Calder Publishing

Calder Publishing
Parent companyAlma Classics
Founded1949
FounderJohn Calder
Defunct2007 Edit this on Wikidata
Country of originUnited Kingdom
Headquarters locationRichmond, London
DistributionMacmillan Distribution
Publication typesBooks
Official websitehttps://almabooks.com/

Calder Publications is a publisher of books. Starting in 1949, the company published many books on all the arts, particularly subjects such as opera and painting, the theatre and critical and philosophical theory.

Calder has been noted for championing avant-garde authors and battling censorship, and has been called one of the most important independent British publishers to emerge in the post-war era. Authors published and supported by Calder have earned 18 Nobel prizes.

History

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

During the 1950s, Calder published a list of translated classics, which included the works of Chekhov, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Goethe and Zola among others. In 1957, Calder published The Walk and Other Stories, the first translation of the Swiss author Robert Walser, translated by Christopher Middleton. The 1957 book is considered a key event in recognition of Walser as an modernist figure not only in English-language awareness but also in Swiss and German-language scholarship as Walser had been largely forgotten in the World War II era.

Calder then began to publish American titles.[citation needed] 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 that mainstream publishers in New York City were afraid to keep on their lists.[citation needed] This led to the development of close ties with those smaller American firms who resisted the McCarthyite pressure.[citation needed]

By the late 1950s, Calder published a group of new writers argued to have changed the face of twentieth-century literature.[citation needed] One of these was Samuel Beckett, all of whose novels, poetry, criticism, and some of his plays were published by Calder. Several writers on the Calder list became synonymous with the school of the "nouveau roman" or "new novel", including Alain Robbe-Grillet, Marguerite Duras, Claude Simon, Nathalie Sarraute and Robert Pinget. Other European novelists, playwrights and poets included Heinrich Böll, Dino Buzzati, Eugène Ionesco, Fernando Arrabal, René de Obaldia, Peter Weiss and Ivo Andrić. Calder was soon launching new experimental British writers such as Ann Quin, Alan Burns, Eva Tucker and R. C. Kennedy – who, influenced by their European counterparts, became part of the avant-garde of the early 1960s.[citation needed]

Controversy

Following their visit to Scotland, Calder began to publish the previously banned work of writers Henry Miller and William S. Burroughs.[citation needed] Controversy also surrounded the publication of Alexander Trocchi's Cain's Book, which was a success despite a minor obscenity trial in Sheffield.[citation needed] Hubert Selby's Last Exit to Brooklyn, although well reviewed, had a more serious case brought against it, first in a private prosecution by Tory MP Cyril Black, and then at the Old Bailey.[citation needed] John Mortimer led a successful appeal and the company was vindicated after losing in both lower courts.

Ownership

In 1963 the company changed its name to Calder and Boyars to accommodate a new partner (Marion Boyars, who subsequently founded Marion Boyars Publishers), but the company 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. In 2012, Alma Books acquired full ownership of Calder and Oneworld Classics, renaming the latter Alma Classics.

Book series

Some of the following series were published by one of the following imprints, John Calder, Calder & Boyars, and Calder Publications, and others by more than one.

Annuals and Biannuals

Magazines

References

  1. ↑ "Macmillan Distribution - Publishers". Retrieved 25 December 2017.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Lawless, Jill. "John Calder, British publisher and champion of avant-garde, dies at 91". Washington Post. Retrieved 21 March 2020.
  3. 1 2 3 O'Mahony, John (19 July 2002). "Publishing's one-man band". The Guardian.
  4. ↑ McDonald, Peter D. (2024). "Calder's Beckett". The Double Life of Books: Making and Re-Making the Reader. Edinburgh University Press: 203–21.
  5. ↑ The Walk and Other Stories. Translated by Christopher Middleton. John Calder, Ltd. 1957. First published in this translation from the German in 1957 by John Calder [Publishers] Limited
  6. ↑ Walser, Robert (2012). Selected Stories. Translated by Christopher Middleton. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. p. Copyright Info. ISBN 0-374-25901-1.
  7. ↑ Leucht, Robert (2019). ""Transnational Entanglements: Switzerland's Newly Emerging Literary Culture of the 1960s and the Anglophone World."". The German Quarterly. 92, no. 3 (2019): 348–64. indebted to the rediscovery of Robert Walser. This discovery was made possible thanks to Christopher Middleton's 1957 translation of Walser into English, which, for the first time since WWII, acknowledged Walser's œuvre as representative of literary modernism.
  8. ↑ "Nobel Prize to Samuel Beckett", The Guardian, 13 November 1969, p. 8.
  9. ↑ Sayers, Stuart (11 February 1984), "Not a man for allowing remainders", The Age, p. 169.
  10. ↑ Williams, Nonia (2023). The Precarious Writing of Ann Quin. Edinburgh University Press. p. 22–24.
  11. 1 2 Hodgkinson, Will (16 October 2004). "Culture quake: Last Exit to Brooklyn". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 21 March 2020.
  12. ↑ Owen, Peter (2 February 1999). "Marion Boyars obituary: Pioneer publisher of the avant-garde". The Guardian. Retrieved 21 March 2020.
  13. ↑ Williams, Charlotte (2 April 2012), "Alma gets classical with 300-strong list", The Bookseller.
  14. ↑ Calderbooks (John Calder (Publishers) Ltd.; Calder & Boyars; Calderbooks) - Book Series List, publishinghistory.com. Retrieved 24 April 2020.
  15. ↑ Final pages of Samuel Beckett, Murphy, London: Calder Publications, 1963. Retrieved 6 October 2025.
  16. ↑ se:English National Opera Guides, worldcat.org. Retrieved 23 July 2023.
  17. ↑ European Classics, seriesofseries.com. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  18. ↑ Illustrated Calderbooks (John Calder (Publishers) Ltd.) - Book Series List, publishinghistory.com. Retrieved 25 April 2020.
  19. ↑ Jupiter Books, worldcat.org. Retrieved 23 July 2023.
  20. ↑ Open Forum, worldcat.org. Retrieved 23 July 2023.
  21. ↑ Opera Library, worldcat.org. Retrieved 23 July 2023.
  22. ↑ Profile Books, worldcat.org. Retrieved 23 July 2023.
  23. ↑ Signature Series, worldcat.org. Retrieved 23 July 2023.