Reclam

Reclam Verlag or just Reclam is a German publishing house, established in Leipzig in 1828 by Anton Philipp Reclam (1807–1896). It is partuclarly known for the "little yellow books" of its Universal-Bibliothek ("universal library"), simple paperback editions of literary classics for school and education.

In 1802 Charles Henri Reclam (1776–1844), whose family originated from Savoy, had moved to Leipzig where he established a bookselling business. His son Anton Philipp completed his apprenticeship as a book printer and bookseller and borrowed money to purchase the Literarisches Museum, a lending library in Leipzig's inner city. During the Restoration period and under the terms of the Carlsbad Decrees, it quickly evolved to a centre of intellectual and literary circles of the pre-revolutionary Vormärz era.

On 1 October 1828 Anton Philipp Reclam founded his own publishing house, first named Verlag des literarischen Museums. When he sold the library in 1837, the company was renamed Philipp Reclam jun. Two years later, he also acquired a Leipzig print shop and became able to market his publishing programme in large numbers. However, the democratic tendencies earned him a sales ban in the lands of the Austrian Empire and a prison sentence by a Leipzig court for publishing a German translation of Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason (Das Zeitalter der Vernunft).

After the German revolutions of 1848–49 had ultimatively failed, Reclam changed his policies and concentrated on the mass distribution of literary classics. From 1858 to 1865 he edited the complete works of William Shakespeare. When according to a 1856 resolution of the German Federal Convention the literary works of numerous German authors was declared public domain (gemeinfrei) in 1867, Reclam started his Universal-Bibliothek with Goethe's Faust I, followed by Faust II, Lessing's Nathan the Wise and numerous other plays and novels, predominantly of the Weimar Classicist period.

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