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 ]
Swiftly and at little cost, newspapers, magazines and sites like The Huffington Post are publishing their own version of ebooks. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2011-09-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Charlotte Williams Publication Date: Fri, 12/08/2011 - 08:30 Vintage Publishing will host a paid internship, with The Bodley Head editor Kay Peddle donating her £1,000 prize money from this year's Kim Scott Walwyn Prize to help fund the four-week one-off internship. Random House... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-08-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Charlotte Williams Publication Date: Fri, 08/07/2011 - 08:40 Will Sulkin will be retiring from his role as publishing director of The Bodley Head in April 2012, with Stuart Williams, editorial director at Harvill Secker, to step into the position. Sulkin's retirement in 2012 will... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-07-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Charlotte Williams Publication Date: Fri, 01/07/2011 - 11:09 The Bodley Head has acquired a non-fiction title about the developmental issues facing Africa, written by the founder of a Ugandan-based social enterprise that supplies processed coffees to the global market. Editor Kay... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-07-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Charlotte Williams Publication Date: Mon, 16/05/2011 - 09:06 The Bodley Head has acquired a title looking at the operation that searched for, and finally killed, Osama bin Laden, by al-Qaeda expert Peter Bergen. Publishing director Will Sulkin acquired UK and Commonwealth rights to... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-05-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Publication Date: Fri, 06/05/2011 - 08:35 Vintage assistant editor Kay Peddle has been awarded the Kim Scott Walwyn Prize 2011 for her Brain Shots audiobooks project for Bodley Head. She received the prize, which recognises the professional achievements of women in publishing yesterday evening... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-05-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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