UNFORGETTABLE DeWitt Wallace

This month marks 100 years since Reader’s Digest got its humble start. Here is the remarkable story of the man who, with his wife, Lila, built it into a global success

- Charles Ferguson

HE WAS A QUIET MAN WHO SAID LITTLE PUBLICLY. DEWITT WALLACE SPOKE INSTEAD THROUGH READER’S DIGEST, WHICH BECAME THE WORLD’S LARGEST INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE. IN ITS PAGES HE TOLD MORE STORIES AND BROUGHT MORE INFORMATION— AND LAUGHTER—TO MORE READERS THAN PERHAPS ANY OTHER MAN WHO LIVED.

THE SCENE IS Greenwich Village, New York City, one morning in January 1922. The Village, where rents are low, is a quaint bohemian place peopled by artists, poets and writers. Those who deal with the printed word come to New York to be near literary markets.

At No. 1 Minetta Lane, in a basement storeroom office, the last copies of the first issue of Reader’s Digest, with a February 1922 cover date, are being readied for shipment. The work is supervised by DeWitt Wallace and Lila Acheson Wallace, founders and co-editors of the magazine. They have hired habitués of the speakeasy upstairs to help.

Finally, the last of 5,000 copies are wrapped, addressed, trussed in mailbags and set outside. A cab will take them to the nearest post office, from where they will be sent to subscribers. Then will come days of anxious waiting to see if the little newcomer is indeed what the world has been waiting for.