Avant-garde Presses
Book Publishing during the Modernist
PeriodAlexa Ondreicka
Publishing & Writing throughout the Modern Era
General disdain for most of the literary works of the Victorian age
A movement to reshape the publishing landscape of interwar Britain
Poets took advantage of the new spirit of the times, and stretched their works longer, experimented with structure
Publishing houses, large & small, expanded
HOGARTH PRESS
Virginia & Leonard Woolf purchase Hogarth House &
hand press Begin publications 1917 Wanted to publish small
books that wouldn’t have the chance at publications
in large companies Refused to publish anything
they did not consider worth printing for their own sake
Majority of authors were a part of Woolf’s Bloomsbury
circle
Clive Bell, T.S. Eliot, E.M. Forster, Roger Fry, Katherine Mansfield
“What began as a recreation became a necessity. Virginia Woolf’s genius surely would have survived in some form under any publisher, but it developed as it did in the
novels and essays because she was free from editorial pressures, real or imagined, and needed to please only
herself” (Willis 44) Allowed for freedom to do what she
wanted as a female writer, free from male criticism
Woolf was exposed to visual, textual, & linguistic experimentation of other modernist writers
T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland” (1923) Publications were never as professional
as others. They did not want to produce “books which are not meant to be read, but to be looked at.”
HOGARTH PRESS
SECKER AND WARBURG Formed 1936 as the result of a merger
between Martin Secker’s publication company with Frederic Warburg’s
Anti-fascist, anti-Soviet stance George Orwell, after parting ways with
Communist-sympathizer Victor Gollancz, joined firm & became close friends with Warburg
Authors: Simone de Beauvoir, Colette, J.M. Coetzee, Alberto Moravio, George Orwell, D.H. Lawrence,
Cedric Dover
HEINEMANN PRESS Founded 1890 in UK William Heinemann Financially supported Joseph
Conrad while he wrote The Rescue, later published The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’
Sold English books to Japan, including translations of Dostoevsky
Authors: Sylvia Plath, Harper Lee, John Steinback, Truman Capote,
Significance? All three of these presses allowed for the
experimentation that characterized the modernist era
Exposure to other authors and public; without the freedom these presses allowed, many of these works would not have been seen today
Began the publications of works on a more global level: Africa, Asia, etc.
Works Cited
"Making Britain." Secker & Warburg |. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Mar. 2014.
"Modernism." Literature Periods & Movements. The Literature Network, n.d. Web. 25 Mar. 2014.
"Secker and Warburg." George Orwell Novels. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Mar. 2014.
Svendsen, Jessica. "Hogarth Press." Modernism Lab Essays. Yale University, n.d. Web. 25 Mar. 2014.
"William Heinemann." William Heinemann. The Random House Group, n.d. Web. 25 Mar. 2014.