throughout the late 1920s and into the 1930s. Notable writers such as "Jack London, Upton Sinclair, Jane Addams, Emma Goldman, H. L. Mencken, Carl Sandburg, Eugene V. Debs, Clarence Darrow, Job Harriman, Will Durant, and Bertrand Russell" had works published by the series.

The Haldeman-Juliuses had two children, Alice Haldeman-Julius Deloach and Henry Julius Haldeman, and adopted Josephine Haldeman-Julius Roselle. The couple legally separated in 1933. Marcet Haldeman-Julius died in 1941, and in 1942, Emanuel married Susan Haney.

While popular, the Little Book Series was also controversial as the Haldeman-Juliuses used the series to also publish works on contentious topics such as sex education and birth control, socialism, and atheistism. Due in part to his radical politics and publishing works criticizing government institutions, Emanuel Haldeman-Julius came under the attention of the FBI. The FBI would eventually convict Emanuel Haldeman-Julius of tax evasion in 1951. While appealing his sentencing, Emanuel died in an accident at his home.

[Source taken from Publisher for the Masses, Emanuel Haldeman-Julius by R. Alton Lee and published by University of Nebreska Press.]