LIKE THE MEDIEVAL LIBRARIES AT ALEXANDRIA AND CORDOVA, POLYGLOT'S MISSION IS TO RECOVER AND MAKE RARE, SCARCE, HARD-TO-FIND BOOKS AND INFORMATION AVAILABLE TO SCHOLARS, MODERN LIBRARIES AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC—A MISSION SUBSIDIZED BY GRANTS, VOLUNTEERS AND COOPERATING INSTITUTIONS WORLDWIDE.
Polyglot was founded on the premise that there is substantial demand in the Polyglot produces English and foreign language titles that have been perennially hard to find, hard to get, expensive to successfully source, and, once in hand, hard to read, because they were invariably poorly printed, edited and proofed. Polyglot offers these not readily or abundantly available titles at a price competitive with the retail price of new literature. Polyglot titles are suggested by librarians, literary societies, independent bookstore owners, home schoolers and heavy readers who seek new copies of scarce, out-of-print books now only available in the used book market. Librarians especially seek to replace damaged copies of perennial favorites to lend to a new generation of readers.
Polyglot also offers LARGE PRINT editions of all of its titles in response to the needs of increasing numbers of low vision readers, and the needs of education and advocacy groups working with increasing vision impairment in an aging population.
Polyglot has a special interest in multilingual readers. Worldwide, there are 400 million English-as-mother tongue (or first-language) speakers, 375 million Spanish-as-first-language speakers (40 million
Polyglot is republishing COMPREHENSIVE COLLECTIONS of well known sixteenth to nineteenth century Northern European, North American and Australian novelists, playwrights and historians writing in English, and of prominent nineteenth and twentieth century Mediterranean and Latin American novelists, playwrights and historians writing in Spanish and Portuguese.
Polyglot is also producing HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS for 2005 release that highlight scholarship on Mediterranean Culture from late Antiquity through the Renaissance.
Polyglot thanks the numerous cooperating contributors, volunteers and institutions that have made our mission possible: The Horatio Alger Society, Northern Illinois University, The Free Library of Philadelphia, The Jane Austen Society, Lighthouse International, The Art Institute of Philadelphia, The University of the Arts, Wabash College, The Heritage Foundation, The William Penn Charter School, General Lew Wallace Study & Museum, Montgomery County (IN) Historical Society, Montgomery County (IN) Visitors and Convention Bureau, Indiana Historical Society, Kansas State University, and the Scott Family.
PURCHASES OF POPULAR POLYGLOT TITLES AND COLLECTIONS ALSO HELP SUBSIDIZE THE COST OF PUBLISHING LESS WELL KNOWN TITLES OF INTEREST TO SMALL GROUPS OF SPECIALIZED READERS.