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Myers Literary Guide:
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The North-East
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JOSEPH DENT (1849 - 1926) Dent was born in Archer Street, Darlington in 1849, the tenth child of a housepainter. In his memoirs, he describes how he joined a Mutual Improvement society attached to his local chapel; there he was given the subject of Dr Johnson to prepare. By the time he had finished Boswell's biography, Dent's destiny was settled. Literature became a kind of religion for him, and though he recognised that he could never be a writer, he would serve as door-keeper of the Temple, as he put it. In 1867, the young apprentice book-binder came to London, but it was not until 1888 that he felt able to pursue his dream of publishing. His Temple Shakespeare was a great success, selling a quarter of a million annually to begin with. Dent also encouraged young illustrators like Arthur Rackham and Aubrey Beardsley, and attracted prominent men of letters to be his collaborators. In 1906 came the beginning of the Everyman Library, for which Dent is world-famous. The idea was to build up a great 'city of books' on popular lines - he never lost sight of readers who, like himself had left school at 13 and needed cheap high-quality books ranging over the world's literature. Dent's own literary taste has been described as 'naive, old-fashioned, petit bourgeois and blindly worshipful'. He was, however, shrewdly advised by his general editor Ernest Rhys (q.v.) another self-made man of letters and between them they correctly judged the deferential seriousness of their potential market. By 1956 title number 1000 was reached, with the famous line from the play Everyman still inside: Everyman, I will go with thee and be thy guide
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