While working on articles about Stella Gibbons's romance My American and the life of the novelist May Sinclair recently, I came across some references to Everyman's Library.
The first was in J. B. Priestley's introduction to his novel Angel Pavement, which I suggested was the inspiration for My American; the second was in some online information about May Sinclair: she wrote introductions for the Everyman editions of the Brontë sisters' works.
J. B. Priestley is yet another voracious reader who later became a writer. This is an extract from his introduction to the Everyman's Library edition of his novel Angel Pavement:
“It was when I was in my middle teens that I began buying books...I had very little money indeed, and the problem was, how to buy books out of it? I managed this chiefly by economising on my lunches. In a shop in the covered market you could buy a bag of stale buns for tuppence...Out of what I saved, I bought books, and most of these books belonged to the old shilling Everyman series. I have some of them, chiefly the green volumes of the poets, to this day.
No bits of silver ever bought more enduring enchantment. I wish it were possible to go back to that youth from the office, as he stands looking at the Everyman volumes in Mr. Power's bookstall in the Bradford market, to whisper to him that the day will come when he will write a novel that will find its way into Everyman’s Library...”
One shilling was the official price, so one brand-new volume cost the equivalent of six bags of stale buns!
