Publishing Samuel Beckett

This is a groundbreaking collection of essays offering a critical examination of the publishing history of Samuel Beckett’s work. Publishing Samuel Beckett charts Beckett’s own attitude towards the literary market place and the business of publishing, and his relationship with specific publishing houses, literary journals and individual publishers. Furthermore, by drawing on publishers’ archives and other archival material, this volume examines the way in which publishing houses and journals responded to Beckett, and the way they produced and marketed his work, and dealt with issues such as censorship. This volume traces the creation, reception and dissemination of the work of one of the most important and influential writers of the 20th century across a variety of cultural contexts.
 
Contents
Mark Nixon, ‘Silly Business’ – Beckett and the World of Publishing; Andrew Nash & John Pilling, The ‘Shaton and Windup’ Affair: Beckett’s Dealings with the Firm of Chatto and Windus; Séan Lawlor, ‘That’s how it was and them were the days’: Samuel Beckett’s early publications with Samuel Putnum and Nancy Cunard; Lois More Overbeck, Edward W. Titus at the Sign of the Black Manikin and This Quarter; Mark Nixon, George Reavey – Beckett’s first literary agent; Séan Kennedy, Beckett Publishing in Ireland; Dirk Van Hulle, Publishing ‘The End’: Beckett and Les Temps modernes;John Pilling and Séan Lawlor, Beckett in Transition; Justin Beplate, Samuel Beckett, Olympia Press and the Merlin Juveniles;Shane Weller, Beckett’s Last Chance: Les Éditions de Minuit; Gaby Hartel, Beckett and his German Publisher Suhrkamp Verlag; S. E. Gontarski, Art and Commodity: Samuel Beckett’s Commerce with Grove Press; Peter D. McDonald, Calder’s Beckett; Chris Ackerley, Samuel Beckett and Faber & Faber; Lois Oppenheim, Beckett and the Livre d’Artiste; Sam Slote, Continuing the End: Variation between Beckett’s French and English Prose Works; Dirk Van Hulle, The Text as Figure and Ground: Beckett and Electronic Publishing; David Tucker, Posthumous controversies: the publications of Beckett’s Dream of Fair to middling Women and Eleutheria.