Franklin Library

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The Franklin Library was the publishing division of the Franklin Mint, which produced collectors books similar to those of the Easton Press for three decades.

Contents

[edit] History

The Franklin Library published its first book in 1973, and closed its doors for good in 2000, after losing the competitive battle with The Easton Press for the popular market for finely bound leather books. Today, the lavishly produced leather books issued by the Franklin Library are highly sought after in the collectibles market.

The Franklin Library issued its books only to the subscribers to its various series. Most of the series were 100 book sets, and a single volume was issued monthly to subscribers. As a result, it took several years to complete a set. Other series, such as the Signed First Edition Society series, were open-ended with no limit on the number of titles published. And yet other books were issued as one-time offerings, such as the 500th anniversary leather-bound edition of the Oxford-English Reference Library, an eight book leather set issued with its own wooden shelf.

There is a very active online market for previously owned Franklin Library leather books on eBay.com, Abebooks.com and on other bookselling venues - including specialist dealers with their own websites for dealing in the books.

[edit] The series

Due to overlapping series themes, the same title appears in more than one series, but ordinarily with a differently designed binding.

[edit] The 100 Greatest Books of All Time (1974-1982)

Considered to be one of the more popular collections, the following titles were bound in genuine leather with 22k gold accents from 1974 to 1982:

[edit] The 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature (1976-1984)

The following titles were bound in genuine leather with 22k gold accents from 1976-1984:

[edit] The Collected Stories of the World's Greatest Writers (1977-1985)

The following titles were bound in genuine leather with 22k gold accents from 1977-1985:

[edit] 60 Signed Limited Editions (1977-1982)

Signature of Robert Penn Warren from the Signed Limited Edition of All the King's Men
Signature of Robert Penn Warren from the Signed Limited Edition of All the King's Men

Considered to be one of the most valuable, the following titles were bound in genuine leather with 22k gold accents from 1977 to 1982:

  • The Rector of Justin by Louis Auchincloss
  • Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
  • The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth
  • The Second Sex by Simone De Beauvoir
  • Singer Gimpel, The Fool and Other Stories by Isaac Beshevis
  • God’s Little Acre by Erskine Caldwell
  • Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote
  • The Coming Fury by Bruce Catton
  • A Stillness at Appomattox by Bruce Catton
  • The Wapshot Chronicle by John Cheever
  • Deliverance by James Dickey
  • A Book of Common Prayer by Joan Didion
  • The Ginger Man by J.P. Donleavy
  • Advise and Consent by Allen Drury
  • A God Against the Gods by Allen Drury
  • Justine by Lawrence Durrell
  • Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
  • Young Lonigan by James T. Farrell
  • The Collector by John Fowles
  • The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles
  • Mary Queen Of Scotts by Antonia Fraser
  • The Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
  • The Last Angry Man by Gerald Green
  • Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
  • Good As Gold by Joseph Heller
  • A Bell for Adano by John Hersey
  • The Wall by John Hersey
  • Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
  • Eleanor and Franklin by Joseph P. Lash
  • The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
  • Collected Plays of Arthur Miller
  • Birds of America by Mary McCarthy
  • The Group by Mary McCarthy
  • Them by Joyce Carol Oates
  • Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Patton
  • The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
  • Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth
  • Five Plays by Jean-Paul Sartre
  • A Thousand Days by Arthur M. Schlesinger
  • The Young Lions by Irwin Shaw
  • The Affair by C.P. Snow
  • The Big Rock Candy Mountain by Wallace Stegner
  • The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone
  • Lust for Life by Irving Stone
  • The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron
  • Lie Down in Darkness by William Styron
  • Rabbit Redux by John Updike
  • Rabbit, Run by John Updike
  • Exodus by Leon Uris
  • Burr by Gore Vidal
  • Julian by Gore Vidal
  • Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
  • All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
  • Selected Poems (1923-1975) of Robert Penn Warren
  • The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty
  • The Shoes of the Fisherman by Morris West
  • In Search of History by Theodore H. White
  • Selected Plays of Tennessee Williams
  • The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk
  • Marjorie Morningstar by Herman Wouk

[edit] Pulitzer Prize Classics (1975-1980)

This was a 53 volume collection of Pulitzer Prize winning novels, from the 1917 prize inception through 1979. The following titles were bound in genuine leather with 22k gold accents from 1975-1980:

  • 1917 no prize for novel
  • 1918 His Family by Ernest Poole
  • 1919 The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkingon
  • 1920 no prize for novel
  • 1920 no prize for novel
  • 1921 The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
  • 1922 Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington
  • 1923 One of Ours by Willa Cather
  • 1924 The Able McLaughlins Margaret Wilson
  • 1925 So Big by Edna Ferber
  • 1926 Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis
  • 1927 Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield
  • 1928 The Bridge of San Luis by Rey Wilder
  • 1929 Scarlet Sister by Mary Julia Peterkin
  • 1930 Laughing Boy by Oliver La Farge
  • 1931 Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes
  • 1932 The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
  • 1933 The Store by T.S. Stribling
  • 1934 Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Miller
  • 1935 Now in November by Josephine Johnson
  • 1936 Honey in the Horn by Harold L. Davis
  • 1937 Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
  • 1938 The Late George Apley by John Marquand
  • 1939 The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
  • 1940 The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
  • 1941 no prize for novel
  • 1942 In This Our Life by Ellen Glasgow
  • 1943 Dragon's Teeth by Upton Sinclair
  • 1944 Journey in the Dark by Martin Flavin
  • 1945 A Bell for Adano by John Hersey
  • 1946 no prize for novel
  • 1947 All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
  • 1948 Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener
  • 1949 Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens
  • 1950 The Way West by A.B. Guthrie, Jr.
  • 1951 The Town by Conrad Richter
  • 1952 The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk
  • 1953 The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
  • 1954 no prize for novel
  • 1955 A Fable by William Faulkner
  • 1956 Andersonville by Mackinlay Kantor
  • 1957 no prize for novel
  • 1958 A Death in the Family by James Agee
  • 1959 The Travels of Jaime Mcpheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor
  • 1960 Advise and Consent by Allen Drury
  • 1961 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
  • 1962 The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O'Connor
  • 1963 The Reivers by William Faulkner
  • 1964 no prize for novel
  • 1965 The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau
  • 1966 Collected Stories by Katherine Ann Porter
  • 1967 The Fixer by Bernard Malamud
  • 1968 The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron
  • 1969 House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday
  • 1970 Collected Stories by Jean Stafford
  • 1971 no prize for novel
  • 1972 Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
  • 1973 The Optimists Daughter by Eudora Welty
  • 1974 no prize for novel
  • 1975 The Killer Angels by Michael Sharra
  • 1976 Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow
  • 1977 no prize for novel
  • 1978 Elbow Room by James Alan Mcpherson
  • 1979 The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever

[edit] The (Signed) First Edition Society

The Franklin Library published limited first editions of a large number of books. They were distributed to the members of its First Edition Society. Initially the books were unsigned and not numbered. Later the name was changed to the Signed First Editions Society, and the books issued to members were all signed by the authors, and in some cases were also numbered as to the limitation.

[edit] See also