I AST week some quarter of a million people in the U.S. began L receiving a handsome new book. It is The World of Delacroix, second in a projected multivolume series called the Library of Art published by TIME-LIFE BOOKS. Since 1961, TIME-LIFE BOOKS has distributed a total of more than 50 million books in 13 languages, now ranks among the world's top ten book-publishing enterprises.

The Library of Art is one of eight series of volumes in production or already completed. One series studies science in all its branches; others deal with nature, U.S. history and the world's cultures. The LIFE World Library of 34 volumes examines in words and pictures the lands of the earth. Each series is profusely illustrated in color. In addition, there is the TIME Reading Program, which offers low-cost, soft-cover reprints of books that have lasting quality.

TIME-LIFE BOOKS is a separate division of Time Inc. The editors of TIME, busy enough in their own field, do not actively participate in the BOOKS division's work. However, many of the 247 people on the editorial staff of that division were drawn from TIME and her sister publications. Out next week will be the 18th volume in the Science Library, Planets, co-authored by Jonathan Norton Leonard, for many years TIME'S science writer.

Editor of the TIME Reading Program is Max Gissen, who for 16 years was a writer in TIME'S Books section. Rhett Austell was general manager of TIME when he was named publisher of TIME-LIFE BOOKS in 1964.

On most books, scholars and other experts are brought in as consultants and writers. Sir Maurice Bowra and Moses Hadas authored volumes in the Great Ages of Man series, respectively Classical Greece and Imperial Rome. Most volumes carry an introduction by an authority in his field. Among the introducers:

British Author-Physicist C. P. Snow; John Walker, Director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington; Glenn T. Seaborg, Chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission; Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall; Henry Ford II. While, in its beginning days in book publishing, Time Inc. brought out volumes that were in large measure derived from articles that had appeared in the magazines, the texts and nearly all of the photographs in all TIME-LIFE BOOKS titles are new.

TIME-LIFE BOOKS is a unique publishing venture in many ways. It brings high-quality books at low cost to large numbers of readers. The books are sold almost exclusively by mail order. Response by both reader and critic has been warm. Of the first volume in the Library of Art series, Artist Rockwell Kent said: "It would be hard for me to overstate my delight in The World of Michelangelo -- not merely for its superb reproductions of the master's work but for the textual and pictorial presentation." The Great Ages of Man series, wrote the Los Angeles Times, "demonstrates the imposing possibilities of pictorial history . . This, of course, is to be expected from the TIME-LIFE specialists. What is even more important is the selection of scholars of the reputation of Bowra and Hadas for texts. Research is meticulous and relevant. This is history written with respect for the reader's intelligence, and, therefore, more worthy of praise."

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