Immigrant Publishers

In the first third of the twentieth century, the publishing industry in the United Kingdom and the United States was marked by well-established and comfortable traditions pursued by family-dominated firms. The British trade was the preserve of self-satisfied men entirely certain of their superiority in the world of letters; their counterparts in North America were blissfully unaware of development and trends outside their borders. In this unique historical analysis, Richard Abel and Gordon Graham show how publishing evolved post-World War II to embrace a different, more culturally inclusive, vision.Unfortunately, even among the learned classes, only a handful clearly understood either the nature or the likely consequences of the mounting geopolitical tensions that gripped pre-war Europe. The world was largely caught up in the ill-informed and unexamined but widely held smug and shallow belief that the huge price paid in "the war to end all wars" had purchased perpetual peace, a peace to be maintained by the numerous, post-war high-minded treaties ceremoniously signed thereafter.The history presented here has as its principals a handful of those who fled to the Anglo-Saxon shores in the pre-World War II era. The remainder made their way to Britain and the United States following that war. They brought an entirely new vision of and energetic pursuit of the cultural role of the book and journal in a society, a vision which was quickly adopted and naturalized by a perspicacious band of post-war native-born book people.

Richard Abel

Introduction: The Impact of European Expatriate Bookmen in the Book Trades of Britain and America, Maurits Dekker and Eric Proskauer: A Synergy of Talent in Exile, André Deutsch: The Great Persuader, Kurt Enoch: Paperback Pioneer, Paul Hamlyn: "There Must Be Another Way ...", Walter J. Johnson and Kurt Jacoby: Academic Press, Walter J. Johnson and the Scholarly Reprint, Andor Kraszna-Krausz: Pioneering Publisher in Photography, Walter and Eva Neurath: Their Books Married Words with Pictures, Robert Maxwell: Man of Dash and Determination, Champion of Dissemination, Frederick A. Praeger: Apostle of Anti-Communism Who Built Two Publishing Houses, Max Reinhardt: Shrewd Businessman, Publisher of Famous Authors, George Weidenfeld: A Publisher of Inexhaustible Vitality and a Renowned International Figure, Kurt Wolff and Jacques Schiffrin: Two Publishing Giants Start Over in America, Other Immigrant Publishers of Note in America, Epilogue: Migration and Transformation, List of Contributors