Which was the first ‘book club’ and by whom was it launched?
The first Book CLUB offering books at specially reduced prices was the Left Book Club. It issued its first monthly selection, Maurice Thorez’s France Today and the People’s Front, to 5,000 subscribers in May 1936. The Club was launched by the London publisher ‘Victor Gollancz’ with the purpose of producing a series of cheap, hitherto unpublished books on the questions of Fascism, poverty and the threat of war. The original selection committee comprised John Strachey, Harold Laski and Gollancz himself. Each book chosen was published in a special Club ‘edition with orange limp cloth binding at 2s 6d, and simultaneously issued as a hardback for normal retail distribution at three or four times the Club price.
The first book club dealing in general literature for a non-specialist membership was the Readers Union, founded in 1937 and now the oldest surviving club of its kind.
