The Corporate Development of Middlebrow Reading: The Peoples Book Club of the Sears, Roebuck Mail-Order Catalog, 1943-1959

D'Arpa, Christine

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/50334 Copy

Description

Title

The Corporate Development of Middlebrow Reading: The Peoples Book Club of the Sears, Roebuck Mail-Order Catalog, 1943-1959

Author(s)

D'Arpa, Christine

Issue Date

2014

Keyword(s)

Books, Printing, Publishing Industry, Reading

Abstract

The Sears, Roebuck and Co. mail-order catalog brought a full service department store to more than 12 million homes in the United States by the middle of the twentieth century. More than one third of those households were rural, and the primary purchasers of mail-order items were women. This paper examines the history and the economic and cultural impact of the decision by Sears, Roebuck and Co. to establish a mail-order book club -- the Peoples Book Club (PBC) -- in 1943. The introduction of the PBC in the July 1943 issue of the mail-order catalog marked a significant change in how the company offered books to its customers. The announcement came as a full-page color advertisement that included a self-addressed, postage-paid card. The infrastructure behind the project was equally elaborate. Sears established a publishing house in Chicago that designed and printed the book club editions and the club’s monthly catalog. The PBC had 350,000 members at its peak, but there are surprisingly few references to it in any of the scholarly literature on book clubs, libraries, women’s reading, and American “middlebrow” reading during the mid-twentieth century. The PBC represents an opportunity to more deeply understand and situate the evolution mass culture in post-World War II America.

Publisher

unpublished

Type of Resource

other

Language

en

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/50334

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