Calder Publications is a publisher of books. Since 1949

1949 in literature

The year 1949 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Arthur C. Clarke becomes Assistant Editor of Science Abstracts.*Bertrand Russell receives the Order of Merit....

, it has published many books on all the arts, particularly musical subjects like opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 and painting, the theatre and critical and philosophical theory. Calder's authors have achieved nineteen Nobel Literature Prizes

Nobel Prize in Literature

Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...

 and three for Peace

Nobel Peace Prize

The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel.-Background:According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize shall be awarded to the person who...

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History

John Calder

John Calder

John Mackenzie Calder is a Canadian and Scottish publisher who founded Calder Publishing in 1949.-Biography:John Calder was a friend of Samuel Beckett, becoming the main publisher of his prose-texts in Britain after the success of Waiting for Godot on the London stage in 1955-56...

 started his publishing house in 1949 when manuscripts were plentiful and many books that were in demand were out of print - the immediate post-war-years paper was scarce and severely rationed.

During the 1950s he built up a list of translated classics which included the works of Chekhov

Anton Chekhov

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics...

, Tolstoy

Tolstoy

Tolstoy, or Tolstoi is a prominent family of Russian nobility, descending from Andrey Kharitonovich Tolstoy who served under Vasily II of Moscow...

, Dostoevsky, Goethe and Zola

Zola

Zola may refer to:People:* Zola , South African entertainer* Émile Zola , French novelist* Arlette Zola, Swiss singer* Calvin Zola , Congo DR footballer...

 among others. Calder then began to publish American titles. As a result of Senator Joe McCarthy's "witch-hunt" he was able to acquire significant American authors as well as books on issues of civil liberty which mainstream publishers in New York were afraid to keep on their lists. This led to the development of close ties with those smaller American firms who resisted the McCarthyite pressure.

By the late 1950s, Calder was publishing a group of new writers who would change the face of twentieth-century literature. One of these was Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett

Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...

; of whom Calder published all his novels, poetry, criticism, and some of his plays. Others became synonymous with the school of the "nouveau roman

Nouveau roman

The nouveau roman is a type of 1950s French novel that diverged from classical literary genres. Émile Henriot coined the title in an article in the popular French newspaper Le Monde on May 22, 1957 to describe certain writers who experimented with style in each novel, creating an essentially new...

" or "new novel". These included Alain Robbe-Grillet

Alain Robbe-Grillet

Alain Robbe-Grillet , was a French writer and filmmaker. He was, along with Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and Claude Simon, one of the figures most associated with the Nouveau Roman trend. Alain Robbe-Grillet was elected a member of the Académie française on March 25, 2004, succeeding Maurice...

, Marguerite Duras

Marguerite Duras

Marguerite Donnadieu, better known as Marguerite Duras was a French writer and film director.-Background:...

, Claude Simon

Claude Simon

Claude Simon was a French novelist and the 1985 Nobel Laureate in Literature. He was born in Antananarivo, Madagascar, and died in Paris, France....

, Nathalie Sarraute

Nathalie Sarraute

Nathalie Sarraute was a French lawyer and writer of Russian Jewish origin.-Life:Sarraute was born Natalia/Natacha Tcherniak in Ivanovo , 300 km north-east of Moscow in 1900 , and, following...

 and Robert Pinget

Robert Pinget

Robert Pinget was a major avant-garde French writer, born in Switzerland, who wrote several novels and other prose pieces that drew comparison to Beckett and other major Modernist writers...

. Other European novelists, playwrights and poets included Heinrich Böll

Heinrich Böll

Heinrich Theodor Böll was one of Germany's foremost post-World War II writers. Böll was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize in 1967 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972.- Biography :...

, Dino Buzzati

Dino Buzzati

Dino Buzzati-Traverso was an Italian novelist, short story writer, painter and poet, as well as a journalist for Corriere della Sera. His worldwide fame is mostly due to his novel Il deserto dei Tartari, translated into English as The Tartar Steppe.-Life:Buzzati was born at San Pellegrino,...

, Eugène Ionesco

Eugène Ionesco

Eugène Ionesco was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist, and one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd...

, Fernando Arrabal

Fernando Arrabal

Fernando Arrabal Terán is a Spanish playwright, screenwriter, film director, novelist and poet. He settled in France in 1955, he describes himself as “desterrado,” or “half-expatriate, half-exiled.”...

, René de Obaldia

René de Obaldia

René de Obaldia is a French playwright and poet. He was elected to the Académie française June 24, 1999.He grew up in Paris, studying at the Lycée Condorcet before being mobilised for the army in 1940. Taken prisoner, he was sent to Stalag VIII C...

, Peter Weiss

Peter Weiss

Peter Ulrich Weiss was a German writer, painter, and artist of adopted Swedish nationality. He is particularly known for his plays Marat/Sade and The Investigation and his novel The Aesthetics of Resistance....

 and Ivo Andric

Ivo Andric

Ivan "Ivo" Andrić was a Yugoslav novelist, short story writer, and the 1961 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. His writings dealt mainly with life in his native Bosnia under the Ottoman Empire...

. Calder was soon launching new experimental British writers such as Ann Quin

Ann quin

Ann Quin was a British writer noted for her experimental style. The author of Berg , Three , Passages and Tripticks , she committed suicide in 1973 at the age of 37, the same year as B.S. Johnson...

, Alan Burns

Alan Burns

Professor Alan Burns FREng FIET FBCS SMIEEE CEng is a professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of York, England. He has been at the University of York since 1990, and held the post of Head of Department from 1999 until 30 June 2006, when he was succeeded by John McDermid.He is...

, Eva Tucker and R.C. Kennedy - who, influenced by their European counterparts, became part of the avant-garde

Avant-garde

Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....

 of the early 1960s.

From his experience of authors' tours, John Calder saw that readers much enjoyed hearing authors air their ideas in public - often in heated debate. He persuaded the Edinburgh Festival

Edinburgh Festival

The Edinburgh Festival is a collective term for many arts and cultural festivals that take place in Edinburgh, Scotland each summer, mostly in August...

 to stage large literary conferences - the first of their kind - which in 1962 and 1963 were immensely successful. They attracted many of the world's leading writers as well as others whose names were not yet familiar to the public.

Controversy

Following their visit to Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

, Calder began to publish the previously banned work writers Henry Miller

Henry Miller

Henry Valentine Miller was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is...

 and William S. Burroughs

William S. Burroughs

William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...

. Controversy also surrounded the publication of Alexander Trocchi

Alexander Trocchi

Alexander Whitelaw Robertson Trocchi was a Scottish novelist.-Early career:Trocchi was born in Glasgow to a Scottish mother and Italian father. After working as a seaman on the Murmansk convoys, he attended University of Glasgow. On graduation he obtained a traveling grant that enabled him to...

's Cain's Book

Cain's Book

Cain's Book is a 1960 novel by Scottish beat writer Alexander Trocchi. A roman a clef, it details the life of Joe Necchi, a heroin addict and writer, who is living and working on a scow on the Hudson River in New York....

, which was a success in spite of a minor obscenity trial in Sheffield. Hubert Selby's Last Exit to Brooklyn

Last Exit to Brooklyn

Last Exit to Brooklyn is a 1964 novel by American author Hubert Selby, Jr. The novel has become a cult classic because of its harsh, uncompromising look at lower class Brooklyn in the 1950s and for its brusque, everyman style of prose....

, although well reviewed, had a more serious case brought against it; first in a private prosecution by a Tory MP; then at the Old Bailey. John Mortimer

John Mortimer

Sir John Clifford Mortimer, CBE, QC was a British barrister, dramatist, screenwriter and author.-Early life:...

 led a successful appeal and the company was vindicated after losing in both lower courts.

Biography

Calder's Pursuit, gives not only a record of over half a century of publishing and literary activity but also a portrait of a life that entered politics and influenced all areas of the arts.

Ownership

In 1963 the company changed its name to Calder and Boyars to accommodate a new partner, but went back to its original name when the partnership was dissolved in 1975. In 2007, Calder Publications was acquired by Oneworld Classics, a joint venture between Alma Books and Oneworld Publications

Oneworld Publications

Oneworld Publications is a British independent publishing firm founded in 1986 by Novin Doostdar and Juliet Mabey to publish non-fiction for general and academic markets. Based in Oxford, it publishes across a wide range of subjects, from history, current affairs, and religion to philosophy,...

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External links

Oneworld Classics

Oneworld Publications

Calder Publications