Call for Papers: Modernist and early twentieth-century publishing houses

Symposium: Modernist and early twentieth-century publishing houses

To be held at the University of Reading, Special Collections, Friday 10^thJuly 2015

“We are thinking of starting a printing press, for all our friends stories. Don’t you think it’s a good idea?” (Virginia Woolf to Lady Robert Cecil, October 1916. Letters 2:120).

Much scholarship has been undertaken in recent years on the “institutions”, producers, and material makers of literary modernism. Such work has aided our understanding of the cultural and textual production of modernist writing and has been particularly prominent with regards to the important role played by periodicals and small and little magazines. The Modernist Journals Project http://modjourn.org/ is one example among many of the dynamic research taking place in this area.

This one-day symposium, taking inspiration from such scholarship, will offer an opportunity to focus on the publishers and publishing houses who also helped to make and produce modernism. Papers are invited from scholars and groups of scholars working on any global publishing house related to modernist writing – from Faber & Faber to Mills & Boon, from Chatto & Windus to the Gregynog Press, from Grant Richards to Tauchnitz. We hope that the day will offer an opportunity to explore some of the multifarious connections between these publishing houses and the writers, illustrators, press workers, managers and editors with whom they were associated. The day is being organised to coincide with the launch of the Modernist Archives Publishing Project (MAPP, funded by SSHRC 2013-15) which we hope, through working with other teams, to expand from the Hogarth Press as case study into the wider publishing landscape of the period.

Papers might explore themes and concepts such as:

-       Publishing and textuality

-       Publishing history and the history of reading

-       Publishing books and the little magazines

-       The roles of publishers, editors, press workers

-       Censorship and innovation

-       Editing

-       Digital initiatives in book and publishing history 

 

Please submit abstracts for papers (300 words max) to Dr Nicola Wilson,n.l.wilson@reading.ac.uk no later than Friday 8^th May.

Further information about the symposium can be found at https://publishinghistory.wordpress.com

Co-organised by Dr Nicola Wilson and Dr Claire Battershill, University of Reading and MAPP

www.modernistarchives.com