Norton's Ingredients for Success                      5

The firm had now removed to its own quarters at 70 Fifth
Avenue. A glance back over its five-year history shows that it had
published with considerable success 2 5 full-size books besides 2 3
small handbooks (the New Science Series and other |i sheet im¬
ports). Among the new authors added to the list aside from those
already mentioned were Thomas E. Tallmadge with his The Story
of Architecture in America; Lillian Gilbreth, Living with our
Children; Franz Boas, Anthropology and Modern Life; and Wal¬
ter Binger, What Engineers Do.

The 1929 catalogs carried a total of 34 new titles. So many books
scarcely could have been published in a single year without more
personnel to carry through the several stages of manufacture, to
promote their sale, and to care for the paperwork of the rather
complicated business of book publishing. By the end of the year
there were a dozen persons on the payroll, from A'lr, Norton to
Howard Weill, the shipping clerk.

Among the 1929 new titles were G. Elliott Smith's Human His¬
tory, John Cowper Powys's The Meaning of Cidture, John Mason
Brown's Upstage, plus re-issues of the following important books
under rights secured from their former publishers: John Dewey's
Experience and Nature; and Bertrand Russell's Our Knowledge of
the External World and his Sceptical Essays. And there was the
highly successful novel. Ultima Thule, by an Australian lady, Mrs.
J. G. Robertson, who wrote under the pseudonym of Henry Han¬
del Richardson.

Early in 1929 Elling Aannestad had made a trip to England on
the firm's behalf and, among other things, arranged for the publi¬
cation of Mrs. Robertson's work in the United States. Ultima Thule
was received here with great acclaim; it was selected by the Book-
of-the-Month Club as its September, 1929, choice, and had a sub¬
stantial sale in both the trade and the book club editions. The novel
was the third of a trilogy, of wliich the two others (Australia Felix
and The Way Home) had earlier been published both in England
and in the States, but with little success. However, the Norton firm