William Godwin, Inc. formally started operations in 1930. It seems to have been the outgrowth of a text book printing firm. The idea behind the imprint (Godwin was both the publishing company’s name and the name of one of its lines) appears to have been to expand the plant’s short run hard back printing business beyond the academic arena. Godwin was mostly an erotica imprint. In 1932, William Godwin, Inc. used the imprint, Rarity Press, and the text and illustrations of books originally published by the Fortune Press and John Lane, both of London, to bring out impressions of erotic classics that enjoyed “tremendous sales at Macy’s and Hearn’s at a dollar a piece.” They also used the imprint “Exotica Club, Inc.” for at least one book, Casanova’s Memoirs (with original art from the soon to be famous director, Vincente Minnelli). Godwin eventually organized a subsidiary known as Arcadia House Publications which published “good clean romances especially designed for the circulating library.” See Commuter Libraries.

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