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Albert and Charles Boni, Inc. records
LSC.1462  
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Table of contents What's This?
  • Restrictions on Access
  • Restrictions on Use and Reproduction
  • Preferred Citation
  • Provenance/Source of Acquisition
  • Processing History:
  • UCLA Catalog Record ID
  • Biography/History
  • Scope and Content
  • Organization and Arrangement
  • Related Material

  • Contributing Institution: UCLA Library Special Collections
    Title: Albert and Charles Boni, Inc. records
    Creator: Albert & Charles Boni
    Identifier/Call Number: LSC.1462
    Physical Description: 5 Linear Feet 10 boxes
    Date (inclusive): ca. 1916-1974
    Abstract: Albert Boni (1892-1981) founded Albert and Charles Boni, Incorporated with his brother in New York City (1923). They introduced Boni Paper Books, and sold them by mail-order subscription. Active in both literary and political fields, the firm published such controversial and influential writers as Marcel Proust, Colette, D.H. Lawrence, Upton Sinclair and Leon Trotsky. The collection consists of papers relating to Albert and Charles Boni, Incorporated.
    Physical Location: Stored off-site. All requests to access special collections material must be made in advance using the request button located on this page.
    General Physical Description note: no content
    Language of Material: English .

    Restrictions on Access

    Stored off-site. All requests to access special collections material must be made in advance using the request button located on this page.

    Restrictions on Use and Reproduction

    Property rights to the physical object belong to the UCLA Library, Department of Special Collections. Literary rights, including copyright, are retained by the creators and their heirs. It is the responsibility of the researcher to determine who holds the copyright and pursue the copyright owner or his or her heir for permission to publish where The UC Regents do not hold the copyright.

    Preferred Citation

    [Identification of item], Albert and Charles Boni, Inc. Records (Collection 1462). Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA.

    Provenance/Source of Acquisition

    Gift of William Boni, 1985.

    Processing History:

    Initial processing of collection done by Kayla Landesman, August 1986. Full processing and description by Michael Devine in the Center for Primary Research and Training (CFPRT), with assistance from Laurel McPhee, Summer 2004.
    We are committed to providing ethical, inclusive, and anti-racist description of the materials we steward, and to remediating existing description of our materials that contains language that may be offensive or cause harm. We invite you to submit feedback about how our collections are described, and how they could be described more accurately, by filling out the form located on our website: Report Potentially Offensive Description in Library Special Collections.  

    UCLA Catalog Record ID

    UCLA Catalog Record ID: 9942303043606533 

    Biography/History

    Albert Boni was born in 1892 in New York City and attended Harvard University. Between the two World Wars Albert Boni left a lasting impression on the publishing world, first with Horace Liveright (Boni & Liveright) and then with his brother Charles (Albert & Charles Boni, Inc.). Boni's first publishing venture was The Little Leather Library, which sold abridged classics in a very small format through Woolworth's (1914). After selling the Washington Square Bookshop in 1917, he joined Horace Liveright to form the Boni-Liveright Publishing Company, which started the Modern Library of the World's Best Classics. Modern Library intended to copy the success of the popular British Everyman Series; in 1925, Boni's salesman Bennett Cerf bought the line, and went on to start Random House. With Albert and Charles Boni, Inc., he moved away from repackaging the classics in hopes of publishing exciting contemporary literature. By 1923 Boni and his brother founded Albert and Charles Boni, Incorporated, a firm that introduced Boni Paper Books and sold them by mail-order subscription. Active in both the literary and the political fields, the firm published such controversial and influential writers as Marcel Proust, Colette, D.H. Lawrence, Upton Sinclair, and Leon Trotsky. In the 1940s, Boni's interest in photography and light technologies led him to create the Readex Microprint Corporation. He died on July 13, 1981 in Ormond Beach, Florida.

    Scope and Content

    The bulk of this collection records Boni's commercial concerns as a publisher; his social and literary interests are clear through correspondence with a variety of artists and writers, from Max Eastman and George Bernard Shaw to Jim Tully. The collection also includes papers related to the Readex Microprint Corporation and Boni's photography compilation, A guide to the literature of photography and related subjects.

    Organization and Arrangement

    Arranged in the following series:
    1. Miscellaneous business papers, 1928-1974 (Boxes 1-2).
    2. Correspondence, 1916-1966 (Boxes 3-5).
    3. Contracts, 1921-1973 (Boxes 5-10).

    Related Material

    Albert Boni Collection of Material about Photography (Collection 1046).  Available at UCLA Library, Department of Special Collections.

    Subjects and Indexing Terms

    Publishers and publishing -- United States -- Archives.
    Albert & Charles Boni--Archives.
    Boni, Albert
    Boni, Charles