The logotype that identifies all Melville House books, found near the bottom of their spines, is composed of a triangle sitting off center atop a square — a black, geometrically minimal archetype representing “house.” Melville House has the “house” in common with our distributor Random House, whose spines imagine a more commodious and less opaque dwelling (it has windows).

Earlier this year, on the LA Times blog Jacket Copy, Adam Tschorn published a link to “A Discussion with Dr. Paul LeClerc” in which LeClerc reveals that the house belonged (or belongs) to Candide, Voltaire’s innocent guide to this best of all possible worlds.

Founding publisher Bennett Cerf commissioned Rockwell Kent to illustrate Candide, and in 1928 it became the first book published under Cerf’s newly created Random House imprint. The book had been published in 1918 by Boni & Liveright, in their Modern Library, a collection that Cerf, a Modern Library editor, bought from the financially foundering Liveright.

According to LeClerc, Kent “intended to depict the home where Candide and his companions lived out their days cultivating their garden as described in the last pages of the story.”

The Candide colophon

Neither Rockwell Kent nor Candide appear (using the Look Inside! feature on Amazon) to be mentioned in Cerf’s book of reminiscences, At Random, but in an interview archived by the Columbia University Libraries Oral History Research Office, Cerf recalls his epiphany:

Rockwell Kent I met with Elmer Adler. The day we dreamed up the name of Random House, Rockwell dropped in. He was sitting at my desk facing Donald [Klopfer, Cerf’s partner], and I went to the bathroom, which is where I get some of my finest ideas. And we were talking then about doing a few books on the side. And while I was on the throne I got this inspiration, and came out and said, “I’ve got the name for our publishing house. We just said we were going to publish a few books on the side at random. Let’s call it Random House.”
Donald liked it, and Rockwell Kent said, “That’s a great name. I’ll draw your trademark.” So, sitting at my desk, he took a piece of paper and in five minutes he drew Random House, which has been our trademark ever since.

You can buy one of the original 1470 copies of Candide signed by Rockwell Kent here, or a facsimile edition commemorating Random House’s 75th anniversary for $8.50, here.