Poetry, Politics and the Book: Small Press Publishing in London and Paris, 1920-1940

This research examines the small presses and publishing ventures established between 1920 and 1940 by modernist poets, John Rodker, Nancy Cunard, and George Reavey, in terms of aesthetics and politics. Like others in London, all three were swept up in the powerful surge of interest in print and book production that marked the early twentieth century, a legacy of the late Victorian interest in print reform and the growing fame of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement. Throughout the 1920s, debates raged on the qualities of type, layout and design, igniting profound questions about ideal form and the political and social capacity of the book as a tool of communication, engagement and education: as the political landscape of Europe shifted throughout the 1930s and 1940s, such debates took on increasingly politicised forms. In the cases of Rodker, Cunard and Reavey, their passion for bookmaking and print was matched with a fascination for contemporary French art, in particular that of the new Surrealist avant-garde: each had strong connections with Paris, the epicentre of European modernism; each was highly sympathetic to the Marxist theory that underpinned the Surrealist movement; each was aware of and interested in the French tradition of the livre d'artiste, a key genre of Surrealist production. Study of their activities and work thus provides a valuable insight into the intersection of national traditions, as well as the beginnings of British Surrealism.

One of the 'Whitechapel boys', Rodker is a pivotal but under-researched figure in British modernism. A translator, poet and editor, driven by a passion for French literature and culture, his early imprints were motivated by a desire to print by hand and to work with young artists to design fine editions, marketed to bibliophiles and book collectors. Rodker's socialism was always pronounced, impacting on his publishing increasingly over the decades. In the 1920s he pursued a Soviet-led publishing strategy with Preslit, the agency of which he was Director, and his own Pushkin Press.

A friend of Rodker, Cunard was a protégé of Irish novelist George Moore, whose theories on printing and book production were developed during his years in Paris in the 1890s. Her own Hours Press, established with Surrealist Louis Aragon in 1927 and based in Reanville near Paris, has been well historicised in bibliographic terms. However, Cunard's aesthetic ambitions and the extent of Moore's influence on her printing practice have not been explored in any depth. Nor has the relation between her publishing practices and her politics, despite the fact that her time in Paris coincided with the beginnings of a commitment to communism that would last for the next 20 years.

Largely neglected in literary history, Reavey was a Russian-born Irish poet and translator and founder of the literary agency, Bureau Littéraire Européen. Setting up the Europa Press in Paris in 1929, he worked with S. W. Hayter and other artists associated with Atelier 17, employing, like Rodker and Cunard, some of the most promising experimental artists of the time to contribute to his publications. He returned to London with the Europa Press in the early 1930s, and with other British Surrealists such as Hayter, Julian Trevelyan and David Gascoyne, was active in introducing Surrealism to Britain. Here, continuing to work with visual artists, he too pursued a publishing agenda in line with his communism.

The histories, outputs and activities of these ventures will be explored as they intersect with their founders' political affiliations, serving to excavating an intricate network in which ideas, materials and texts circulated between France and Britain. In these ventures commercial and political motivations combined with aesthetic ambition: this study thus offers a space in which to consider the intersections between literary and artistic modernism and cultural formations of such as nationalism and communism.

In addition to the academic beneficiaries, the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art will benefit directly from the partnership and project outcomes, which aim to reach as wide a public as possible through a related display, public lecture, symposium and possible linked events.

The National Galleries of Scotland hold one of the largest and most important collections of art in the world, welcoming over a million visitors each year, the economic impact of which is estimated to be approaching £69m per annum. Research and care of the collections is a primary objective, which feeds directly into a responsibility to share research and knowledge, and promote access to the national collections to as wide a public as possible. Within this framework, the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art Archive & Library aims to provide public and scholarly access to resources, both in the Reading Room at the Dean Gallery and through a programme of temporary displays and related events which draw on the Archive and Special Collections. The proposed research and its projected outcomes lends itself to these objectives and aims.

In the longer term, and with the publication of the fellow's monograph, the SNGMA will benefit from the attention that the research draws to their collections, which will also serve to increase awareness of the UK's cultural heritage on the world stage. Over subsequent years, the research may help to attract a more diverse audience to the SNGMA and increase the number of visitors to the Archive & Library. A further important result of this project, which brings together the SNGMA and the Centre for the History of the Book for the first time, will be the creation of new networks between Edinburgh University and local institutions. It is expected that this will lead to new collaborative project bids, for example combined doctoral awards. Such bids could directly benefit the CHB and the SNGMA in economic terms and in social and cultural terms, as the development of connections between the institutions may lead to joint projects that both diversify the SNGMA audience and provide local dissemination and outreach opportunities to the CHB.

In order to reach other general audiences, the fellow will offer lectures and events to other local institutions, including the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society, a long established local organisation dedicated to the study of the book, and the Edinburgh International Book Festival (EIBF), a prestigious annual event held over a two-week period in August, which attracts an international audience of over 200,000 readers, publishers and book trade professionals. The festival office will be approached about the possibility of hosting a one-hour, ticketed event focused on alternative publishing, past and present. This would feature a roundtable consisting of the Fellow, and two other invited speakers, drawn from the sphere of contemporary alternative/small press publishing. This could potentially be mutually beneficial for the book festival and the participants, opening up new and international audiences to the book as a creative medium and the activities of small presses in Scotland, and would increase public engagement with the issue of media transformation by providing a historical perspective on the issue.

Finally, the research will also impact on the nation's heritage by helping to consolidate Edinburgh's position as a centre for research into artists' books and alternative publishing, and, in terms of thinking through the effects of media transformation, will be of interest to policy makers and cultural custodians.