The Culture of the Publisher’s Series, Volume One : Authors, Publishers and the Shaping of Taste

This volume focuses on the publisher's series as a cultural formation - a material artefact and component of cultural hierarchies. Contributors engage with archival research, cultural theory, literary and bibliometric analysis (amongst a range of other approaches) to contextualize the publisher's series in terms of its cultural and economic work. Front Matter....Pages i-xiii Introduction....Pages 1-61 Market Forces and Modernisation in the French Book Trade in the Last Century of the ‘Ancien Régime’ and in the Early Nineteenth Century: Some Reflections on the Emergence of the Publisher’s Series....Pages 62-71 The Paperback Revolution in France, 1850–1950....Pages 72-87 Canonicity, Reprint Publishing, and Copyright....Pages 88-105 ‘To Undertake Such Works as They Find to Be Wanted’: The Early Years of the Clarendon Press Series....Pages 106-124 Personality, Appreciation and Literary Education: Harrap’s Poetry and Life Series, 1911–1930....Pages 125-140 Excavating Original African American ‘Pulp Fiction’: W.W. Norton’s Old School Books....Pages 141-155 The Symbiotic Relationship of Thomas Nelson & Sons and John Buchan within the Publisher’s Series....Pages 156-170 The Series as Commodity: Marketing T. Fisher Unwin’s Pseudonym and Autonym Libraries....Pages 171-187 Sifting out ‘Rubbish’ in the Literature of the Twenties and Thirties: Chatto & Windus and the Phoenix Library....Pages 188-201 Behind the Scenes at the Albatross Press: A Modern Press for Modern Times....Pages 202-218 ‘Sound Information and Innocent Amusement’: John Murray’s Books on the Move....Pages 219-236 Back Matter....Pages 237-257 This volume explores problems concerning the series, national development and the national canon in a range of countries and their international book-trade relationships. Studies focus on issues such as the fabrication of a national canon, and on the book in war-time, the evolution of Catholic literature, imperial traditions and colonial libraries. This volume focuses on the publisher's series as a cultural formation - a material artifact and component of cultural hierarchies. Contributors engage with archival research, cultural theory, literary and bibliometric analysis (amongst a range of other approaches) to contextualize the publisher's series in terms of its cultural and economic work