Reader’s Digest: A favourite across generations of magazine lovers

Indian fans of Reader’s Digest recall their fondest memories of the magazine in its heyday

Bookish folks of a certain age sighed remorsefully when they heard of the UK edition of Reader’s Digest (RD) permanently going off the stands from June after 86 years, owing to financial pressures. In India, the magazine holds a special place in the hearts of readers who grew up in the pre-internet era, as RD gave English-loving families a window to a world outside their own.

“There was a time when Reader’s Digest was publishing books on health, general knowledge, nutrition and dictionaries that stood out not just for their content, but their layout, colour photography and paper quality. Even the binding on these books was superb, and stayed intact,” says K. Balasubramaniyan, an engineer-turned-author, environmentalist and book collector who maintains a library of 1,50,000 books, five lakh magazines and 10 lakh back issues of newspapers at his family home in Tiruchi’s Thillai Nagar neighbourhood.

Balasubramaniyan recently received a gunnysack full of RD from a friend, and is busy sorting them out when we meet. “I was so sad to learn that the British edition is closing down. With the growth of electronic media, nobody seems to have the time to read physical books. I hope someone will re-publish popular issues of RD for a new generation of readers,” he says.

First published in 1922, by American couple DeWitt Wallace and Lila Bell Wallace, Reader’s Digest began as a US-based pocket-sized compendium of condensed articles taken from other periodicals. In many ways, RD could be called the original aggregator, breaking reading material of topical interest and entertainment value into capsules of information that appealed to a wide range of public tastes.

For several decades, says a Wikipedia page, RD maintained a format of 30 articles per issue (one for each day of the month), including columns such as ‘It Pays to Increase your Word Power’ vocabulary quiz, a page of ‘Amusing Anecdotes’ and ‘Personal Glimpses’, funny stories entitled ‘Humour in Uniform’ and ‘Life’s Like That!’, among others.

The Indian and Pakistani editions were launched in 1954, and some of its earliest fans credit RD for introducing them to Western literature. “RD was part of my English reading, from the 1950s, and we had a whole library of ‘Condensed Books’ published by them at home,” says retired High Court judge Prabha Sridevan. “Circulating libraries were not common in Chennai at the time, so most of the magazines would be given away at the end of the month. My father wrote a joke for the Life’s Like That! column.”

“I read books like Rebecca, 39 Steps and other lovely titles in the Condensed version series,” says the septuagenarian.