Noonday Paperbacks

Noonday Press, founded October 1951, by Arthur A. Cohen, published its first novel on July 14, 1952: Epitaph of a Small Winner, by author Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis. Cohen intended Noonday to operate as a "university press type" of publisher, generally forfeiting the profit motive in favor of quality, and putting out the work of a Brazilian literary eminence, widely respected abroad but virtually unknown in the U.S., was certainly a good first step down that path. Three years later Machado de Assis's novel was announced as the first of the Noonday Paperbacks, a series distinct from Noonday's other quality paperback line, Meridian Books, which was intended for reprints of more scholarly works rather than novels.

From what I can tell, the first Noonday Paperbacks did not, at least initially, have any series numbers. Thus, although Epitaph of a Small Winner in later printings bore the series number N101, I don't think it had that number on initial publication as a paperback. Other early Noonday Paperbacks, like José Maria de Eça de Queirós/z's Cousin Bazilio and The Relic and Machado de Assis's Dom Casmurro, never received series numbers (i.e., they probably never received later Noonday printings). It's not clear when the Noonday Paperbacks were assigned N- series numbers, although it's definitely by late 1958 or early 1959, as PW lists the spring 1959 titles with N- numbers and the Noonday catalog in the 1959 Publishers' Trade List Annual lists all titles in print with N- numbers.

Here are the early Noonday Paperbacks (titles in bold never received N- series numbers and were probably never reprinted):

• Machado de Assis, Epitaph of a Small Winner (October 1955, $1.25) -- N101

• Eca de Queiroz, Cousin Bazilio (July 1956, $1.25)

• Machado de Assis, Dom Casmurro (July 1956, $1.25)

• Louis de Broglie, The Revolution in Physics (Oct. 1, 1956, $1.65) -- N103

• Benedetto Croce, Aesthetic (Oct. 1, 1956, $1.95) -- N102

• Knut Hamsun, Pan (Oct. 1, 1956, $1.25) -- N104

• Eca de Queiroz, The Relic (Oct. 1, 1956, $1.25)

• Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, The Dance of Shiva (Jan. 1957, postponed from Oct. 22, 1956, $1.45) -- N108

• Vyacheslav Ivanov, A Study in Dostoevsky: Freedom and the Tragic Life (Feb. 1957, $1.45) -- N107

• Hermann Hesse, Journey to the East (Mar. 1957, $1.25) -- N109

• Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Laocoon (Mar. 1957, $1.45) -- N105

• George Williamson, A Reader's Guide to T.S. Eliot (Mar. 1957, $1.45) -- N106

All other Noonday Paperbacks from 1957-1959, by which time new titles definitely had N- series numbers, received N- series numbers at some point, so I think it's sufficient to list everything by those numbers.

The Noonday titles continued through the sale of the Noonday Press to Farrar, Straus and Cudahy (later Farrar, Straus and Company from 1963-1964 and Farrar, Straus and Giroux from 1964 on) in 1960. FSG decided to drop the Noonday name at some point in the late 1970s -- the latest use of it in PW is from the Jan. 23, 1978, issue, but paperbacks continued to be assigned N- series numbers for a few years, at least until 1984.

In 1987 FSG chose to revive the Noonday name as a trade paperback imprint, placing Steve Wasserman in charge of both Noonday and Hill & Wang titles. Noonday paperbacks continued to be published by FSG into the late 1990s. I'm leaving these titles off because there's no systematic way to find them all. FSG was not a company that incorporated series numbers into their book numbers in the late 1960s, so it's not possible to track the series systematically after the N- series numbers disappeared.