Faber & Faber: by Toby Faber review – the untold story of a publishing giant

They turned down Ulysses and Animal Farm, but still shaped 20th‑century literatureAll publishing houses have archives, but for anyone interested in 20th-century literature the archive of Faber & Faber is a fabled treasure house. This is the firm that was, as Toby Faber puts it, “midwife at the birth of modernism”. In 1924 Faber’s grandfather, Geoffrey Faber, aspiring poet and fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, had been installed as chairman of the Scientific Press, recently inherited by another All Souls fellow, Maurice Gwyer. It published mostly books and journals for nurses. Geoffrey Faber renamed it and started making it into a literary publisher. Within his first year he had installed TS Eliot as a fellow director and acquired his backlist.The firm would go on to publish Ezra Pound, WH Auden and James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Then Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Philip Larkin, Seamus Heaney: a poetry list to beat all others. Academics have always itched to get into the Faber archive, to get at the letters and memos that record how this 20th-century canon was made. Toby Faber has rights of entry. He has given us a highly selective anthology rather than a narrative: his book is made up of extracts from original documents (mostly letters, but also memos, board minutes and blurbs), with spare comments from himself.Faber & Faber allowed The Bodley Head to get Ulysses; “Feebler and Fumbler”, Joyce called the firm Related: Lord of the Flies? ‘Rubbish’.... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'

[ The Guardian | 2019-06-20 11:00:08 UTC ]

Other news stories related to: "Faber & Faber: by Toby Faber review – the untold story of a publishing giant"


Lenore Taylor on why truth, facts and journalism are more important to democracy than ever

In 2020 the media was faced with the dual challenge of covering a pandemic and an avalanche of misinformation. In this episode of Full Story, Guardian Australia editor Lenore Taylor discusses how Australia’s response compared with other countries and the challenges ahead for journalismThis... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2021-01-19 16:30:01 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Who Gets to Tell the Story of the Midwest?

I originally called Columbus a cowtown. When I first emailed Anne Trubek, the founder and director of Belt Publishing, about the possibility of editing an anthology about Columbus, Ohio, I proposed they publish a Columbus anthology as part of their city anthology series because, “Columbus, Ohio... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2021-01-12 09:49:51 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Black Futures Co-Creators to Guest-Curate Facebook App’s Lift Black Voices Section

Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham, co-authors of visual anthology Black Futures, will become the first-ever guest curators of the Lift Black Voices section in its flagship mobile applications. Starting Monday and lasting for three weeks, they will personally select collections of dialogues, essays... Continue reading at AdWeek

[ AdWeek | 2021-01-11 18:55:42 UTC ]
More news stories like this


“Lusting after a Tart of Peacock Tongues”: A Conversation with Publisher Barbara Epler, by Veronica Esposito

Interviews Barbara Epler started working at New Directions after graduating from college in 1984, and she has been its president and publisher since 2011. In 2015 Poets & Writers awarded Epler their Editor’s Prize, and in 2016 Words Without Borders... Continue reading at World Literature Today

[ World Literature Today | 2021-01-11 14:39:22 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Pushing the bounds of form in ‘The Glorious American Essay’

Phillip Lopate's choices for this fine anthology may stretch the parameters of an essay, but he's made distinctive and evocative selections. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor

[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2020-12-23 21:36:26 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Pushing the bounds of form in ‘The Glorious American Essay’

Phillip Lopate's choices for this fine anthology may stretch the parameters of an essay, but he's made distinctive and evocative selections. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor

[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2020-12-23 21:36:26 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Pushing the bounds of form in ‘The Glorious American Essay’

Phillip Lopate's choices for this fine anthology may stretch the parameters of an essay, but he's made distinctive and evocative selections. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor

[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2020-12-23 21:36:26 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Read Harder: An SFF Anthology Edited by a Person of Color

In this Read Harder Challenge post, we're recommending books for the task asking you to read an SFF anthology edited by a person of color. Continue reading at Book Riot

[ Book Riot | 2020-12-18 11:31:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this


A never-before-seen Shirley Jackson story has just been published.

This week is a whirlwind for Shirley Jackson fans! On Monday we learned we’re getting a Jackson tribute anthology in 2021, and now, an unseen Shirley Jackson story has been published in The Strand Magazine. Jackson’s son, Laurence Hyman, found the story—“Adventure on a Bad Night”—among Jackson’s... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2020-12-17 16:17:13 UTC ]
More news stories like this


The best journalism of 2020: Covering the pandemic

A year has passed since the novel coronavirus first emerged. Even with mass inoculation efforts underway, it continues to rage on, with little sign of abating.  Throughout this year, we’ve relied on journalism to make sense of it all—especially as the virus’s spread frequently outpaced our... Continue reading at Columbia Journalism Review

[ Columbia Journalism Review | 2020-12-15 13:02:41 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Denver Indie Bookstore Launches BookBar Press with Debut Release

Independent Denver bookstore BookBar has launched its new publishing division, BookBar Press, with the publication of an anthology of micro-plays written by area playwrights. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-12-15 05:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham on Social Media, Black Futurity, and the Archive

Writers Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham have edited and brought forth to the world Black Futures, a visually-stunning mixed-media anthology that threads together different facets of Black culture and thought by some of today’s most esteemed poets, artists, academics, and creatives. At its heart,... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2020-12-11 09:49:52 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Announcing a New Publishing Project and a Call for Co-Editors: Best Translations: An Annual Anthology, by The Editors of WLT

News and Events Photo by Wendy Call / www.wendycall.com Deadline for Applications: Thursday, January 7, 2021 Call for Applications: Two series co-editors, one with expertise in Asian literatures and one with expertise in Middle Eastern and/or... Continue reading at World Literature Today

[ World Literature Today | 2020-12-09 14:16:34 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Announcing WLT’s 2020 Pushcart Prize Nominees, by The Editors of WLT

News and Events Photo: Quarantine portrait. Tulsa, Oklahoma. March 22, 2020, by Joseph Rushmore. This photograph accompanied the publication of Rilla Askew's "Cataclysm" in the Summer 2020 issue of World Literature Today. The editors of World... Continue reading at World Literature Today

[ World Literature Today | 2020-11-30 21:07:51 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Small Axe: what Steve McQueen got right and wrong about lovers rock

Centred around a Blues Party in London, the second film from the Small Axe anthology captured the excitement of setting up a party but missed things about sound system culture in the UK. Continue reading at The Conversation

[ The Conversation | 2020-11-30 15:04:41 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Inkandescent makes its mark with crowdsourced anthology

An Unbound link-up for a new anthology of writers from the margins could put indie Inkandescent on the map Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2020-11-27 17:33:34 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Carrie Jade Williams wins Bodley Head and FT essay prize

The Bodley Head and the Financial Times have announced Carrie Jade Williams as the winner of their eighth annual essay prize. Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2020-11-26 18:25:17 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Life Isn’t a Narrative: A Conversation with JoAnn Wypijewski

JoAnn Wypijewski is a writer, editor, and journalist based in New York. From 1982 to 2000, she was an editor at The Nation magazine and co-editor, with Kevin Alexander Gray and Jeffrey St. Clair, of Killing Trayvons: An Anthology of American Violence (2014). She has written for CounterPunch,... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books

[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-11-26 18:00:16 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Indie ingenuity

The small press industry works on a shoestring. Departments of marketing, PR, editorial and design often do not exist and instead become merged into one, with a couple of freelancers. Small presses exist for the same reason that large publishing houses do - for the love of books and in the name... Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2020-11-24 19:57:10 UTC ]
More news stories like this


Jeff Bezos’s thoughts on Big Business, outer space and The Washington Post

An anthology of writings provides a glimpse into the mind of the Amazon founder. Continue reading at The Washington Post

[ The Washington Post | 2020-11-20 13:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this