Grove Press
Encyclopedia
Grove Press is an American publishing imprint that was founded in 1951. Imprints include: Black Cat, Evergreen, Venus Library, Zebra. Barney Rosset
purchased the company in 1951 and turned it into an alternative
book press in the United States. The Atlantic Monthly Press, under the aegis of its publisher, Morgan Entrekin
, merged with Grove Press in 1991. Grove is now an imprint of the publisher Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
, a literary magazine whose March-April 1960 edition includes work by Albert Camus
, Lawrence Ferlinghetti
, Bertolt Brecht
, and LeRoi Jones, as well as Edward Albee
's first play, The Zoo Story
.
Grove published French avant-garde of the era, including Alain Robbe-Grillet
, Jean Genet
, and Eugène Ionesco
; most of the American Beats
of the 1950s, including Jack Kerouac
, William Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg
; and poets associated with Black Mountain
and the San Francisco Renaissance
such as Robert Duncan
.
In 1954 Grove published Samuel Beckett
's play Waiting for Godot
after it was refused by more mainstream publishers. Since then it has been Beckett's U.S. publisher. In 2006 Grove published an anniversary bilingual edition of Waiting for Godot and a special four-volume edition of Beckett's works, with commissioned introductions by Edward Albee
, J. M. Coetzee
, Salman Rushdie, and Colm Tóibín
, to commemorate his centenary (April 2006).
Grove is also the U.S. publisher of the works of Harold Pinter
; in 2006 it published a collection called The Essential Pinter, which includes Pinter's Nobel Lecture, entitled "Art, Truth & Politics."
Grove is also the exclusive United States publisher of the unabridged complete works of the Marquis de Sade
.
In addition, Grove publishes Japanese authors, such as Kenzaburo Oe.
, Frantz Fanon
and Régis Debray
.
by D. H. Lawrence
. The U.S. Post Office Department
confiscated copies sent through the mail. Lawyer Charles Rembar
sued the New York city postmaster and won in New York and then on federal appeal.
's 1934 novel, Tropic of Cancer
, had explicit sexual passages and could not be published in the United States. In 1961, Grove Press issued a copy of the work and lawsuits were brought against dozens of individual booksellers in many states for selling it. The issue was ultimately settled by the U. S. Supreme Court
's 1973 decision in Miller v. California
. (The Miller of the Miller case was unrelated to Henry Miller.)
was forbidden from being published in some parts of the world for approximately ten years. The first American publisher was Grove Press. The book was banned by Boston
courts in 1962 due to obscenity, but that decision was reversed in a landmark 1966 opinion by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. This was the last major literary censorship
battle in the US.
Upon publication, Grove Press added to the book supplementary material regarding the censorship battle as well as an article written by Burroughs on the topic of drug addiction. Grove would publish several editions of the novel over the next four decades, including a "Restored Text" version in 2002. Grove also published the first American paperback editions of other Burroughs' works including The Soft Machine
, Nova Express
and The Ticket That Exploded
. Grove would also publish the final collection of the author's writings, the posthumously published Last Words: The Final Journals of William S. Burroughs
, and in 2008 published the American first edition of And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks
, the first release of a novel that Burroughs and Jack Kerouac
had collaborated on in the mid-1940s.
, Lenny Bruce
, William S. Burroughs, Jim Carroll
, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Al Goldstein
, Erica Jong
, Ray Manzarek
, Michael McClure
, Henry Miller, John Rechy
, Ed Sanders
, Floyd Salas
, John Sayles
, Gore Vidal
, John Waters
and Malcolm X
.
Barney Rosset
Barnet Lee Rosset, Jr. is the former owner of the publishing house Grove Press, and publisher and Editor-in-Chief of the magazine Evergreen Review. He led a successful legal battle to publish the uncensored version of D. H. Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover, and later was the American...
purchased the company in 1951 and turned it into an alternative
Alternative media
Alternative media are media which provide alternative information to the mainstream media in a given context, whether the mainstream media are commercial, publicly supported, or government-owned...
book press in the United States. The Atlantic Monthly Press, under the aegis of its publisher, Morgan Entrekin
Morgan Entrekin
Morgan Entrekin is the president and publisher of Grove/Atlantic Inc. Books in New York City. He is one of six owners of the publishing company. He is from Nashville, Tennessee.-Timeline:...
, merged with Grove Press in 1991. Grove is now an imprint of the publisher Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Literary avant-garde
Grove published Evergreen ReviewEvergreen Review
Evergreen Review is a U.S.-based literary magazine founded by Barney Rosset, publisher of Grove Press. It existed in print from 1957 through 1973, and was re-launched online in 1998...
, a literary magazine whose March-April 1960 edition includes work by Albert Camus
Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
, Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Ferlinghetti is an American poet, painter, liberal activist, and the co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers...
, Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
, and LeRoi Jones, as well as Edward Albee
Edward Albee
Edward Franklin Albee III is an American playwright who is best known for The Zoo Story , The Sandbox , Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , and a rewrite of the screenplay for the unsuccessful musical version of Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's . His works are considered well-crafted, often...
's first play, The Zoo Story
The Zoo Story
Not to be confused with Zoo Story: Life in the Garden of Captives the book about Lowry Park ZooThe Zoo Story is American playwright Edward Albee's first play; written in 1958 and completed in just three weeks...
.
Grove published French avant-garde of the era, including 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...
, Jean Genet
Jean Genet
Jean Genet was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing...
, and 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...
; most of the American Beats
Beat generation
The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...
of the 1950s, including Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac
Jean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic...
, William Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
; and poets associated with Black Mountain
Black Mountain poets
The Black Mountain poets, sometimes called projectivist poets, were a group of mid 20th century American avant-garde or postmodern poets centered on Black Mountain College.-Background:...
and the San Francisco Renaissance
San Francisco Renaissance
The term San Francisco Renaissance is used as a global designation for a range of poetic activity centered on San Francisco and which brought it to prominence as a hub of the American poetic avant-garde. However, others The term San Francisco Renaissance is used as a global designation for a range...
such as Robert Duncan
Robert Duncan (poet)
Robert Duncan was an American poet and a student of H.D. and the Western esoteric tradition who spent most of his career in and around San Francisco. Though associated with any number of literary traditions and schools, Duncan is often identified with the poets of the New American Poetry and Black...
.
In 1954 Grove published 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...
's play Waiting for Godot
Waiting for Godot
Waiting for Godot is an absurdist play by Samuel Beckett, in which two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait endlessly and in vain for someone named Godot to arrive. Godot's absence, as well as numerous other aspects of the play, have led to many different interpretations since the play's...
after it was refused by more mainstream publishers. Since then it has been Beckett's U.S. publisher. In 2006 Grove published an anniversary bilingual edition of Waiting for Godot and a special four-volume edition of Beckett's works, with commissioned introductions by Edward Albee
Edward Albee
Edward Franklin Albee III is an American playwright who is best known for The Zoo Story , The Sandbox , Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , and a rewrite of the screenplay for the unsuccessful musical version of Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's . His works are considered well-crafted, often...
, J. M. Coetzee
John Maxwell Coetzee
John Maxwell Coetzee ; is an author and academic from South Africa. He is now an Australian citizen and lives in Adelaide, South Australia...
, Salman Rushdie, and Colm Tóibín
Colm Tóibín
Colm Tóibín is a multi-award-winning Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, journalist, critic, and, most recently, poet.Tóibín is Leonard Milberg Lecturer in Irish Letters at Princeton University in New Jersey and succeeded Martin Amis as professor of creative writing at the...
, to commemorate his centenary (April 2006).
Grove is also the U.S. publisher of the works of Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...
; in 2006 it published a collection called The Essential Pinter, which includes Pinter's Nobel Lecture, entitled "Art, Truth & Politics."
Grove is also the exclusive United States publisher of the unabridged complete works of the Marquis de Sade
Marquis de Sade
Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade was a French aristocrat, revolutionary politician, philosopher, and writer famous for his libertine sexuality and lifestyle...
.
In addition, Grove publishes Japanese authors, such as Kenzaburo Oe.
Political works
In the 1960s, Grove Press published works by Malcolm XMalcolm X
Malcolm X , born Malcolm Little and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz , was an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its...
, Frantz Fanon
Frantz Fanon
Frantz Fanon was a Martiniquo-Algerian psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary and writer whose work is influential in the fields of post-colonial studies, critical theory and Marxism...
and Régis Debray
Régis Debray
Jules Régis Debray is a French intellectual, journalist, government official and professor. He is known for his theorization of mediology, a critical theory of the long-term transmission of cultural meaning in human society; and for having fought in 1967 with Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara in...
.
The Lady Chatterley's Lover case
In 1959, Grove Press published an unexpurgated version of Lady Chatterley's LoverLady Chatterley's Lover
Lady Chatterley's Lover is a novel by D. H. Lawrence, first published in 1928. The first edition was printed privately in Florence, Italy with assistance from Pino Orioli; it could not be published openly in the United Kingdom until 1960...
by D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
. The U.S. Post Office Department
United States Postal Service
The United States Postal Service is an independent agency of the United States government responsible for providing postal service in the United States...
confiscated copies sent through the mail. Lawyer Charles Rembar
Charles Rembar
Charles Rembar was an American lawyer who was born in Oceanport, New Jersey and grew up in Long Branch, New Jersey. He graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor's degree in 1935 and received his law degree from Columbia Law School in 1938...
sued the New York city postmaster and won in New York and then on federal appeal.
The Tropic of Cancer case
Henry MillerHenry 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...
's 1934 novel, Tropic of Cancer
Tropic of Cancer (novel)
Tropic of Cancer is a novel by Henry Miller which has been described as "notorious for its candid sexuality" and as responsible for the "free speech that we now take for granted in literature." It was first published in 1934 by the Obelisk Press in Paris, France, but this edition was banned in the...
, had explicit sexual passages and could not be published in the United States. In 1961, Grove Press issued a copy of the work and lawsuits were brought against dozens of individual booksellers in many states for selling it. The issue was ultimately settled by the U. S. Supreme Court
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
's 1973 decision in Miller v. California
Miller v. California
Miller v. California, was an important United States Supreme Court case involving what constitutes unprotected obscenity for First Amendment purposes...
. (The Miller of the Miller case was unrelated to Henry Miller.)
The Naked Lunch case
The William S. Burroughs novel Naked LunchNaked Lunch
Naked Lunch is a novel by William S. Burroughs originally published in 1959. The book is structured as a series of loosely-connected vignettes. Burroughs stated that the chapters are intended to be read in any order...
was forbidden from being published in some parts of the world for approximately ten years. The first American publisher was Grove Press. The book was banned by Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
courts in 1962 due to obscenity, but that decision was reversed in a landmark 1966 opinion by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. This was the last major literary censorship
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
battle in the US.
Upon publication, Grove Press added to the book supplementary material regarding the censorship battle as well as an article written by Burroughs on the topic of drug addiction. Grove would publish several editions of the novel over the next four decades, including a "Restored Text" version in 2002. Grove also published the first American paperback editions of other Burroughs' works including The Soft Machine
The Soft Machine
The Soft Machine is a novel by William S. Burroughs, first published in 1961, two years after his groundbreaking Naked Lunch. It was originally composed using the cut-up and fold-in techniques from manuscripts belonging to The Word Hoard...
, Nova Express
Nova Express
Nova Express is a 1964 novel by William S. Burroughs. It was written using the cut-up method, developed by Burroughs with Brion Gysin, of enfolding snippets of different texts into the novel. It is the third book in The Nova Trilogy, preceded by The Soft Machine and The Ticket That Exploded...
and The Ticket That Exploded
The Ticket That Exploded
The Ticket That Exploded is a novel by William S. Burroughs first published in 1962 by Olympia Press and later published in the United States by Grove Press in 1967. It is the second book in a trilogy created using the cut-up technique, often referred to as The Nova Trilogy...
. Grove would also publish the final collection of the author's writings, the posthumously published Last Words: The Final Journals of William S. Burroughs
Last Words: The Final Journals of William S. Burroughs
Last Words: The Final Journals of William S. Burroughs is a collection of diary entries made by Beat Generation author William S. Burroughs between November 16, 1996 and July 30, 1997, only a few days before his death on August 2 at the age of 83...
, and in 2008 published the American first edition of And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks
And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks
And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks is a novel by Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs. It was written in 1945, a full decade before the two authors became famous as leading figures of the Beat Generation, and remained unpublished for many years....
, the first release of a novel that Burroughs and Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac
Jean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic...
had collaborated on in the mid-1940s.
In Film
Obscene, a documentary feature about Rosset and Grove Press by Neil Ortenberg and Daniel O’Connor, was released September 26, 2008. The film was a selection of the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival. Featured in the film are Amiri BarakaAmiri Baraka
Amiri Baraka , formerly known as LeRoi Jones, is an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays, and music criticism...
, Lenny Bruce
Lenny Bruce
Leonard Alfred Schneider , better known by the stage name Lenny Bruce, was a Jewish-American comedian, social critic and satirist...
, William S. Burroughs, Jim Carroll
Jim Carroll
James Dennis "Jim" Carroll was an author, poet, autobiographer, and punk musician. Carroll was best known for his 1978 autobiographical work The Basketball Diaries, which was made into the 1995 film of the same name, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Carroll.-Biography:Carroll was born to a...
, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Al Goldstein
Al Goldstein
Alvin "Al" Goldstein is a former American publisher and pornographer. His company Milky Way Productions, home of Screw, and his long-running cable TV show, Midnight Blue was started in 1968 and went into bankruptcy in 2004...
, Erica Jong
Erica Jong
Erica Jong is an American author and teacher best known for her fiction and poetry.-Career:A 1963 graduate of Barnard College, and with an M.A...
, Ray Manzarek
Ray Manzarek
Raymond Daniel Manzarek, Jr., better known as Ray Manzarek , is an American musician, singer, producer, film director, writer, co-founder and keyboardist of The Doors from 1965 to 1973, Nite City from 1977–1978 and Manzarek-Krieger since 2001.Manzarek is listed #4 on Digital Dreamdoor's "100...
, Michael McClure
Michael McClure
Michael McClure is an American poet, playwright, songwriter, and novelist. After moving to San Francisco as a young man, he found fame as one of the five poets who read at the famous San Francisco Six Gallery reading in 1955 rendered in barely fictionalized terms in Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums...
, Henry Miller, John Rechy
John Rechy
John Francis Rechy, , is an American author, the child of a half-Scottish and half-Mexican father, Roberto Rechy, and a Mexican-American mother, Guadalupe Flores. In his novels he has written extensively about homosexual culture in Los Angeles and wider America, and is among the pioneers of modern...
, Ed Sanders
Ed Sanders
Ed Sanders is an American poet, singer, social activist, environmentalist, author and publisher and has been a longtime member of the band The Fugs. He has been called a bridge between the Beat and Hippie generations.-Biography:...
, Floyd Salas
Floyd Salas
Floyd Salas is an American fiction writer and boxer. His work is well known in the San Francisco Bay Area and among aficionados of both Latino literature and 60s era protest literature.-External links:*Interview *Tribute...
, John Sayles
John Sayles
John Thomas Sayles is an American independent film director, screenwriter and author.-Early life:Sayles was born in Schenectady, New York, the son of Mary , a teacher, and Donald John Sayles, a school administrator. He was raised Catholic and took to labeling himself "a Catholic atheist"...
, Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...
, John Waters
John Waters (filmmaker)
John Samuel Waters, Jr. is an American filmmaker, actor, stand-up comedian, writer, journalist, visual artist, and art collector, who rose to fame in the early 1970s for his transgressive cult films...
and Malcolm X
Malcolm X
Malcolm X , born Malcolm Little and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz , was an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its...
.
External links
- Grove/Atlantic, Inc. Official website (Grove Press and Atlantic Monthly Press; with links also to Atlantic Books, Ltd., Canongate Books, Ltd., and Open City Magazine)
- William Ashley's lists of Grove Press titles
- Grove Press Records at Syracuse University
- Venus Library (imprint of Grove Press) - Front covers of titles (1969-1973)