Books: Personal Publisher

Personal Publisher

Varicose Veins, McCarthy and His Enemies and Patristic Homilies on the Gospels have one thing in common: they are published by Henry Regnery Co.. a young Chicago publishing house that operates in the old tradition of the personal publisher. Regnery's personal publisher is its 43-year-old president, Henry Regnery, a slight, intense man, whose interests and whims in religion, philosophy, education, poetry and politics have produced a varied, provocative, often infuriating and rarely dull catalogue of Regnery books.

Henry Regnery has published a spate of works by such right-wing authors as William F. Buckley Jr., Chesly Manly, Louis Budenz, William Henry Chamberlain and Freda Utley. He seems to act as a magnet for those who hate Roosevelt, champion Joe McCarthy, attack unlimited academic freedom and take a dim view of the U.N. On the whole, he finds himself aligned with his authors' opinions, but he rarely hobnobs with right-wing VIPs. He sees himself as the champion of outcast authors, charges other publishers with deliberately ignoring books that express a far-right point of view. "It wouldn't be any service for me to publish the liberal authors." he says. "They have plenty of publishers who are only too happy to have them."

Sweaters & Philosophy. It was his concern about the lack of a sounding board for many "worthwhile ideas" that brought him into publishing. His father, the Wisconsin-born son of an Alsatian immigrant, built up a fortune in textiles and banking in Chicago, helped found and support the isolationist America First Committee. Young Henry studied at M.I.T., the University of Bonn and Harvard graduate school in preparation for a career in the family textile business. Later, he founded a successful sweater factory, and married the daughter of Philadelphia Banker Alfred Scattergood, a well-known Quaker.

Henry had developed into something of an egghead while at school, and his chief interests were the German and Communist problems. At war's end he was approached by friends who could not find a publisher for a book criticizing Henry Morgenthau's plan to reduce Germany to a pastoral state. Henry forgot about textiles and banks. Eight years ago he formed his publishing firm. Millionaire Regnery likes to say that it cost him $100,000 to learn the publishing business. but today the company is in the black.

Regnery's catalogue is weak on sex and popular novels, includes textbooks, classics reprints, and such unexpected offerings as The Natural History of a Yard and How to Free Yourself from Nervous Tension. Regnery risks his money on such deserving but esoteric authors as England's Wyndham Lewis and Swiss Philosopher Max Picard. A fat list of steadily selling Roman Catholic books helps him take losses on less popular works.