Thursday, August 16, 2007

Publishers hip to the démodé

The nature of our reading challenge assumes that many of us will be searching library catalogues and putting our library cards to more frequent use. Still, there are some publishers who keep the worthy but currently dépassé authors on your list. Here are the ones that I know about. If you find anymore let me know so that I can add them to the list. I did not list many for authors like D.H. Lawrence as their works more or less firmly entrenched in popular classics backlists.

This post will be a work in progress. For a few authors their works are scattered so widely it did not make much sense to include them here. (Not until I'm in a more perfectionist mood, anyway.) Amazon was the main source for this list; from it I selected only publishers who had books readily available, rather than those with books being sold by third parties. Publishers only listed with a single author are included if they have a significant portion of her writings.

Anchor Books: website

Authors: Elizabeth Bowen (lovely covers on their editions.)

Dalkey Archive Press: website

Authors: Violette Leduc, Djuna Barnes

David R. Godine: website, blog

Authors: Alfred Chester, Marian Engel, Sarah Orne-Jewett

Dover Publications: website

Authors: W. Somerset Maugham, G.K. Chesterton

George Braziller: website

Authors: Janet Frame

Peter Owen Publishers: website, blog

Authors: Anna Kavan (one of her books is smack on the homepage and blog. love it.), Blaise Cendrars, Cesare Pavese, Violette Leduc

New York Review of Books Classics: website, blog

Authors: Ivy Compton-Burnett, Blaise Cendrars, Richard Hughes, Cesare Pavese, Malcolm Lowry

Penguin Publishing (Classics, Popular Classics, 20th century classics, Modern classics): website, blog

Authors: G.K. Chesterton, W. Somerset Maugham, George Bernard Shaw, D.H. Lawrence

University of California Press: website, blog

Authors: Blaise Cendrars

Vintage: website

Authors: W. Somerset Maugham, Italo Svevo, Elizabeth Bowen

W.W. Norton & Company: website

Authors: May Sarton

Zoland Books: website

Authors: Dawn Powell (I feel obliged to note that it was reprinting Powell years before Library of America came on to the scene. It offers her individual works separately too, in case you don't want a hefty volume of collected works.)

1 comment:

Rebecca H. said...

Thanks for pulling all that information together!