With its soaring yet earthy motto -- "Everyman I will go with thee/ and be thy guide" -- the Everyman's Library published its first volume, Boswell's "The Life of Samuel Johnson," in 1906. Before long it became the most successful venture ever undertaken by an English language publisher. By 1965 the English house of J.M. Dent & Sons and its American partner, E.P. Dutton, had sold 46 million copies in the series, whose 1,000-plus titles included works by Dickens and Homer, Austen, Dostoevsky and Shakespeare.

This cultural phenomenon is spotlighted by an eye-opening exhibit at Wilson Library at UNC-Chapel Hill. "The ABC of Collecting Everyman's Library: Archives, Books, Collections" showcases more than 100 Everyman's volumes and bookmarks owned by collector Terry Seymour, as well as materials from the Dent archives housed at UNC.

Jewels of the exhibit include the copy of "Alice in Wonderland" owned by Lewis Carroll's muse, Alice Liddell Hargreaves; a copy of Aristotle's "Metaphysics," annotated by C.S. Lewis; and a gorgeously illustrated version of "Pinocchio" by Carlo Collodi -- yes, kids, there was a book before the movie!

The beauty of these books - their gilt-edged spines and elaborate endpapers created by Aubrey Beardsley, Reginald Knowles and other renowned artists - is entrancing. And the pleasure this biblio-eye candy provides is matched by the inspiring history of the series detailed in background material displayed beneath the glass cases.

The Everyman's Library was more than paper and ink. It was a utopian project that put books at the center of human progress. In our own time, when literature has receded to the margins of popular culture, the Everyman's Library reminds us not too long ago millions of American and Brits believed that the books could make them better people.

This point is illuminated by an unlikely source, actress Elizabeth Taylor. In 1969, she presented her then-husband, Richard Burton, with a complete set of the Everyman's Library -- including the copy of Dickens' "Nicholas Nickleby" on display at UNC -- for his 44th birthday.

Burton, the 12th of 13 children born to a coal miner's family in Wales, visited brighter worlds and dreamed of greater things thanks to the horizons revealed to him by the Everyman's Library. The aspiring actor was the kind of person Joseph Malaby Dent and his associate Ernest Rhys aimed to reach.

A self-educated son of a house painter, Dent was, as Terry Seymour has put, it, "something of a tyrant and a penny-pincher, but also a visionary. He wanted to make money, but he had a lot of idealism, too."

Dent dreamed of a library, 1,000 volumes strong, offering the world's best books for "a democratic shilling" each (30 cents in America). They would include thoughtful introductions to help hardscrabble readers appreciate their themes and significance. And they would sport high-minded quotes capturing the project's missionary spirit.

Early dust jackets were graced with Thomas Carlyle's assertion that "The true university in these days is a collection of books." The Everyman's edition of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" was graced with Sir Philip Sidney's lovely line, "A tale which holdeth children from play and old men from the chimney corner."

Dent was not a solitary dreamer. The Everyman's Library reflected visionary currents about labor and industry in late 19th- and early 20th-century European and American culture.

As the UNC exhibit notes, Dent was deeply influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement. Exemplified by the work of the artist William Morris, the furniture maker Gustav Stickley and the architect Frank Lloyd Wright, the movement trumpeted the value of skilled craftsmanship over the "soulless" products of modern factories. Hence the intricate detail in the design of the Everyman's books.

In addition, Dent operated his business out of the Letchworth Garden City. Forty miles north of London, this pioneering planned community combined the best aspects of the city and countryside. Businesses were kept separate from residential areas in a landscape marked by open spaces and shady trees -- beneath which Everyman and Everywoman might read.

"Dent's was among the first companies to shorten the workweek, to employ large numbers of women at equal pay, and to form a thrifty pension plan to benefit long-term employees," the pamphlet describing the UNC exhibit notes.

Dent died in 1926, but his firm continued publishing the Everyman's Library and a wide range of other books until its demise in the late 1980s. When the company's assets were auctioned off in 1991, UNC acquired many of Dent's records to add to its impressive collection documenting the history of publishing.

Alfred A. Knopf revived the imprint in 1991. While maintaining the tradition of offering high-quality books at a reasonable price, it has, through no fault of its own, been unable to continue the social mission that fueled the series.

The Everyman's Library thrived because it reflected the aspirational culture that once flourished among those for whom higher education was beyond reach. Before radio, TV and the Internet changed our definition of culture and knowledge, many working-class people (itself now a quaint term) agreed with the 19th-century English writer Matthew Arnold that we could come "to know ourselves and the world" only by encountering "the best that has been thought and said."

During the 20th century, that basic truth came to be branded as elitist. Notions of uplift and edification were dismissed as stuffy and archaic.

What bunk. And what a pity.

That's the message of the exhibit at UNC, articulated by John Milton in a quote that adorns the first volume of the Everyman's Library: "A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit embalmed and treasured upon purpose to a life beyond life."