Of all the publishers who sought to publish fine books for the masses, perhaps none is so famous (at least here in the USA) as The Limited Editions Club:
(The image above is an LEC title currently on offer from Charles Agvent, a bookseller who specializes in the Limited Editions Club.)
Founded in 1929 by George Macy, LEC's mission (as noted by Bill Majure in a nice, if brief, history of LEC) was
to publish finely made and finely illustrated limited editions of the classics of literature - and of a few carefully selected contemporary titles.... Most of the books were beautifully illustrated with original artwork by leading book illustrators. In most cases, the illustrators handsigned each copy of the books that they illustrated for the LEC...[although some] books were published without that signature due to the unexpected death of the artist before publication....
LEC generally published no more than 1500 copies of any particular title--enough to keep the costs below that of a typical fine press title. From 1929 to 1985, some 550 titles were issued. Interestingly enough, LEC mailed its first title, The Travels of Lemuel Gulliver, on Wednesday, 23 October 1929, less than a week before the world began to plunge into the Great Depression.
Some titles were more expensive than others, because LEC titles were occasionally illustrated by major artists such as Picasso and Matisse. The image below, of the Picasso-illustrated version of Aristophanes' Lysistrata, is currently on offer from Joshua Heller Rare Books:
Others titles carried especially important signatures in addition to those of the author and/or illustrator. Among the most notable such titles were the copies of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass signed by Alice herself (the image below is from a copy currently on offer from Aleph-Bet Books):
After Macy's death in 1956, his wife, Helen, directed LEC's operations until 1968. Then, until 1970, operations were under control of the Macy's son, Jonathan, and other family members. In the early 1970s the firm began to go into a rapid decline, as Majure recounts:
[i]n 1970, the LEC (together with The Heritage Press and The Heritage Club), was sold to Boise Cascade Corporation. Boise Cascade sold it to Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. Ziff-Davis sold it to Cardavon Press. Cardavon operated the LEC with limited success for most of the 1970's, finally putting it on the block for sale.
Cardavon had raised the limitation to 2000 copies, and had sold The Heritage Press & The Heritage Club to The Danbury Mint (a sister company to The Easton Press) to generate needed cash....
Sidney Shiff (1924-2010) acquired the LEC from Cardavon in 1978. Over the next decade, Mr. Shiff gradually changed the focus of the club, and eventually began producing only Livres d'Artiste illustrated with original artwork by major "fine art" artists, rather than professional graphic artists & illustrators....
While LEC titles from the Macy era can often be picked up for a few hundred dollars or less in Fine condition (if there's a problem, it's usually with the slipcase), the livres d'artistes of the Shiff era are well beyond the means of the average book collector. The Fall of the House of Usher, for example, features an etching and two lithographs by Alice Neel, who died shortly before the book was published (the image below is from a copy currently on offer from Charles Agvent):
Peter Lacey describes the shift in publishing focus in a 1992 article:
Shiff brought the club to its present status by reducing its membership to 200 and the frequency of publication to four books a year. Most important, he raised the quality (and price) of LEC books by commissioning only leading fine artists and photographers. While George Macy usually chose a text he asked an illustrator to adorn, Shiff asks artists such as de Kooning, Motherwell, Kelly and Clemente to select texts themselves.
These titles generally sell for several thousand dollars when first issued, and for much, much more thereafter....
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