E. Haldeman-Julius (born Emanuel Julius, July 30, 1889 – July 31, 1951) was an American publisher, journalist, and socialist activist, best known for democratizing access to literature through his "Little Blue Books" series. Early life and career: Born in Philadelphia to a Jewish immigrant bookbinder, he began working in socialist journalism as a teenager, writing for papers including the New York Call, the Chicago Daily Socialist, and the Coming Nation. In 1915 he settled in Girard, Kansas, to work for the influential socialist paper Appeal to Reason. Marriage and name: In 1916 he married Anna Marcet Haldeman, a wealthy Girard native, writer, and grandniece of Jane Addams. The couple merged their surnames into "Haldeman-Julius," and Marcet became an active partner in his publishing ventures. The Little Blue Books: In 1919, using the Appeal to Reason's printing plant, Haldeman-Julius launched what became the "Little Blue Books" — inexpensive, pocket-sized reprints of classic literature, philosophy, science, freethought, and self-improvement texts, sold for as little as five cents. Over three decades the series grew to more than 2,000 titles and sold several hundred million copies, bringing Shakespeare, Voltaire, Ibsen, and countless other authors to working-class and rural readers who had little other access to books. He styled himself "the Henry Ford of publishing" for applying mass-production economics to literature. Politics and other work: A committed socialist and freethinker, he also published the Haldeman-Julius Weekly (later the American Freeman), promoting secularism, atheism, and social reform, and frequently clashed publicly with organized religion. Death: Convicted of income tax evasion in 1951, he died the following day, drowned in his backyard swimming pool in Girard, Kansas — widely believed to be a suicide. Legacy: Haldeman-Julius is remembered as a pioneering figure in cheap, mass-market publishing and adult self-education, whose Little Blue Books anticipated the modern paperback revolution.
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