Boni-Liveright 1919-1925 Back of Book Catalogs

In 1919 B&L moved the catalog from the front of the book to the back. Like the previous years not all books had the catalog present. These catalogs seemed to be updated yearly in the fall except for 1922.

The first page of the catalog is usually an introduction in a box, and notes the season/year the list of titles is updated through. This note was not updated consistantly, and by late 1924 or early 1925 the season/date was replaced with "recent titles". Some examples are shown below. Note the change from jagged lined box to double line.

     

Following the initial page with the intro box there is typically a two page description of the Modern Library; or perhaps it would more appropriate to call it an advertisement. The text changed over time, at the very least because the opening sentence indicates how many years since the series was launched. The most significant change was between the 2 year and 4 year versions.

Barry Neavill has stated that there were 7 unique catalog lists, each identified by the last title on the first page of the catalog. The earliest of these has two varieties distinguished by the rule below the heading "Modern Library of the World's Best Books" on each of the catalog list pages.

There is also one more B&L style catalog after those seven, which is often included in a book with a B&L title page but only observed in #4 binding MLs. This catalog list would have been created by B&L for release in Fall 1925, all of which were ultimately bound by the ML, and the titles listed match the Fall 1925 catalog designated by the 1925-1970 Dating Key.

In 1924 a subject index was added to some catalogs, at the end, likely when there were blank pages available. The index is five pages in length and can show up in either the C12 or C13 style catalogs. The content in the C13 Subject Index was updated from C12.