Albert Boni | |
|---|---|
 c. 1928 | |
| Born | (1892-10-21)October 21, 1892 New York City, United States |
| Died | July 31, 1981(1981-07-31) (aged 88) Ormond Beach, Florida, United States |
| Education | Harvard (1 year), Cornell (2 years) |
| Occupation | Publisher |
| Years active | 1912–1974 |
| Notable work | Microprinting |
| Children | William, of Carmel, N.Y., and three granddaughters, Karin Fisher of St. Paul, Minn., Mariette Bock of Chester, Vt., and Nell Hughes of Rochelle Park, N. J.[1] |
| Parent(s) | Charles Boni Sr & Bertha Seltzer Boni, Her brother was Thomas Seltzer, their uncle and fellow publisher |
| Relatives | Charles F Boni |
Albert Boni (October 21, 1892 – July 31, 1981[2][3]) was co-founder of the publishing companyBoni & Liveright and a pioneering publisher in paperbacks andbook clubs.[1]
Born in 1892 to a Jewish family in New York City, Albert Boni moved, at an early age, with his family toNewark and completed his secondary school education there atBarringer High School.[4] He completed two years of college atCornell University and one year atHarvard University. Instead of starting his senior year at Harvard, Boni convinced his father to finance the establishment (originally at 95Fifth Avenue[5] and then at 135MacDougal Street) of the Washington Square Bookshop[6] with Albert's brother Charles as a partner. The Boni brothers' book store became a meeting place for leftist,Greenwich Village writers and intellectuals. The Boni brothers, with two other partners, created theLittle Leather Library of pocket-sized editions of literary classics bound in imitation leather. These editions were hugely successful – theWoolworth stores sold a million copies in one year. In 1913–1914, the Boni brothers published the short-lived literary magazineThe Glebe. In 1914, Boni, withLawrence Langner and others, founded theWashington Square Players.[1] In 1915, the Boni brothers sold the Washington Square Bookshop to Frank Shay.[7]
In 1917, Boni married Cornelia 'Nell' van Leeuwen, a widow with a young son, who was adopted by Boni upon the marriage.[8] With financial backing fromHorace Liveright's father-in-law, paper executive Herman Elsas, the two partners Boni and Horace Liveright incorporated the publishing houseBoni & Liveright on February 16, 1917. Boni & Liveright founded theModern Library (originally calledModern Library of the World's Best Classics), which was eventually acquired byRandom House. The Modern Library was financed by $25,000 fromFelix M. Warburg and the Boni brothers' uncleThomas Seltzer.[5] A year and a half after incorporating, Boni sold his interest in Boni & Liveright to Horace Liveright in 1919. However, the name of the firm remained "Boni & Liveright" until 1928, when the name of the publishing house was changed to "Horace Liveright, Inc."
Sometime between 1920 and 1925, the Boni brothers signedThe Greenwich Village Bookshop Door at Frank Shay's Bookshop onChristopher Street. The door came to serve as anautograph book of notable 20th-centuryauthors, artists, publishers, and other creatives. The door is now held by theHarry Ransom Center at theUniversity of Texas at Austin, and Albert's signature can be found on front panel 2.[9]
In 1923, the Boni brothers purchased the publishing companyLieber & Lewis and renamed it the "Albert and Charles Boni Publishing Company." In 1926, they purchased the publishing business of their uncle,Thomas Seltzer. In 1929, the Boni brothers created Boni Paper Books, which offered one soft-cover book per month for 12 months for a yearly subscription price of $5. Boni Paper Books failed during theGreat Depression. In 1939, Boni founded theReadex Microprint Corporation, a microfilm publisher of reference materials. When Boni retired in 1974, his only son, William, took over as president of Readex.[8] Boni died in Florida in 1981 and was survived by his wife, his son, and his son's three daughters.[1]
Whilemicrophotography precedesmicroprint, microprint was conceived by Boni in 1934 when he was inspired by his friend, writer and editorManuel Komroff who was showing his experimentation's related to the enlarging of photographs. It occurred to Boni that if he could reduce rather than enlarge photographs, this technology may enable publication companies and libraries to access much greater quantities of data at a minimum cost of material and storage space. Over the following decade, Boni worked to develop microprint, a micro-opaque process in which pages were photographed using 35mm microfilm and printed on cards using offset lithography.U.S. patent 2260551AU.S. patent 2260552A This process proved to produce a 6" by 9"index card which stored 100 pages of text from the normal sized publications he was reproducing. Boni began the Readex Microprint company to produce and license this technology. He also published an articleA Guide to the Literature of Photography and Related Subjects (1943) which appeared in a supplemental 18th issue of thePhoto-Lab Index.[10][11][12][13]
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