DeWitt Wallace

DeWitt Wallace (1889-1981), American publisher, was the founder of Reader's Digest, one of the world's largest-selling magazines.

DeWitt Wallace was born on November 12, 1889, in St. Paul, Minnesota, where his father was on the faculty (and later president) of Macalester College. DeWitt attended Macalester from 1907 to 1909 but, finding life there too confining, transferred to the University of California at Berkeley. He returned to St. Paul in 1912 and was hired by a publishing firm specializing in farming literature. Much of the company's information was provided without cost by federal and state agencies. Wallace compiled a list of the available public documents, added his own comments, and published the result in 1916 in a pamphlet entitled Getting the Most Out of Farming. Acting as his own salesman, Wallace sold nearly 100,000 copies, primarily to rural bankers who offered it to their customers as a promotional device.

When America entered World War I Wallace enlisted in the Army, was sent to France, and in 1918 was seriously wounded in action near Verdun. Wallace passed the hours in a French military hospital editing superfluous words from magazine articles, preparing himself for his next publishing venture—Reader's Digest.

For six months in 1919 Wallace was a constant visitor to the periodical room of the Minneapolis Public Library. He pored through a host of magazines, seeking out those articles that still retained general interest even ten years after publication. The chosen few were then carefully condensed. By January 1920 he had prepared a sample issue of the Reader's Digest," 31 Articles Each Month From Leading Magazines, Each Article of Enduring Value and Interest, In Condensed and Permanent Form." The sample contained all of the essential elements that would make the Reader's Digest a world-wide success. Unlike most magazines of the day, the Digest contained no fiction, for it was envisioned as a service for busy readers who wanted hard facts conveyed quickly, clearly, and concisely. Wallace edited the Digest to speak directly to the concerns of the average reader, skillfully blending stories of human interest, down-to-earth advice, and good-natured humor. The Digest frankly acknowledged the world's problems but remained ever-confident of their eventual solution.

Wallace's initial plans for the Reader's Digest were, in retrospect, quite modest. He offered to give his idea to any publisher who would make him editor of the new magazine. But even on those generous terms no one was interested. So, as a last resort, he decided to publish the Digest himself. A small office was rented in New York City's Greenwich Village and hundreds of circulars were sent out to potential subscribers. His sole partner then, and in the years to come, was Lila Bell Acheson, the sister of a Macalester classmate. The couple were married in October 1921. When they returned from their honeymoon some 1,500 orders awaited them.

The first official edition of Reader's Digest appeared in February 1922. Most magazine publishers readily granted re-publication rights, for they considered a credit in the Digest a form of free advertising for their periodicals. In its early years the Digest itself carried no advertising and was sold solely by subscription. On that basis the magazine grew slowly, but steadily. In 1922 Wallace was able to move the company to its permanent headquarters in Pleas-antville, New York. Three years later the Digest had a circulation of 20,000 copies. The real growth of the Reader's Digest did not come until it was sold on the nation's newsstands, but Wallace did not take that step until 1929. He feared that other magazines, sensing new competition, would no longer grant reprint rights. Most of the major periodicals, however, continued with the Digest (some for a fee), and by the end of 1929 circulation had climbed over 100,000.

Wallace constantly adjusted his editorial product to meet the needs of his rapidly growing readership. For example, in February 1933 the Digest began presenting signed, original articles. In time the magazine would produce over half of its own material. As the Digest grew in size and influence it inevitably attracted its share of critics. Some scorned the Digest's brand of condensed English; others objected to its alleged conservative political bias.

Yet the Reader's Digest did have its crusading moments. It was one of the first major periodicals (in 1954) to link cigarette smoking and cancer, and it frequently attacked unfair business practices. The Digest's most famous article, "…And Sudden Death," published in August 1935, graphically portrayed the hazards of reckless driving. It became the most widely reprinted article in magazine history, with four million copies in circulation.

By the end of the 1930s Reader's Digest was moving into the international market. A British edition was produced in 1938, to be followed by editions in Spanish (1940), Portuguese (1942), Swedish (1943), and, eventually, most of the world's major languages. The foreign editions carried advertising from their inception. The American edition followed suit in 1955, but only after Wallace, in typical fashion, had first surveyed the likely reaction of his readers. Wallace, meanwhile, was reaching out into other areas of publishing, usually successfully. The Reader's Digest Book Club, for example, offered its members quarterly volumes of condensed books, primarily current novels. When the club started in 1950 it had 183,000 subscribers; in four years there were two and a half million.

Wallace gradually began to withdraw from the active management of the company in the mid-1960s, although he remained as chairman of the board until 1973. He died on March 30, 1981. At the time of his death over 30 million copies of Reader's Digest were being sold every month to readers in 163 countries.

Further Reading

The biography of DeWitt Wallace, a man who long shunned publicity, is inseparable from the story of his great creation, Reader's Digest. James Playsted Wood, Of Lasting Interest: The Story of the Reader's Digest (1967) was written with the cooperation of the magazine's management. Samuel A. Schreiner, Jr., The Condensed World of the Reader's Digest (1977) is a sometimes critical insider's view of Wallace and life at the Digest.

Additional Sources

Heidenry, John, Theirs was the kingdom: Lila and DeWitt Wallace and the story of the Reader's digest, New York: W.W. Norton, 1993. □

THE READER'S DIGEST

Small Wonder

The digest magazine was introduced in the 1920s; the term digest applied to both the format (5" X 7½) and the editorial policy. The first and only enduring digest magazine—which gave its name to the category—was The Readers Digest, founded by newlyweds DeWitt and Lila Wallace in 1922. DeWitt Wallace condensed articles published in other magazines to provide a monthly selection of "enduring value" cut for people who did not have time to read many magazines or long articles; there was no fiction. Because there were no ads, the price of twenty-five cents (three dollars per year) was high at a time when most magazines cost ten cents or fifteen cents. The no-ad policy held until 1955. The first issue, dated February 1922, went to 1,500 subscribers. By 1929 there were 216,000 subscribers, and The Reader's Digest, which ultimately reached a world circulation of more than 30 million, was on its way to becoming the most successful magazine in history. From the start The Reader's Digest had critics who charged that it was cheerfully lowbrow and oversimplified complex ideas. Nonetheless, the editorial formula worked: readership extended to 163 countries with editions in sixteen languages. The digest concept was widely imitated, but none of the imitations succeeded.

Editorial Policy

The extraordinary popularity of The Reader's Digest resulted from the nature of the material and the character of the magazine as much as from its readability. Until the operation became too big for one editor to control, DeWitt Wallace was responsible for selecting all the articles: "I simply hunt for things that interest me, and if they do, I print them." In the early years he worked in the New York Public Library, making condensations himself in longhand, and until the 1930s he was not charged reprint fees. The Digest began including book condensations in 1934. The overall tone of each issue was optimistic and wholesome, with a certain spiritual quality; the Digest was politically conservative, but it had a progressive attitude toward sex education. The Digest had a missionary aspect, engaging in medical crusades and campaigning for safer driving. It was among the earliest magazines to publish the connection between cigarettes and lung cancer.

Sources:

John Bambridge, Little Wonder, or, The Reader's Digest and How it Grew (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1946);

John Heidenry, Theirs Was the Kingdom: Lila and De Witt Wallace and the Story of the Reader's Digest (New York: Norton, 1993).

Wallace, DeWitt (1889–1981), magazine editor and publisher, philanthropist, and Wallace, Lila (1888–1984), philanthropist.Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, DeWitt Wallace proved an indifferent student. Expelled from Macalester College (where his father taught religion, Greek, and political science), he later dropped out of the University of California, Berkeley. After apprenticing at a St. Paul publishing firm, he joined the army. Wounded during World War I in the Meuse‐Argonne offensive, he perfected his idea for the Reader's Digest in a military hospital. On his return, he courted Lila Bell Acheson, a social worker. Born in Virden, Manitoba, Lila shared with DeWitt both a strict Presbyterian upbringing and a rebellious individualism. Married in October 1921, they published the first issue of Reader's Digest in New York City the following February, with Lila nominally listed as an editor to attract women readers. Later they transferred the headquarters of the Reader's Digest Association to Pleasantville, New York.

The Digest's emphasis on brevity, spiritual uplift, confidence‐building, real‐life dramas, and homey humor found a ready market. The editorial formula was later broadened to include original material in addition to condensed reprints from other magazines. From its inception, the magazine also reflected DeWitt's pronounced conservative views and nostalgic yearning for an idealized America. With government help, the first foreign editions appeared during and after World War II to counter Axis and communist propaganda. The immensely successful Condensed Books Division was launched in 1950. In 1955, to keep the cover price low, the Digest began accepting advertising.

In later years the childless Wallaces turned increasingly to philanthropy, particularly the arts and education. The Reader's Digest Association, worth three billion dollars, was bequeathed to seven major charities, with Macalester College as a major beneficiary. By the end of the twentieth century, published in nineteen languages, with a combined circulation above 27 million, the Reader's Digest remained the world's largest‐circulation magazine.
See also Journalism; Magazines; Popular Culture; Twenties, The.

Bibliography

John Heidenry , Theirs Was the Kingdom: Lila and DeWitt Wallace and the Story of the Reader's Digest, 1993.
Peter Canning , American Dreamers: The Wallaces and Reader's Digest: An Insider's Story, 1996.

John Heidenry

Reader's Digest, the (1922–), monthly magazine featuring condensations of articles reprinted from other periodicals. It had a circulation (1994) of 16,250,000 in the U.S. and of 31,000,000 in all of its 16 language editions, making it the widest circulated magazine in the U.S. and in the world. It also publishes a Braille edition, a school edition, and a phonograph transcription. About 60% of its articles are original works, generally farmed out to other magazines for first publication, the remaining being legitimate reprints. Until 1955 it did not carry advertising. It has always featured many filler items such as a department of picturesque speech, and maxims and epigrams. It also features condensations of books and human‐interest material. The editorial content is conservative and geared to the average mind. It is optimistic in depicting the joys of living on a small income, the ways of overcoming misfortune, the wonders of science, and the easy means of learning about “difficult” subjects.