Publisher and bookseller who championed some of the great avant-garde writers of the 20th centuryIn the 1950s the publisher and bookseller John Calder, who has died aged 91, introduced a British readership to some of the best writing from Europe, including the work of Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco and Marguerite Duras. In partnership with Marion Boyars in the company Calder & Boyars in the 60s and 70s, he published a series of vibrant and daring works from around the world. These included, in 1966, the US writer Hubert Selby Jr’s Last Exit to Brooklyn, for which the company was prosecuted for obscenity.Anybody who had the privilege of knowing Calder during his long and eventful life has a story about him. They may have met him as he travelled across the US in the 80s, hand-selling the books he published, heard him tell anecdotes about Ionesco or Wyndham Lewis at a party, experienced a romantic adventure with him, got inebriated with him, seen him whirling invoices around and barking instructions while he lay on a hospital bed after heart surgery: “Pay this – right-hand side, second drawer down – that one can wait – I’m not paying this one.” Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2018-08-21 00:00:00 UTC ]