How and Why Wonder Books

A brief history of Gosset & Dunlap Publishing

Debra Dorfman, President at Grosset & Dunlap, wrote in an article on the Penguin website that Alexander Grosset and George T. Dunlap began their own publishing company in 1898 after the two men were left jobless by the bankrupcy of the American Publishers Corporation.

She says "In the words of the late George T. Dunlap, Grosset & Dunlap originated 'in the minds of Mr. Grosset and myself, more or less as a temporary gesture.' From 'this rather vague idea,' Grosset & Dunlap was born. They built their business by putting paperback copies into hardcovers for sale at 50 cents 1, and then, with the purchase of the renowned Stratemeyer Syndicate (currently owned by Simon & Schuster), publishing Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, the Bobbsey Twins, and other very successful children's series. These were probably the first mass-market series for children, the books are still widely available and read by young people today2".

George Dunlap started out working as a salesman for the United States Book Co., which went bankrupt a few months later. He worked for American Publishers Corporation, and it, too, went bankrupt. During this last job he struck up a friendship with Alexander Grosset, a company manager, and for a while lived in the Grosset home. When American Publishers Corporation's assets were auctioned off to satisfy creditors, Dunlap and Grosset used their combined savings to buy as many books as possible. Dunlap then went on the road to sell the books to local stores while Grosset handled the books and incorporated as Grosset & Dunlap 3.

After a brief split Grosset & Dunlap reunited and re-incoporated as 'pirates', printing cheap copies of books already in print without having to pay royalties or agent fees. Their first successes were cheap editions of Kipling's Barrack Room Ballads, The Light that Failed, and Child Stories. With income from these pirated titles, Grosset & Dunlap were able to purchase paper books in sufficent bulk to make a small profit rebinding them.

Grosset & Dunlap Publishing conducted business from a premises on West 26th and Tenth Avenue, New York, U.S.A. The photograph at above left is one of their building with a fading sign showing their name 4. Their primary output was the reprinting of titles from other publishing houses and there has been some controversy over Grosset & Dunlap reprinting of books without updating the information on the original title page and thus creating confusion with book collectors about who was the original publishers of the material. This being said Grosset & Dunlap also had many original titles of their own as mentioned above. What Grosset & Dunlap achieved by creating the reprint market cannot be underestimated. The burgeoning number of competing reprint publishers led to ever lower prices and cheaper means of publishing.

In 1955 Grosset & Dunlap were sued by Platt & Munk over rights to publish The Little Engine That Could after an explosive controversy involving authorship of the book 5. Platt & Munk were eventually bought out by Grosset & Dunlap.

Donald Grosset, Alexander Grosset's son, purchased the Filmways group in 19741, which added original non-fiction works, such as Memoirs of Richard Nixon and Pritikin Diet. In 1982, Grosset & Dunlap was bought by G. P. Putnam's Sons (later to be known as The Putnam Berkley Group), which then merged with Penguin USA in 1996 to become Penguin Putnam. Although now owned by Penguin Publications there is still a Grosset & Dunlap Division. Grosset & Dunlap played a major role in developing Ace Books and Bantam Books.

How and Why Wonder Books

Grosset & Dunlap published seventy-four How and Why Wonder Books from 1960 under the banner Wonder Books. These extraordinary books are rarely mentioned in webpage articles written about the Gosset & Dunlap company. How and Why Wonder Books were meant to be collected as a series, each book had it own serial number between 5001 and 5076 and this number was printed clearly on the spine and the front cover. What began in 1960 as a short list of 12 titles [5001 - 5012] in the series was expanded to 5018, 5030, 5036 etc as the years progressed and titles increased.

The front covers of these books were remarkably stable design-wise, The How and Why Wonder Books logo always appears in cyan, yellow and magenta in alternating bands in top left hand corner of the cover. A small illustrated logo of a boy and girl reading a red book is normally seen in the bottom left corner but this may not appear or the position may shift depending on the cover illustration. Six very different back covers representing different stages of development were used during two decades. They changed in the early early 60's and early 70's and clearly defined 'periods' can be determined in the series' history. I call these periods 'Early 1', 'Early 2', 'Classic', 'Late', 'PSS' and 'Transworld'. Go to HWWB Periods.

How and Why Wonder Books - The Classic Series

I own a complete collection of the 'Classic' HWWB series. The classic series is the most collectable period of How and Why Wonder Books and is the most widely recognised of all the styles as it was in print the longest. The style is defined by an illustrated back cover margin that include colour images of a Knight, a Dinosaur, a Viking and an Spitfire etc with a central yellow background that has the title list of then available books. Another distinguishing feature of this style is the 'blue square' motifs found on the inside front and back covers of each edition (see background image).

The attraction of these books to ardent collectors is in the quality of the writing and the simple 1950's style illustrations. Although most of the technical information is now wildly out of date, the purpose of the books at the time was to give accurate information to young children in an intelligent manner. Short questions were posed at the start of each opening paragraph; the answer was then clearly and simply explained in a non-patronising manner in the ensuing paragraphs. The illustrations were sometimes hand drawn in black ink and are often complemented with a single spot colour. Many others were full colour.

All of the How and Why Wonder Books published by Grosset & Dunlap were edited under the supervision of Dr. Paul E. Blackwood, a specialist who, according to a disclaimer on the title page, undertook this duty independently to his role in Elementary Science at the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Until the 'Late' editions Dr. Blackwood always contributes an introduction to each book just before the contents page.

The 'how and whys' were originally published in batches of six or twelve (monthly?) as indicated by the first-published dates recorded in the opening pages of the books each particular batch was split, on average, (6 and then 6) over 12 months. This continued until 1965 when it seems that only six books were planned or production was interupted. However, two further books were added, Electronics [5061] and Deserts [5062]. The reason for this change is not apparent but I suspect one possibility is that Grosset & Dunlap may have been faced with a 'take over' or some other major internal overhaul. After three non-productive years, production started up again in 1969 with one new book being produced Air and Water [5063]. Air and Water was possibly started during the 1965 production period and then shelved until 1969. Go to HWWB American

Re-issues

1969 saw six re-issues of previous titles. They had been updated editorially and reprinted as new books in the series with new front-cover designs but with continuing serial numbers (5064 - 5069). In 1971 the final book in the original series, Ecology [5070], is published. Between 1973 and 1976 another six new books were planned but only four made it into production. These were The Environment and You [5071], Extinct Animals [5072], Snakes [5073] and Fossils [5076]. The editions of 5074 and 5075 have never seen the light of day. As books in a series are often published in non-sequential order depending on which ones are ready first, so the gap between 5073 and 5076 indicates a rather sudden and unexpected termination of the project. These later editions may indicate change within Gosset & Dunlap as the books were published under the umbrella of a variety of companies in America including; G. J. Ferguson, and Filmways; revealing that a lot of the disruption to the series after 1965 may have occurred due to the company buying into other company's or itself being bought-out. 5072, 5073 and 5076 were reprinted from Transworld British (UK) editions. They were the first books in the series not to be edited with an introduction by Dr. Paul E. Blackwood.

How and Why Wonder Books - Transworld

From about 1969 - 1970, Transworld Publishers in the United Kingdom seem to have the rights through it's parent company to begin reprinting the Gosset & Dunlap back catalogue. Transworld enlarged the series dramatically by adding many books deemed appropriate to a British market such as Kings and Queens, The Tower of London etc. This continued well into the late seventies. The UK series (what I call the 'Transworld' series) are not as collectable as the earlier American publications as the interior illustrations are usually heavy handed, dark, lack the fifties-style charm and are not particularly attractive. I only have a handful of the Transworld UK series as I don't try very hard to collect them. Go to HWWB Transworld

Another series of books were published in the eighties by Price, Stern and Sloan another subsidiary of Penguin Publications. The books in this reprinted series (the 'PSS' series) had quite a few design alterations to the front and back covers but were still titled How and Why Wonder Books 6.

Go to HWWB Table of Years and Notes This is a table showing all the book titles and the year they were first published. It also shows how batches were planned and printed in blocks of 6 or 12, possibly so they could be released on a monthly basis. Can anyone remember?

References

1. sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/lucile/publishers/grosset/GROSSET.HTM

2. us.penguingroup.com/static/html/aboutus/youngreaders/grosset.html

3. paperbarn.www1.50megs.com/publishers/g.html#1898---GROSSET%20&

4. fadingad.wordpress.com/2008/02/05/grosset-dunlap-publishers-west-26th-street-tenth-avenue/

5. tigger.uic.edu/~plotnick/littleng.htm

6. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grosset_&_Dunlap

Additional research by myself, Ray Hehr.

Other How and Why Wonder Book sites you might like to try

1. homepage.mac.com/doubtboy/HowAndWhy.html

2. members.optushome.com.au/intabits/HowAndWhy.htm

3. www.rocketroberts.com/how_and_why/how_and_why.htm

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