Transatlantic Knowledge Production: Expanding Networks in The Modernist Archives Publishing Project

The publishing industry determines whose voices get heard. Publishers can be gatekeepers as well as agents of change, capable of challenging or reaffirming dominant narratives and inequalities and driving cultural change across borders. This project transforms public access to twentieth-century publishers' archives, asking new questions about the transatlantic relationship between US/UK and expatriate publishers, and putting pressure on existing assumptions about voice and representation in Anglophone literary publishing.

The period we focus on (1900-50) was a time of exponential growth in readership, book-buying, and the number of publishing houses starting up, as the industry modernised rapidly in response to international changes in copyright, changes in printing technology, and global channels of distribution. At the same time, innovative publishers were making crucial space for new types of writing and new voices. Key modernist works and publishing histories that we'll showcase in this new, expanded database include Nancy Cunard's edited Negro anthology (1934), Sylvia Beach's publication of James Joyce's Ulysses (1922), Alfred Knopf's publishing of Willa Cather alongside European and Russian translations for American audiences, and Leonard and Virginia Woolf's fostering of anti-colonial and left-wing voices.

The Modernist Archives Publishing Project (or MAPP) is an established international digital humanities project (http://www.modernistarchives.com/), built by a team of US, UK and Canadian archivists and scholars. It is the first international open access project to digitise a publisher's archive and to contextualise and present little-known aspects of the publishing process (submission letters, reader's reviews, sales and accounts data) in relation to books and the people and businesses involved. This new phase adds a transatlantic dimension to the prototype we have built, which has focussed on the Hogarth Press. The expanded resource will put US publishing house Alfred A. Knopf (founded by Alfred and Blanche Knopf in 1915), into dialogue with expat publishers and booksellers Sylvia Beach and Nancy Cunard, literary agents William and Jenny Bradley (founded 1909, representing American, English and French authors, including James Baldwin and Richard Wright), and the UK publishing house of Chatto & Windus (founded 1855). In size, organisation, and outputs, Knopf is an American counterpart to the Woolfs' press, while Nancy Cunard's Hours Press is a shorter-lived small press (1928-31). Chatto & Windus represents the kind of modernist mid-sized press that the Hogarth Press became. Bringing these transatlantic collections together will make it possible to map transatlantic publishing networks and the circulation of books, ideas and peoples across borders, in a way that has not been possible for scholars working individually in paper-based archives before.

Transatlantic knowledge production and collaborative and community experiences are central to this research. Working across several workstreams, we'll build on and expand our previous practice by creating new data with existing partners (University of Reading Special Collections, Washington State University Pullman, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin) and work with other cultural institutions (the New York Public Library, and Sussex University Library Special Collections) to engage with a wider community of audiences. We'll work with new groups of community volunteers, facilitate transnational training, and develop a best practice toolkit and series of digital and in-person exhibitions on Transatlantic Modernist Publishing with our cultural institutions. Collaboration is built into the heart of MAPP as a feminist digital humanities project. This project takes this further by working with a larger group of British and American partners to reconfigure the relationships between publishers, authors and readers across borders.