looking for info on Reilly and Lee

[Sarah Brouillette]

I am posting this on a friend's behalf. He searched the archives of this
list and noticed brief mention of the firm in some posts about the
Wizard of Oz books. He is hoping to start gathering some more
substantial info... Thanks.


Dear SHARPists,

I'm working on a project dealing with the relationship between the firm
Reilly and Lee (a Chicago based company that published many children's
books) and early 20th century cartoonists. Reilly and Lee published
books based on such comic strips as Gasoline Alley and Little Orphan
Annie.

What I need to start with is a very basic history of Reilly and Lee --
when did the company start? how big was it? what were its main titles?
how did it stand in relation to other kids book publishers?

Any help in this regard would be most appreciated.

I can be reached at ***@hotmail.com

Best, Jeet Heer

[Huttner, Sidney F]

Subject: looking for info on Reilly and Lee

I believe Reilly & Lee was a successor to Reilly & Britton. The latter
firm submitted its annual publications catalog to _Publishers' Trade
List Annual_ each year from 1905 through 1918; Reilly & Lee submitted
catalogs each year from 1919 to at least 1947 (when my index of PTLA
stops). We hold no titles dated later than 1970, which suggests the firm
ended in or about that year.

I think Reilly & Britton may have established themselves a bit earlier
than 1905 -- one trace suggests 1902 -- but it is pretty likely that
Reilly & Lee first became an imprint in late 1918 or early 1919. Some
Reilly & Lee titles carry library catalog dates earlier than 1919, but
these all seem to be copyright (not title page) dates, which suggests
they are reprint editions of titles first brought out by the earlier
firm.

For more information on PTLA see
http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/lucile/ptla/history.htm

Cordially -------- Sid Huttner, The University of Iowa Libraries
sid-***@uiowa.edu

[Robert Beasecker]

The earliest publication that I can locate issued by Reilly & Britton is their 1901 _Hot stuff by famous funny men : comprising wit, humor, pathos, ridicule, repartee, satires, dialects, bulls, blunders and paradox, temperance, anecdotes, Irish, Dutch and Negro wit, political wit, scholastic, clerical, lawyer's and doctor's wit and humor ... / by Eli Perkins, Josh Billings, Alex Sweet, Mark Twain, Robert J. Burdette ... with 'The philosophy of wit and humor' by Melville D. Landon_.

Reilly & Lee was taken over by the Chicago firm Henry Regnery Co. in the 1970s; the last mention of them is in the Cumulative Book Index (CBI) volume for 1977: "Rellly & Lee. See Regnery." There is no such reference in 1978.

Robert Beasecker
Director of Special Collections
Grand Valley State University Libraries
1 Campus Drive
Allendale, Michigan 49401