AbeBooks: Tauchnitz Editions: Not to be Introduced into the British Empire or U.S.A.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

Penguin, and its founder Allen Lane, tend to hoard the headlines when someone writes about pioneering publishers. But it is worth looking at the impact of Leipzig-based publisher Bernhard Tauchnitz and its Collection of British and American Authors.

The Tauchnitz family began printing and publishing in at the end of the 18th century and published traditional literature such as bibles, dictionaries and the classics. Christian Bernhard Freiherr von Tauchnitz (1816-1895) took the company in new direction by reprinting more than 5,000 English language titles. Many were printed in cheap, paperback formats with plain covers. These affordable editions helped pave the way for Penguin and its famous range of paperback reprints that made quality literature accessible to the vast majority.

The paperbacks of the Collection of British and American Authors typically carried a warning on the cover saying the book could not be introduced into the British Empire or the U.S.A. Of course, international travellers ignored it, purchased copies in continental Europe and carried them home to London or New York. Books rarely interest customs officials. Now, these paperbacks can be found in used bookshops all over the globe and remain affordable collector’s items, although Tauchnitz’s more durable and very attractive hardback editions and collections have higher prices.

Tauchnitz printed works by Charles Dickens, Walter Scott, Thomas Carlyle, George Eliot, James Joyce, Sinclair Lewis, Zane Gray, Pearl S Buck, John Galsworthy, Jack London and Ernest Hemingway to name but a handful. During this period, pirating was rife in publishing, but Tauchnitz paid royalties to authors and helped establish early copyright agreements. Tauchnitz merged with the Albatross Modern Continental Library in 1934 and the Nazis closed down the operation during World War II.