Bücher der Reihe Elements in Publishing and Book Culture

This Element explores the politics of literary translation via case studies from the Heinemann African Writers Series and the work of twenty-first-century literary translators in Cameroon. It intervenes in debates concerning multilingualism, race and decolonization, as well as methodological discussion in African literary studies, world literature, comparative literature and translation studies. The task of translating African literary texts has developed according to political and socio-economic contexts. It has contributed to the consecration of a canon of African classics and fuelled polemics around African languages. Yet retranslation remains rare and early translations are frequently criticised. This Element's primary focus on the labour rather than craft or art of translation emphasises the material basis that underpins who gets to translate and how that embodied labour occurs within the process of book production and reception. The arguments draw on close readings, fresh archival material, interviews, and co-production and observation of literary translation workshops.

The term 'new adult' was coined in 2009 by St Martin's Press, when they sought submissions for a contest for 'fiction similar to YA that can be published and marketed as adult - a sort of 'older YA' or 'new adult'.' However, the literary category that later emerged bore less resemblance to young adult fiction and instead became a sub-genre of another major popular genre: romance. This Element uses new adult fiction as a case study to explore how genres develop in the twenty-first-century literary marketplace. It traces new adult's evolution through three key stages in order to demonstrate the fluidity that characterises contemporary genres. It argues for greater consideration of paratextual factors in studies of genre. Using a genre worlds approach, it contends that in order to productively examine genre, we must consider industrial and social factors as well as texts.

Reprinting, republishing and re-covering old books in new clothes is an established publishing practice. How are books that have fallen out of taste and favour resituated by publishers, and recognised by readers, as relevant and timely? This Element outlines three historical textures within British culture of the late 1970s and early 1980s - History, Remembrance and Heritage - that enabled Virago's reprint publishing to become a commercial and cultural success. With detailed archival case studies of the Virago Reprint Library, Testament of Youth and the Virago Modern Classics, it elaborates how reprints were profitable for the publisher and moved Virago's books - and the Virago brand name - from the periphery of culture to the centre. Throughout Virago's reprint publishing - and especially with the Modern Classics - the epistemic revelation that women writers were forgotten and could, therefore, be rediscovered, was repeated, again and again, and made culturally productive through the marketplace.

This Element proposes to relate the eighteenth-century world of travel and travel writing with the bluestocking salon. It locates eminent British travellers and explorers in the female-presided intellectual space and examines their multifaceted interaction with the bluestockings between 1760 and 1799. The study shows how the bluestockings acquired knowledge of the world through reading, discussing, writing and collecting travel accounts. It explores the 'social life' of manuscript and printed travel texts in the circle, their popularity and impact on the bluestockings. This Element builds upon the body of evidence provided by their published and unpublished diaries, correspondence and private library catalogues.

Publishing Scholarly Editions offers new intellectual tools for publishing digital editions that bring readers closer to the experimental practices of literature, editing, and reading. Sections 1 and 2 frame intentionality and data analysis as intersubjective, interrelated, and illustrative of experience-as-experimentation. In them, I explore these ideas in two editorial projects of nineteenth-century works: Herman Melville's Billy Budd, Sailor and the anti-slavery anthology The Bow in the Cloud, edited by Mary Anne Rawson. Section 3 uses philosophical Pragmatism to rethink editorial principles and data modelling, arguing for a broader conception of the edition rooted in data collections and experience. The Conclusion draws attention to the challenges of publishing digital editions, and why they have failed to be supported by the publishing industry. If publications are conceived as pragmatic 'inventions' based on reliable, open-access data collections, then editing will embrace the critical, aesthetic, and experimental affordances of editions of experience.

The creation of texts preserves culture, literature, myth, and society, and provides invaluable insights into history. Yet we still have much to learn about the history of how those texts were produced and how the production of texts has influenced modern societies, particularly in smaller nations like Wales. The story of publishing in Wales is closely connected to the story of Wales itself. Wales, the Welsh people, and the Welsh language have survived invasion, migration, oppression, revolt, resistance, religious and social upheaval, and economic depression. The books of Wales chronicle this story and the Welsh people's endurance over centuries of challenges. Ancient law-books, medieval manuscripts, legends and myths, secretly printed religious works, poetry, song, social commentary, and modern novels tell a story of a tiny nation, its hardy people, and an enduring literary legacy that has an outsized influence on culture and literature far beyond the Welsh borders.

This Element explores the papacy's engagement in authorial publishing in late antiquity and the Middle Ages. The opening discussion demonstrates that throughout the medieval period, papal involvement in the publication of new works was a phenomenon, which surged in the eleventh century. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

This study focuses on the spread of print in colonial India towards the middle and end of the nineteenth century. This Element will look at this phenomenon in eastern India, and survey how printing spread from Calcutta to centres such as Hooghly-Chinsurah, Murshidabad, Burdwan, Rangpur etc.

This Element examines entrepreneurship through the lens of identity and narrative based on interview data with book publishing entrepreneurs in the US Book publishing entrepreneurship narratives of independence, culture over commerce, accidental profession, place, risk, (in)stability, busyness, and freedom are examined in this Element.

While the term 'bestseller' explicitly relates books to sales, commercially successful books are also products of individual creative work. This Element presents a new perspective on the relationship between art and the market, with particular reference to bestselling writers and books.

This Element looks at the publishing history of the genre, girls' literature, in the United States spanning 1850-1940. American girls' literature shares a common bildungsroman: heroines 'grow down,' choosing community over individualism, by entering a domestic role.

How is academia portrayed in children's literature? This Element ambitiously surveys fictional professors in texts marketed towards children. Professors are overwhelmingly white and male, tending to be elderly scientists who fall into three stereotypes: the vehicle to explain scientific facts, the baffled genius, and the evil madman. By the late twentieth century, the stereotype of the male, mad, muddlehead, called Professor SomethingDumb, is formed in humorous yet pejorative fashion. This Element provides a publishing history of the role of academics in children's literature, questioning the book culture which promotes the enforcement of stereotypes regarding intellectual expertise in children's media. The Element is also available, with additional material, as Open Access.

Defines the academic bookshop, text, and market. Examines change drivers in worldwide markets. Draws on current research from commercial publishers and publishing interest groups. Includes quantitative and qualitative research data from academic booksellers. Argues that academic booksellers can lead a sustainable and equitable future for the academic text.

Considering young adult fantasy (YA fantasy) texts alongside the way they are circulated and marketed, this Element aims to show that the YA fantasy genre is a dynamic formation that takes shape and reshapes itself responsively in a continuing process over time.

This Element is founded upon research conducted with seventeen teens and young adults who identify themselves as readers of comics for pleasure. These interviews provide insights about how comics reading evolves with the readers and their overall reading experience. Special attention is paid to the place of female readers in the comics community.

Explores contemporary authorship via three key authorial roles: indie publisher, hybrid author, and fanfiction writer. Examines how digital and networked media allow writers to distribute their work directly to - and often in collaboration with - their readers. These writers tend to favor publishing platforms that generate attention capital.

Demonstrates that rather than Penguin Classics' frequently cited 'general reader', a more academic market contributed to the success of these titles. Investigates the publication of medieval French literature on this list and shines a light on the drivers, motivations, negotiations and decision-making processes behind it.

Contributes to the ongoing debate on what it meant to publish a book in manuscript. Offers case-studies of twelfth-century Anglo-Norman historians. Argues that their contemporary success was a result of successfully conducted publishing activities. This Element is also available as Open Access.

Through readings of key figures like H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, this Element argues that changes in publishing and distribution were crucial to the expansion of science fiction. Suitable for anybody interested in the reasons why science fiction went from being a niche variety of fantastical adventure into the global culture it is today.

Harry Potter fans contribute their immaterial and affective labor in multiple arenas. Fan participation in the Harry Potter universe has contributed to its success. Outlines the context and theoretical frameworks that support an analysis of the fan experience and examines tensions between fans and Warner Bros.

This Element is for anyone interested in the processes of canon-formation, world literatures in general and African literature in particular. It offers a fresh and exciting perspective on canon-formation and contestation that draws on original archival and field research.