Cheap Modernism
Expanding Markets, Publishers’ Series and the Avant-Garde
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Edinburgh University Press
Published:17th Apr '17
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
The first account of European reprint series that sold modernism to a wide, international public at the beginning of the 20th century. Draws on extensive work in neglected publishers' archives. Sheds new light on the relationship between publishers and major modernist writers (including Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, James Joyce and Wyndham Lewis). Prompts a rethinking of modernist institutions, away from small presses and little magazines and towards large-scale publishing enterprises.
Drawing on extensive work in neglected archives, Cheap Modernism will be of interest to all those who want to know how the new literature became a global commercial hit.The first sustained account of cheap series of reprints that transformed literary modernism from a little-read movement into a mainstream phenomenon We often think of Mrs Dalloway or A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as difficult books, originally published in small print runs for a handful of readers. But from the mid-1920s, these texts and others were available in cheap format across Europe. Uniform series of reprints such as the Travellers’ Library, the Phoenix Library, Tauchnitz and Albatross sold modernism to a wide audience – thus transforming a little-read "highbrow" movement into a popular phenomenon. The expansion of the readership for modernism was not only vertical (from "high" to "low") but also spatial – since publisher’s series were distributed within and outside metropolitan centres in Britain, continental Europe and elsewhere. Many non-English native speakers discovered texts by Joyce, Woolf and others in the original language – a fact that has rarely been mentioned in histories of modernism. Drawing on extensive work in neglected archives, Cheap Modernism will be of interest to all those who want to know how the new literature became a global commercial hit. Key Features The first account of European reprint series that sold modernism to a wide, international public at the beginning of the twentieth centuryDraws on extensive work in neglected publishers’ archivesSheds new light on the relationship between publishers and major modernist writers (including Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, James Joyce and Wyndham Lewis)Prompts a rethinking of modernist institutions, away from small presses and little magazines and towards large-scale publishing enterprises
In engaging and informative fashion, Jaillant unearths a number of fascinating stories in which publishers and authors collaborated to expand modernist writing beyond its first readers and to set the stage for the larger cultural diffusion of the movement. -- Colette Colligan * Clio *
Scholars of Modernism will find Jaillant’s volume, in confronting academic prejudices against mass editions and presenting data collected from a range of literary and publishing archives, both an inspiring and a stimulating read. * Forum for Modern Language Studies *
Cheap Modernism is an accessible and valuable resource, providing thorough details and useful statistics. * James Joyce Quarterly *
an appealing ‘voyage of the mind,’ promising new ways of seeing the world of modernist studies and book history and introducing new archival materials about these interwar series and their publishers * Journal of Modern Literature *
Intriguing, elegantly argued and thoroughly researched study: definitely one to recommend for purchase by your university library. * Literature & History *
Remarkable""...illustrates an exemplary methodology for future study of what we might call serial culture. -- Loren Glass, University of Iowa * Los Angeles Review of Books *
Remarkable""...illustrates an exemplary methodology for future study of what we might call serial culture. -- Loren Glass, University of Iowa * Los Angeles Review of Books *
As an introduction to an underexplored aspect of interwar publishing, Cheap Modernism is expertly done. * Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America *
Well researched and readable...it is a substantial contribution to modernist studies. -- David Buchanan Athabasca University * Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada *
Cheap Modernism will be of interest not only to modernist scholars working in the archive but also to those researching book history and literary cultures. -- Eliza Murphy * Papers on Language and Literature *
This book is notable for Jaillant’s deft use of a distinctive range of archives to throw new light on the relationship between the writers of the Modernist canon – Eliot, Woolf, Joyce, Lawrence and Wyndham Lewis – and the reprint publishers who introduced them to a wider European readership than the small coteries that greeted them on first publication. These reprint editions, neglected by many previous scholars, were not only in some cases rewritten by the authors but also placed the works in a new context of popular and genre fiction. -- Alistair McCleery * Scottish Centre for the Book *
Jaillant . . . continues to break ground in the fields of modernist book history and early twentieth-century print culture . . . a lucid and compelling treatment of a little-discussed feature of modernist publishing. * The Year's Work in English Studies *
[...] a lucid and compelling treatment of a little-discussed feature of modernist publishing, bringing to light those commercial modes of circulation and repackaging that, as Jaillant rightly points out, are too often overlooked in favour of first editions and other original forms of publication. * The Year's Work in English Studies, Volume 98, Issue 1, 2019 *
Extensive archival work" – "Cheap Modernism is a book of facts and figures" for scholars "interested in analysis of context as well as content: how material culture and economics affected the style and substance of a text, and how it affected the reception and canonisation of modernist writers -- Rebecca Bowler, Keele University * Times Higher Education *
Embedded in broader histories of technological advancement in book production, education reform, copyright law and burgeoning academic markets, Jaillant's study makes a significant contribution to the continuing work of de-ghettoizing literary modernism. -- Amber K. Regis, University of Sheffield * Times Literary Supplement *
Embedded in broader histories of technological advancement in book production, education reform, copyright law and burgeoning academic markets, Jaillant's study makes a significant contribution to the continuing work of de-ghettoizing literary modernism. -- Amber K. Regis, University of Sheffield * Times Literary Supplement *
This study is highly informative and an enjoyable read: a rare combination. -- Stephen Barkway * Virginia Woolf Miscellany *
Brilliant" – "Cheap Modernism is a valuable resource to scholars and students of Woolf and of modernism more broadly. * Woolf Studies Annual *
ISBN: 9781474417242
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 442g
184 pages