publishing

Asian Horizon

About: 

In the editorial of its inaugural edition, this short-lived periodical states its aim ‘to provide a forum for the discussion of the problems facing this new Asia and those who seek to work in harmony with the countries of the East’. Triggered by the newly independent status of Asian nations, it sought to give a voice to their peoples in order to enable western readers to gain better access to this region of the world. Asian Horizon published short fiction and poetry, essays on different areas and aspects of the continent, and book reviews. Examples include a short story titled ‘The Liar’ by Mulk Raj Anand, a poem by the London-based Aga Bashir, and essays on contemporary Pakistani fiction and an exhibition of Asian artists held in London in 1950. Produced and published in London, it included work by several contributors based in the Indian subcontinent and other parts of Asia, as well as in Britain.

Example: 

Lo, Kenneth, Asian Horizon 2.4 (Spring 1950), p. 41

Content: 

The extract is taken from a review of an exhibition of Asian artists sponsored and arranged by Asian Horizon and funded by D. P. Chaudhuri who founded the Asian Institute a few months previously.

Date began: 
01 Jan 1948
Extract: 

In the past there have been in London exhibitions of the works of individual artists from Asia. The exhibition at the Asian Institute Gallery during the third week in April was the first time that a joint exhibition had been arranged. It was quite a conglomeration of artistic works, some of no small value, as various and as wide apart as the traditions and background of Asia. During the ten days of the exhibition, it was viewed by over 1,000 people.

Neville Wallis of the ‘Observer’ described the exhibition thus: ‘…East and West meet most happily in the mysterious, decorative paintings of A. D. Thomas, an Indian Christian.’

The New Statesman reporter described his impression thus:

‘The exhibits themselves vary in quality even more than in most shows. I liked particularly a fresco by a Pakistan painter. There was distinguished work from each country. The Chinese seems to be least influenced by the tradition of the West. Even when they paint an English seaside resort it is just as Chinese as Pekin. The outstanding Indian painter is A. D. Thomas and, amongst the others, Mr. Abeyasinghe deserves to be as well known here as he is in Ceylon.’

Precise date began unknown: 
Y
Key Individuals' Details: 

Dorothy Woodman (editor), D. P. Chaudhuri (assistant editor).

Editorial associates: Vernon Bartlett, Jack Cranmer-Byng, Maung Ohn, Hurustiati Subandrio, Poey Ungphakorn, Nguyen Van-Nhan, Chun-Chan Yeh.

Relevance: 

That an exhibition of Asian artists was held in the metropolis – and that it was well attended – suggests a degree of receptiveness to the work of South Asian (as well as other Asian) artists on the part of the British. It is probable that this receptiveness was increasing in the wake of Indian independence. The comments by both reviewers signal an element of hybridity, or a cross-fertilization of ideas, in the work of South Asian artists in this period.

Connections: 

Contributors: Stanley Abeyasinghe, Mulk Raj Anand, Aga Bashir, A. S. Bokhari, A. S. Bozman, Ismat Chugtai, Chitra Fernando, Abdul Majid, Aslam Malik, Lord Pethick-Lawrence, Kenneth Lo, M. Masud, Lester Peries, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, B. Rajan, G. P. Rajaratnam, S. Raja Ratnam, Suhdir Sen, Feliks Topolski, Ranjita Sarath Chandra, Khushwant Singh, M. J. Tambimuttu, Beryl de Zoete.

Date ended: 
01 Jan 1951
Archive source: 

British Library, St Pancras

Precise date ended unknown: 
Y
Books Reviewed Include: 

Coomaraswamy, Ananda Kentish, The Bugbear of Literacy (London: Dennis Dobson, 1949)

Gandhi, M. K. The Story of my Experiments with Truth: An Autobiography, trans. Mahadev Desai (London: Phoenix Press, 1949)

Polak, H. S. L., Brailsford, H. N. and Pethick-Lawrence, F. W., Mahatma Gandhi (London: Odhams Press, 1948)

Location

34 Victoria Street
London, SW1H 0EU
United Kingdom

Horizon: Review of Literature and Art

About: 

Founded and edited by Cyril Connolly, with financial backing from Peter Watson (who was also its art editor), Horizon was a London-based magazine which published short fiction, essays on literature and art, and book reviews by an impressive range of contributors including W. H. Auden, George Orwell, E. M. Forster and Stephen Spender, who was also the magazine’s uncredited associate editor in its early years. Several of its contributors had connections with South Asian writers in Britain in the 1940s, and the magazine displays an awareness of the work of Indian writers in the form of numerous advertisements for their published fiction as well as for periodicals featuring their work. In spite of this, however, Horizon itself gave surprisingly little space to articles by these writers or about their work. An article on ‘Kalighat Folk Painters’ by Ajit Mookerjee, and an essay on the artist Jamini Roy by E. Mary Milford, are two of the rare exceptions to this tendency to confine itself to Euro-American literature and art.

Secondary works: 

Shelden, Michael, Friends of Promise: Cyril Connolly and the World of Horizon (London: Hamilton, 1989)

Date began: 
01 Jan 1940
Precise date began unknown: 
Y
Key Individuals' Details: 

Cyril Connolly (editor), Stephen Spender (unofficial associate editor), Peter Watson (art editor).

Connections: 

W. H. Auden, George Barker, John Betjeman, Laurence Binyon, Maurice Blanchot, Elizabeth Bowen, Alex Comfort, Paul Eluard, William Empson, E. M. Forster, Lucian Freud, Barbara Hepworth, Aldous Huxley, C. E. M. Joad, Augustus John, John Lehmann, Cecil Day Lewis, Jack Lindsay, Julian Maclaren-Ross, Louis MacNeice, Henry Miller, Ajit Mookerjee, George Orwell, Ben Nicholson, Peter Quennell, Kathleen Raine, Osbert Sitwell, Dylan Thomas, Ruthven Todd.

Date ended: 
01 Jan 1950
Archive source: 

British Library, St Pancras

Precise date ended unknown: 
Y
Books Reviewed Include: 

Fielden, Lionel, Beggar My Neighbour (London: Secker & Warburg, 1943). Reviewed by George Orwell.

Menon, Narayana, The Development of William Butler Yeats (London: Oliver & Boyd, 1942). Reviewed by George Orwell.

The London Mercury

About: 

The London Mercury was a monthly magazine published by Field Press Ltd.  It was published first in 1919, one year after the end of the First World War. It sought to fill a gap in the market of literary magazines. According to its founding editor it was unique among other literary journals as it combined the publication of creative writing, reviews of the contemporary literary output, publishing poetry, prose writing and full-length literary essays, and critical surveys of books. Its mission was to foster the teaching of English and the appreciation of the arts.

Especially after Rolfe Arnold Scott-James took over as editor in 1934, the magazine increasingly featured short stories and poetry by Indian writers. It also included survey articles and reviews by Indian writers on topics such as Indian art and Indian literature. Reviews of books on India were also increasingly published by the journal. The journal absorbed The Bookman in 1934. In the  late 1930s, the magazine ran into financial difficulties. The last issue was published in April 1939, after which the journal was absorbed into Life and Letters Today.

 

Example: 

 'Editorial Notes', The London Mercury 39.234 (April 1939), p. 274

Other names: 

The London Mercury with which is incorporated The Bookman

The London Mercury and Bookman

Content: 

In his final editorial for the journal, the editor Scott-James restates the mission of the magazine. Subsumed into Life and Letters Today, the journal would carry on this tradition. The journal was characterized by a broad range of materials  and sought to expose its readership to fiction and non-fiction written by South-Asian artists, writers and cultural commentators, exemplified here in this final statement of the journal's brief.

Date began: 
01 Nov 1919
Extract: 

From the first Squire designed this magazine  as an organ of independent and disinterested opinion and that it has always been. My own conception of the magazine has been that it existed to serve the cause of creative ideas from whatever source they were drawn, more especially in reference to our own time, and to do what it could to promote an interest in such ideas, whether they were manifested in the stories and poems we published or the books we reviewed, or whether, more broadly, they were shown to be applicable to current practical problems. Whatever seemed to be informed and enlightened by the creative imagination – that I conceived to be within our province; and side by side with it, of course, one looked for the critical judgment, which in itself is allied to the creative.

Key Individuals' Details: 

Editors: John Collings Squire (1919-34), Rolfe Arnold Scott-James (1934-9).

Connections: 

Contributors: Mulk Raj Anand, J. C. Ghosh, Bharati Sarabhai, Rabindranath Tagore, J. Vijaya-Tunga, Suresh Vaidya, William Butler Yeats.

Date ended: 
01 Apr 1939
Archive source: 

British Library, St Pancras

Books Reviewed Include: 

Bose, Subhas C., The Indian Struggle. Reviewed by E. Farley Oaten.

Rawlinson, H. G., India: A Short Cultural History. Reviewed by Mulk Raj Anand.

 

The Bookman

About: 

The Bookman was a monthly magazine published by Hodder & Staughton. First published in 1891, The Bookman was initially conceived as an advertising tool for Hodder and Stoughton’s catalogue. The journal also published essays and reviews. The journal was quick to respond to new technological innovations, including columns on film, photography and a new supplement called 'The Illustrated Bookman', which featured articles on travel writing and accompanying photographs that from today's perspective could be read as 'orientalist'. These photographs exoticized the locale, highlighting the places' strangeness, otherness and their attraction as a space for adventure and exploration.

Under the editorship of Hugh Ross-Williamson in the 1930s, the journal increasingly reviewed books on India and Indian political issues. Aubrey Menen became the drama critic for The Bookman from October 1933 to May 1934. His columns engaged with the state of London's commercial theatre and argued for an alternative theatre that was poltically engaging and addressed a wider constituency. He also intervened into debates around the creation of a national theatre. He called for a more realist style of acting and lamented the influence of film that in his opinion had lead to a dumbing down of theatre. The journal published a number of survey articles on Indian writing, and regularly reviewed books on Indian politics. The journal was incorporated into the London Mercury in 1935, which was absorbed into Life & Letters today in 1939.

Date began: 
01 Oct 1891
Key Individuals' Details: 

William Robertson Nicoll (editor), Arthur St. John Adcock (editor), Hugh Ross Williamson (editor).

Date ended: 
01 Dec 1934
Books Reviewed Include: 

Andrews, C. F., Mahatma Gandhi at Work (London: Allen & Unwin, 1931)

Bernays, Robert, Naked Fakir (London: Gollancz, 1931). Reviewed by J. R. Glorney Bolton.

Butler, Harcourt, India Insistent  (London: Heinemann, 1931)

Craig, A. E. R., The Palace of Intrigue (London: Harmsorth, 1932). Reviewed by  J. Vijaya-Tunga.

Crozier, F. P., A Word To Gandhi: The Lesson of Ireland (London Williams & Norgate, 1931)

Kennion, R. L., Diversions of an Indian Political (Edinburgh: Blackwell, 1932). Reviewed by  J. Vijaya-Tunga.

Polak, Millie Graham, M. Gandhi: the Man (London: Allen & Unwin, 1931)

Tagore, Rabindranath, The Golden Boat, trans. by Bhattacharya, Bhabani (London: Allen & Unwin, 1932). Reviewed by  J. Vijaya-Tunga.

Poetry London

About: 

M. J. Tambimuttu and Anthony Dickins launched this literary magazine in 1939, with the former as literary editor and the latter as general editor, but it was Tambimuttu who was the driving force behind it. Well regarded in the literary world, it featured the work of many of the most influential British poets of the period, including Lawrence Durrell, W. H. Auden, Louis MacNeice and Stephen Spender, as well as reviews of poetry, fictions, plays, literary magazines and scholarly work, and some short prose, critical essays and illustrations. It also published work by new poets, declaring in its first editorial that 'every man has poetry within him'. Indeed, T. S. Eliot said of the magazine: 'It is only in Poetry London that I can consistently expect to find new poets who matter'. Initially funded by subscriptions and donations, and frequently suffering from paper shortages during the Second World War, the magazine was beset by financial difficulties and appeared irregularly. From 1942 to 1947, it gained the backing of publishers Nicholson & Watson, who also asked Tambimuttu to develop his own imprint of books, Editions Poetry London. As well as writers, Editions Poetry London promoted several artists, publishing work by Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore, among others. After Nicholson & Watson withdrew their support in 1947, the magazine gained the financial backing of Richard March until its demise in 1951.

Correspondence between Tambimuttu and his contributors (MSS Add 88907-8, British Library, St Pancras) highlights the central position occupied by Poetry London and its editor Tambimuttu within the literary and artistic networks of 1940s London. Letters to the editor suggest that several well known cultural figures felt much personal affection for Tambimuttu and that the magazine was held in high regard by the literary establishment, as well as triggering debate and controversy. There is some rather limited evidence of connections between Tambimuttu and other Indian writers, resident in both India and Britain (for example, Ahmed Ali and Cedric Dover) – although the work of Indian poets and writers rarely appears in the magazine. The correspondence also gives insight into the impact of war on literary culture.

Other names: 

Poetry

Poetry (London)

Secondary works: 

Beckett, Chris, ‘Tambimuttu and the Poetry London Papers at the British Library: Reputation and Evidence’, Electronic British Library Journal (2009): http://www.bl.uk/eblj/2009articles/article9.html

Maclaren-Ross, J., Memoirs of the Forties (London: Alan Ross Ltd, 1965)

Ranasinha, Ruvani, South Asian Writers in Twentieht-Century Britain: Culture in Translation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)

Williams, Jane, Tambimuttu: Bridge Between Two Worlds (London: Peter Owen, 1989)

Date began: 
01 Feb 1939
Precise date began unknown: 
Y
Key Individuals' Details: 

Editors: M. J. Tambimuttu (until 1949), Anthony Dickins (early issues), Richard March (from 1949).

Connections: 

George Barker, Audrey Beecham, Ronald Bottrall, Robert Cecil, Alex Comfort, Dorian Cooke, Keith Douglas, Lawrence Durrell, T. S. Eliot, Paul Eluard, Gavin Ewart, G. S. Fraser, Lucian Freud, Diana Gardner, David Gascoyne, Barbara Hepworth, Pierre Jean Jouve, Alun Lewis, Louis MacNeice, Walter de la Mare, Henry Miller, Joan Miro, Henry Moore, Nicholas Moore, Pablo Neruda, George Orwell, Mervyn Peake, Paul Potts, Kathleen Raine, Balachandra RajanHerbert Read, Keidrych Rhys, Anne Ridler, Rainer Maria Rilke, Francis Scarfe, Edith Sitwell, Stephen Spender, Graham Sutherland, Dylan Thomas, Henry Treece, Gerald Wilde, Stephen Coates.

Date ended: 
01 Jan 1951
Archive source: 

Add. MS 88907, M. J. Tambimuttu papers, British Library, St Pancras

Add. MS 88908, Richard March papers, British Library, St Pancras

Northwestern University, Chicago

Poetry London–New York records, Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New York

Precise date ended unknown: 
Y
Books Reviewed Include: 

Aiken, Conrad, The Soldier: A Poem (London: Editions Poetry, 1946)

Auden, W. H., 'For the Time Being'

Connolly, Cyril, Horizon: A Review of Literature and Art

Durrell, Lawrence, A Private Country (London: Faber & Faber, 1943)

Eliot, T. S., The Family Reunion (London: Faber & Faber, 1939)

Eliot, T. S., East Coker  (London: Faber & Faber, 1940)

Empson, William, The Gathering Storm (London: Faber & Faber, 1940)

Garcia Lorca, Federico, Poems, trans. by Stephen Spender and J. L. Gili; selection and introduction by R. M. Nadal (London: Dolphin, 1939)

MacNeice, Louis, Autumn Journal: A Poem (London: Faber & Faber, 1939)

Menon, V. K. Narayana, The Development of William Butler Yeats (London: Oliver & Boyd, 1942)

Read, Herbert, Poems

Sassoon, Siegfried, Rhymed Ruminations (London: Chiswick Press, 1939)

Spender, Stephen, The Still Centre (London: Faber & Faber, 1939)

The Geeta: The Gospel of the Lord Shri Krishna, trans. by Shri Purohit Swami (London: Faber & Faber, [1935] 1942)

Tambimuttu, M. J., Out of This War: A Poem (London: Fortune Press, 1941)

Watkins, Vernon, The Lamp and the Veil: Poems (London: Faber & Faber, 1945)

Locations

Marchmont Street
London, WC1N 1RE
United Kingdom
Craven House, London, WC2A 2HT
United Kingdom
Manchester Square
London, W1U 3EJ
United Kingdom
Tags for Making Britain: 

Life and Letters Today

About: 

Life & Letters Today was a monthly literary review magazine which published short fiction, essays on cultural issues, and book reviews. Several well known British literary figures, including D. H. Lawrence, Dylan Thomas and Julian Symons, contributed to the magazine. Mulk Raj Anand was a regular contributor of both fiction and reviews, and the work of several other South Asian writers based in Britain was also occasionally featured. There were three issues dedicated to Indian writing and featuring a range of short fiction and essays by writers such as Narayana Menon, S. Menon Marath, Iqbal Singh and the Ceylonese J. Vijaya-Tunga, as well as reviews of their work.

Example: 

Life and Letters Today 21.20 (April 1939), pp. 3-4

Other names: 

Life and Letters (1928-35, 1946-50)

Life and Letters and the London Mercury and Bookman (1945-6)

Content: 

This issue includes work by South Asian writers including Iqbal Singh, Alagu Subramaniam and J. Vijaya-Tunga.

Date began: 
01 Jun 1928
Extract: 

INDIAN WRITERS IN ENGLAND: Addressing members of the Indian Progressive Writers' Association at the Indian Students' Union on 19th March, Randall Swingler remarked that Indian writers faced a peculiar difficulty in this country – if they wrote well they were rejected by publishers on the ground that they wrote too well. Their success was taken as a slight to British superiority…Indian writers, like most foreign writers in England, found themselves unappreciated by publishers and literary folk in England.

Precise date began unknown: 
Y
Key Individuals' Details: 

Editors: Desmond McCarthy (1928-34), Hamish Miles (1934), R. Ellis Roberts (1934-55), Robert Herring (1935-50).

Relevance: 

This Indian edition of Life and Letters Today, as well as the two subsequent Indian issues, highlights a degree of success on the part of South Asians in infiltrating an established 'mainstream' British cultural product. The comments above from the editorial of the magazine suggest its awareness and sympathy with the marginalization of Indian writers in Britain. That said, contributions to the magazine by South Asians comprise, for the most part (and with some notable exceptions), short fiction located almost uniquely in India/Ceylon rather than in Britain, and short prose on Indian history/culture, often positioning their authors as cultural informers primarily.

Connections: 

Contributors: K. Ahmad Abbas, Mulk Raj Anand, George Barker, Nancy Cunard, Cedric Dover, Julian Huxley, D. H. Lawrence, Jack Lindsay, Sarkis Megherian, Narayana Menon, S. Menon Marath, Ajit Mookerjee, Sean O’Casey, B. Rajan, S. Rajandram, S. Raja Ratnam, Keidrych Rhys, Dorothy M. Richardson, Iqbal Singh, Osbert Sitwell, Stevie Smith, Stephen Spender, Alagu Subramaniam, Julian Symons, Dylan Thomas, Fred Urquhart, J. Vijaya-Tunga, Vernon Watkins, Francis Watson.

Date ended: 
01 Jun 1950
Archive source: 

Life & Letters Today, P.P.5939.bgf, British Library, St Pancras

Precise date ended unknown: 
Y
Books Reviewed Include: 

Abbas, K. Ahmad, Rice. Reviewed by Oswell Blakeston.

Anand, Mulk Raj, Coolie. Reviewed by Ronald Dewsbury.

Anand, Mulk Raj, Two Leaves and a Bud. Reviewed by Stephen Spender.

Anand, Mulk Raj, Indian Fairy Tales. Reviewed by Lorna Lewis.

Bhushan, V. N. (ed.), The Peacock Lute: Anthology of Poems in English by Indian Writers. Reviewed by S. Menon Marath.

Blom, Eric, Some Great Composers. Reviewed by Narayana Menon.

Ch’ien, Hsiao, The Spinners of Silk. Reviewed by Mulk Raj Anand.

Desani, G. V., All About Mr Hatterr. Reviewed by Fred Urquhart.

Dover, Cedric, Half-Caste. Reviewed by Mulk Raj Anand.

Flaubert, Gustave, Letters (selected by Richard Rumbold). Reviewed by S. Menon Marath.

Green, Henry, Loving. Reviewed by Mulk Raj Anand.

Lawrence, T. E., Oriental Assembly. Reviewed by Mulk Raj Anand.

Menon, Narayana, The Development of William Butler Yeats. Reviewed by Mulk Raj Anand.

Motwani, Kewal, India: A Synthesis of Cultures. Reviewed by S. Menon Marath.

Nehru, Jawaharlal, Autobiography. Reviewed by Mulk Raj Anand.

Palme Dutt, R., India Today.

Poems from Iqbal, trans. by V. G. Kiernan. Reviewed by Jack Lindsay.

Rajan, B. (ed.), The Novelist as Thinker. reviewed by Hugo Manning.

Rajan B. (ed.), T. S. Eliot: A Study of his Writing. Reviewed by George Barker.

Sampson, William, Fireman Flower. Reviewed by Mulk Raj Anand.

Saroyan, William, Razzle-Dazzle. Reviewed by Mulk Raj Anand.

Shelvankar, K. S., The Problem of India. Reviewed by Mulk Raj Anand.

Silone, Ignazio, The Seed Beneath the Snow. Reviewed by Mulk Raj Anand.

Tagore, Rabindranath, Caramel Doll.

Wernher, Hilda and Singh, Huthi, The Land and the Well.

Woolf, Virginia, The Death of a Moth. Reviewed by Mulk Raj Anand.

Left Book Club

About: 

The Left Book Club was established in the context of the rise of fascism in Europe and the economic depression, when the need for the dissemination of left-wing politics was keenly felt among British intellectuals. It was an immediate success on its establishment, with 6,000 subscriptions after a month and a membership of 40,000 by the end of its first year. With links to the Communist Party of Great Britain, the LBC was explicit in its advocacy of a left-wing politics. It published books on a wide range of subjects, ‘from farming to Freud to air-raid shelters to Indian independence’ (Laity, p. ix), aiming for accessibility and education. The titles, many of which were newly commissioned, were sold to LBC members at discounted prices. Despite its attempts to bring politics and literature to working-class people, its activists were largely privileged men and women. The LBC organized summer schools and trips (including to the Soviet Union) and held lectures and rallies focused on political events such as the Spanish Civil War, with members also hosting local meetings to discuss the books.

Clearly espousing an anti-imperial stance, the LBC published books by Rajani Palme Dutt and Ayana Angadi, as well as by Santha Rama Rau and Bhabani Bhattacharya. In late 1936, authorities in India began to intercept Left Book Club books despatched (via the Phoenix Book Company) to members in India on the grounds that they contained ‘extremist propaganda’, and the India Office requested reports on the LBC’s activities. Evidence suggests that there were LBC Indian student discussion groups (such as the one formed by Promode Ranjan Sen Gupta, who was under government surveillance), and later an Indian Branch of the LBC, and that these groups attempted to subvert the censorship of LBC material in India. Further, in late 1937, there is evidence that Victor Gollancz, supported by Nehru, was attempting to start a Left Book Club in India in order to circumvent the ban (L/PJ/12/504, pp. 8, 10–11, 18–19). 

Published works: 

There were LBC editions of over 200 works. These include:

Attlee, Clement, The Labour Party in Perspective (1937)

Barnes, Leonard, Empire or Democracy? A Study of the Colonial Question (1939)

Bhattacharya, Bhabani, So Many Hungers! (1947)

Brailsford, H. N., Why Capitalism Means War (1938)

Brailsford, H. N., Subject India (1943)

Brockway, Fenner, German Diary, 1946

Burns, Emile, What is Marxism? (1939)

Cole, G. D. H., The People’s Front (1937)

Cripps, Stafford The Struggle for Peace (1936)

de Palencia, Isabel, Smouldering Freedom: The Story of the Spanish Republicans in Exile (1946)

Deva, Jaya (Ayana Angadi) Japan’s Kampf (1942)

Dutt, R. Palme, World Politics, 1918–36 (1936)

Dutt, R. Palme, India Today (1940)

Gollancz, Victor (ed.), The Betrayal of the Left (1941)

Horrabin, J. F., An Atlas of Empire (1937)

Koestler, Arthur, Scum of the Earth (1941)

Laski, Harold, Faith, Reason and Civilisation (1944)

Marquard, Leopold, The Black Man’s Burden (1943)

Mulgan, John (ed.), Poems of Freedom (1938)

Orwell, George, The Road to Wigan Pier (1937)

Rao, Santha Rama, Home to India (1945)

Russell, A. G., Colour, Race and Empire (1944)

Snow, Edgar, Red Star Over China (1937)

Spender, Stephen, Forward from Liberalism (1937)

Strachey, John, The Theory and Practice of Socialism (1936)

Strachey, John, Federalism or Socialism? (1940)

Webb, Sidney and Webb, Beatrice, Soviet Communism: A New Civilization (1937)

Woolf, Leonard, Barbarians at the Gate (1939)

Monthly journal: Left News

Example: 

L/PJ/12/504, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras, p. 8

Secondary works: 

Dudley Edwards, Ruth, Victor Gollancz: A Biography (London, 1987)

Hodges, Sheila, Gollancz: The Story of a Publishing House, 1928–78 (London, 1978)

Laity, Paul (ed.), Left Book Club Anthology (London: Victor Gollancz, 2001)

Lewis, John, The Left Book Club: An Historical Record (London, 1970)

Content: 

This file consists of correspondence and reports relating to the Left Book Club and its ‘Indian connections’, with information on the Britain-based Indians involved in the LBC, the connections between LBC activists and Indian anti-colonialists, and attempts to ban LBC material from entering India.

Date began: 
01 Feb 1936
Extract: 

A Left Book Club Discussion Group has been formed in London for Indian students, with Promode Ranjan SEN GUPTA, 7, Woburn Buildings, W.C., as secretary.

In this connection it may be stated that in the 22.5.37 issue of “Time and Tide” there was published a letter from Dharam Yash DEV. In it he protested against the censorship of books exercised by the Government of India, with particular reference to Left Book Club literature. He contended that books not normally banned in India are seized by Customs when they are imported in the L.B.C. edition.

Precise date began unknown: 
Y
Key Individuals' Details: 

Rajani Palme Dutt (on the LBC panel of speakers), Victor Gollancz (founder and publisher), Harold Laski (commissioning editor), Sheila Lynd (worked for LBC), Betty Reid (worked for LBC), Emile Burns (on selection committee), John Strachey (instrumental in foundation of Club and commissioning editor).

Relevance: 

This note on Indian students in Britain involved in the Left Book Club is suggestive of the way in which left-wing networks transgressed cultural and ‘racial’ boundaries, bringing Indians and Britons together in pursuit of their political ideals. The censorship of LBC material in India is further indicative of the intersection of the Communist ideals associated with the Club and the anti-colonial ideologies that were a threat to the Government of India. The protest against this censorship by Indians in Britain emphasizes the importance of Britain as a site of anti-colonial activism by South Asians.

Connections: 

Ayana Angadi (Jaya Deva) (his Japan’s Kampf was an LBC book), Bhabani Bhattacharya (his So Many Hungers! was an LBC book), Miss Bonnerji (Indian branch of the LBC), Amiya Bose (Indian branch of the LBC), Ben Bradley, Stafford Cripps (instrumental in foundation of Club), Dharam Yash Dev (wrote a letter in the 22/5/37 issue of Time and Tide protesting against the Government of India censorship of LBC books), Promode Ranjan Sen Gupta (organized a Left Book Club discussion group for Indian students in London), Mahmud-us-Zaffar Khan (Nehru’s personal secretary – liaised with Gollancz in relation to his attempt to set up an LBC in India), Cecil Day Lewis (spoke at LBC meetings), Jawaharlal Nehru (supported Gollancz’s attempts to set up an LBC in India), George Orwell (his The Road to Wigan Pier and Homage to Catalonia were LBC books), Sylvia Pankhurst (spoke at LBC meetings), Santha Rama Rau (her Home to India was an LBC book), Paul Robeson (spoke at LBC meetings), Ellen Wilkinson (supporter of the LBC).

Date ended: 
01 Jan 1948
Archive source: 

L/PJ/12/504, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

Papers of Sir Victor Gollancz, Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick
 

Precise date ended unknown: 
Y

Location

Henrietta Street
London, WC2E 8PW
United Kingdom
Involved in events details: 

LBC national rally, Royal Albert Hall, London, February 1937

Conference on civil liberties in India, London, 17 October 1937

Michael Joseph Publishers

About: 

The publishing house Michael Joseph Ltd was founded by Michael Joseph on 5 September 1935. It was initially set up as a subsidiary of Victor Gollancz, which invested £4,001 4s. 0d. Gollancz and Norman Collins acted as directors with Joseph as managing director. Both publishing houses could save money by sharing premises, packers and accountants. Michael Joseph founded his house at a volatile economic time when many other publishing houses were folding or suffering serious financial difficulties.

Gollancz and Joseph clashed on the direction of the publishing house. Joseph found it difficult to meet Gollancz’s over-ambitious financial targets. Furthermore they did not agree on the type of material the house should publish. In the end, after Gollancz tried to censor Sir Philip Gibbs's Across the Frontiers for political reasons, he bought out Gollancz in 1938.

Joseph managed to build up an impressive list of authors, such as H. E. Bates, C. S. Forester, Monica Dickens, and Richard Llewellyn. He also published a book by Bertrand Russell and D. F. Karaka’s autobiographical book about his time in England, I Go West (1938). Other authors on Joseph’s list included Paul Gallico, Richard Gordon, Vicki Baum, Joyce Cary, and Vita Sackville-West. His publishing house was bought out by Penguin and is now an imprint on its list.

Published works: 

Ghose, Sudhin N., And Gazelles Leaping (London: Michael Joseph, 1949)

Karaka, D. F., I Go West (London: Michael Joseph, 1938)

Lin, Yutang (ed.), The Wisdom of India (London: Michael Joseph, 1944)

Muspratt, Eric, Going Native (London: Michael Joseph, 1936)

Relton, Max, A Man in the East: A Journey through French Indo-China (London: Michael Joseph, 1939)

Russell, Bertrand, Which Way to Peace? (London: Michael Joseph, 1936)

Shanani, R. G., Indian Pilgrimage (London: Michael Joseph, 1939)

Younghusband, Francis Edward, A Venture of Faith: Being a Description of the World Congress of Faiths held in London in 1936 (London: Michael Joseph, 1937)

Secondary works: 

Dudley Edwards, Ruth, Victor Gollancz: A Biography (London: Victor Gollancz, 1987)

Joseph, Michael, The Adventure of Publishing (London: Allan Wingate, 1949)

'Obituary: Michael Joseph', The Times (17 March 1958)

Room, Adrian, ‘Joseph, Michael (1897–1958)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/39029]

Date began: 
01 Jan 1935
Key Individuals' Details: 

Michael Collins, Victor Gollancz, Michael Joseph.

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Secker & Warburg

About: 

Secker & Warburg is a publishing company formed in 1936 by the merger of Martin Secker's publishing firm with Frederic Warburg's. The company took an anti-facist and anti-Soviet stance and published among other writers George Orwell (after his departure from Victora Gollancz), Cedric Dover, D. H. Lawrence, C. L. R. James, Frank Moraes, and Ram Gopal. In 1951 the company became an imprint of Heinemann, later merged with Harvill and, as Harvill Secker, is now part of the Random House group.

Date began: 
01 Jan 1936
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Bodley Head

About: 

The Bodley Head is a publishing firm founded by Charles Elkin Mathews and John Lane. It originally started as an antiquarian bookshop. It was named after Sir Thomas Bodley, founder of the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and the firm used the head of Bodley as its insignia. In the early 1890s, the Bodley Head embodied the spirit and aestheticism of the period by specializing in stylishly decorated limited editions of belle-lettres, and by publishing representative works of the English fin-de-siécle, such as Oscar Wilde’s plays and Aubrey Beardsley’s controversial periodical The Yellow Book. It took on many young poets, notably those of ‘The Rhymers’ Club’, a group of London-based poets which included W. B. Yeats, Arthur Symons and Ernest Rhys. After the partnership between Mathews and Lane ended in September 1894, Lane, who retained the firm’s insignia, continued to expand the Bodley Head. Lane died in 1925, and his nephew, Allen Lane, took over the business.

From 1932 to 1935, V. K. Krishna Menon was an editor at the Bodley Head. He launched a series called the Twentieth Century Library, which included Art by Eric Gill, Democracy by J. A. Hobson, Design by Noel Carrington, The Jews by Norman Bentwich, Broadcasting by Raymond W. Postgate, The Home by Naomi Mitchison, Property by H. L. Beales, The Black Races by J. H. Drieberg, The Theatre by Theodore Komisarjevsky, The Town by David Glass, Money by M. A. Abrahams, Communism by Ralph Fox and Women by Winifred Holtby. Menon was Jawaharlal Nehru’s literary agent in London, and the Bodley Head published Nehru’s Autobiography in 1936. In 1936, Bodley Head went into liquidation, and the following year it was bought by a consortium of the publishers George Allen & Unwin Ltd, Jonathan Cape, and J. M. Dent. Lane left the Bodley Head in 1936 to set up Penguin Books, and appointed Menon as the editor of Pelican in 1937.

In 1957 the firm was bought by Max Reinhardt, who successfully expanded the business, publishing authors such as George Bernard Shaw, Charles Chaplin, G. V. Desani, William Trevor, Maurice Sendak, Muriel Spark, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Sam Haskins and Alistair Cooke. Graham Greene, one of the firm’s authors, became its director. In the 1970s, the Bodley Head joined Jonathan Cape and Chatto & Windus. In 1987, it was sold to Random House, which continues to publish children’s books under the Bodley Head imprint. It was relaunched by Random House as a non-fiction imprint in April 2008.

Published works: 

Desani, G. V., All About H. Hatterr (1970)

Joyce, James, Ulysses (1936)

Nehru, Jawaharlal, Jawaharlal Nehru: An Autobiography with Musings on Recent Events in India (1936)
 

Example: 

Extract from an advertisement for the Twentieth Century Library series, New Stateman and Nation (5 May 1934), p. 167

Other names: 

John Lane

Secondary works: 

Brown, R. D., ‘The Bodley Head Press: Some Bibliographical Extrapolations’, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 61 (1967), pp. 39-50

Lambert, J. W. and Ratcliffe, Michael, The Bodley Head 1887-1987 (London: The Bodley Head, 1987)

May, J. Lewis, John Lane and the Nineties (London: The Bodley Head, 1936)

Nelson, James Graham, The Early Nineties: A View from the Bodley Head (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: Distributed by Oxford University Press, 1971)

Nelson, James Graham, Elkin Mathews: Publisher to Yeats, Joyce, Pound (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989)

Stetz, Margaret D., England in the 1890s: Literary Publishing at the Bodley Head (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990)

Stetz, Margaret D.,  ‘Sex, Lies, and Printed Cloth’, Victorian Studies 35 (Autumn 1991), pp. 71-86

Extract: 

The Twentieth Century Library is a new series of books on problems of to-day viewed in the light of the changing ideas and events of modern times. Life in all its varieties of expression is essentially dynamic: the economic structure, by which current forms of cultural manifestations are conditioned, is in a constant state of flux and must inevitably change however drastically certain sections of society may try to prevent it from doing so. The books in this series, each of which is written by a well-known author with expert knowledge of his subject, are intended to explain for the information of the intelligent man or woman the effect of modern thought of the metamorphosis which is affecting every aspect of our civilisation to-day. A 16-page prospectus is available explaining the purpose and scope of the Library and giving a detailed description of each volume.

Key Individuals' Details: 

Editors: Grahame Greene, John Lane, Charles Elkin Mathews, V. K. Krishna Menon, Max Reinhardt.

Relevance: 

This extract, which outlines the aim and scope of the Twentieth Century Library series, was published alongside the announcement of the publication of the first two volumes of the series, Democracy by J. A. Hobson and The Jews by Norman Bentwich. The logo of the series was a version of Laocoon, symbolizing Man ‘fighting with the twin snakes of War and Usury’, and was designed by Eric Gill, who wrote Art for the series. Each volume was sold at 2s 6d.

Connections: 

Grant Allen, Aubrey Beardsley, Max Beerbohm, Arnold Bennett, Walter Blaikie, Robert Bridges, Agatha Christie, G. V. Desani, Ernest Dowson, Florence Farr, Richard Le Gallienne, Kenneth Grahame, J. A. Hobson, Lionel Johnson, James Joyce, Allen Lane, Wyndham Lewis, Naomi Mitchison, Vladimir Nabokov, Jawaharlal Nehru, Gertrude Stein, George Bernard Shaw, The Sitwells, Arthur Symons, Ezra Pound, Rex Warner, H. G. Wells, Oscar Wilde, W. B. Yeats.

Date ended: 
01 Jan 1990
Archive source: 

GB 6 RUL MS 2606, Archives of The Bodley Head Ltd, Special Collections Services, University of Reading

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