Outselling the Best Sellers–Sears Roebuck

Readers in 1897 were captivated by two books that have gained immortality in the literary world—Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkewicz, and Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage. But neither was read as voraciously, as raptly, as delightfully as a bulky volume sent post-free to millions of American homes—the “Consumers Guide” that we now know as the Sears Roebuck catalogue and billed as “the cheapest supply house on earth.” Its arrival surely deflated regular work production, as eve