Feature Anniversary publishing
of original documents, copies of leters and fascinat- ing historical photographs. The bicentenary project has been a global operation, with all 18 HarperCol- lins offices involved. It has been led by the corporate communications team in New York and has involved the deep mining of its US and UK archives, held in New Jersey and Glasgow, respectively. The publisher created an engrossing website at 200.
hc.com—of interest to anyone involved with books— which has gems on every page. Here’s1 a photograph of Bernie and Pat Zondervan—and editor Ted Engstrom, centre—outside their first store in Grand Rapids, Michi- gan in 1933 (the Christian publishing imprint has its origins in bookselling); here’s2 a telegram from editor Cass Canfield Junior to the agent Carmen Balcells concerning Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s 100 Years of Soli- tude, which the publisher’s reader “likes very much”, adding “leter follows with contract”; and here’s3 a leter from E B White to his editor Eugene Saxton, accompa- nying the manuscript for Stuart Little, whose hero, White notes, “has somewhat the atributes and appearance of a mouse… Luckily he bears no resemblance, either physically or temperamentally, to Mickey.”
Sweet Jane The John Murray Archive, held at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh, holds the manuscripts, private leters and business papers for more than 16,000 authors and their correspondents, among them Lord Byron, Jane Austen, Charles Darwin and David Living- stone. Among its cherished items are a leter from Austen to her sister Cassandra in October 1816, in which she says of publisher John Murray II: “He is a rogue of course, but a civil one.” It also holds the world’s “largest and greatest” collection of Byron papers. The poet and John Murray II were friends, and the archive includes the original manuscript of Childe Harold and the Greek funeral oration for the poet in 1836. Hodder & Stoughton’s archive is held at the London Metropolitan Archives. As well as “profit and loss ledg- ers” and “material about company sports days”, the records also include Hodder family documents, among them “the private correspondence of Sir Ernest Hodder- Williams [chairman of the company from 1902–1927]… and the papers of the last chairman of the company, Philip Atenborough, [who] played a major role in safe- guarding the future of the archive.” There is also a note concerning J M Barrie’s famous bequeathing of all Peter Pan royalties to Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children. It says: “No new editions are to be published without the hospital’s approval. All editions to contain a note that Sir James Barrie is the author of the play and that the hospital owns copy- right.” This legacy continues to this day. Both John Murray and Hodder are keeping their powder dry concerning their anniversaries, and all three publishers are aware of the slight problem such milestones present for legacy publishers. How do they respect their past but still appear modern and relevant? “We were very cognisant of this,” says HC UK communications director Fiona Allen. “The website and the promotions throughout the year have very
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From left Joe Wicks, Jeffrey Archer, Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler holding their Pan bestseller trophies, presented by back row, from left Jeremy Travathan and Paul Baggaley
Macmillan toasts 70 years of Pan
Pan was officially founded in 1944 by Alan Bott, owner of The Book Society, journalist and former First World War pilot—Eastern Flights, his 1920 memoir of his crash, cap- ture by the enemy and subsequent daring escape, was a bestseller. It published a handful of titles in its first couple of years, but Pan Macmillan is marking the 70th anniversary of the imprint switching gears and becoming a mass-market paperback publisher, at a time when Penguin was the only player in that sector. After Bott died in 1952, the company became jointly owned by a consortium of
Who wore it best?
Pan70 titles take on the originals...
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publishers: Macmillan, Collins, Heinemann and, for a brief time, Hodder & Stoughton (Macmillan assumed sole control in 1987, thus becoming Pan Macmillan in 1990). Pan’s heyday was arguably the 1950s and 1960s, when it was driven by design, with its unashamedly commercial four-colour covers, at a time when Penguin stuck to its classic two-tone livery. In a nod to that history, in September
Pan Macmillan launched a series of rejack- eted Pan classics, all designed by Justine Anweiler, which “evoke the past while look- ing at the present”.
The Collins Canada mail room, pictured in the 1940s
much been a celebration of publishing, and our liter- ary culture overall as it exists today. We also empha- sised that our rich literary history informs our present and our future. For example, HarperCollins was always an innovative company—it set a book using electronic composition as early as 1968—and this spirit remains in how we work today.” As the industry grows older, it is remarkable just how much social, political and cultural history is kept in publishers’ archives: legacy houses in particular are like working museums, their lists holding up a mirror to the dreams and aspirations, diversions and achievements of societ at a given time. Long may it continue.
11th October 2017
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