Initially producing 6,500 books per day, that figure had grown to 115,000 books by 1945, at which time Doubleday was the largest publisher in the US, with annual sales of over 30 million books. Some of this growth had been spurred by the mail order subscription ‘book club’ model that was first introduced to the company by Nelson Doubleday in the 1920s. Garden City’s early books were actually primarily reprints of books first offered by Doubleday, printed from the original plates but on less expensive paper.

The earliest volumes in the Junior Deluxe Editions series were therefore not yet marketed as part of a standalone series, but were rather reprints of other publications in the Doubleday stable that were specially marketed as affordable but beautiful special “Junior De Luxe Editions” (yes, the space in “de luxe” is used in the earliest volumes) on the title page. For example, several of these volumes were taken from the ‘Rainbow Classics’ series under the World Publishing Company imprint from NY, simply dropping the introductions, and adding the text “Garden City, New York, Junior De Luxe Editions” to the title or fly leaf. Some of these early volumes did not feature the JDE title on the spine, nor list it as the publishing house on the copyright page (as do the ‘main’ books later in the series), and are identifiable only by the title page text, but as the series developed these recognisable features began to appear.