Exporting America via Leipzig, Germany: Tauchnitz Editions and the International Popularization of American Literature

In the twenty-first century, making a literary work readily available and potentially famous worldwide can, via the internet, be accomplished quite easily and almost instantaneously. During the nineteenth and most of the twentieth century, however, because works of fiction were published only in paper formats, and the existing means for distributing such materials and information about them were quite limited, this process was much more difficult and took considerably longer. Somewhat surprisingly, the companies that in the past actually made American literary works available to readers outside the United States have thus far received comparatively little scholarly attention. Understanding these firms and the distribution systems they established, though, is essential not only to determining how certain works of American literature—as well as their authors—became well known outside the United States but also to formulating more accurate hypotheses as to the cultural labor they performed. One of the most important facilitators of such popularity between 1841 and 1943 was an English-language reprint series published by the Bernhard Tauchnitz firm of Leipzig, Germany, at first entitled “Collection of British Authors” and, after 1930, the “Collection of British and American Authors” (henceforth simply referred to as the Collection). The former title is actually quite misleading, as American authors were involved from the beginning to the end in this series, which eventually included 5,370 volumes and sold over forty million copies;2 in fact, Tauchnitz published James Fenimore Cooper’s The Spy as number 5 in the Collection (April 1842) and Margaret Halsey’s With Malice Toward Some was number 5,362 (1939), making the latter among the last ten volumes published in the series

Of Nazis, False-bottomed Suitcases, and Paperback Reprints: Der Tod kommt zum Erzbischof (Death Comes for the Archbishop) in Germany, 1936−1952

In Willa Cather: A Bibliography, Joan Crane provides an extremely intriguing entry for the first German-language edition of Death Comes for the Archbishop, entitled Der Tod kommt zum Erzbischof. The first part of this bibliographical description is quite innocuous: “Translated by Sigismund von Radecki. Stuttgart, 1940.” Immediately after this, however, Crane states: “Note: This edition was burned by the Nazis, and the plates were destroyed. The translator carried carbon sheets of his translation into Switzerland concealed under the lining of 2 suitcases.” She then concludes the description by noting, “The edition that follows (E50) was subsequently published in Zurich” in 1940 and 1942 (Crane 327). A Cather novel run afoul of the Nazis? A daring, heroic escape to Switzerland by someone who wanted German-language readers to have access to the novel? These elements would more typically be found in a spy thriller than in a bibliography. Such a dramatic narrative not only makes for interesting reading but also almost certainly pleases those who love nothing more than to hear stories of how particular fictions were so powerful or threatening to the status quo that various authorities moved to prevent their publication or distribution (e.g., via libraries or classrooms). There is only one problem: almost none of what Crane wrote is accurate

Midlands Voices: Student literacy gets major boost

A glance at local and national media might lead one to believe there’s little good news about secondary schools and the literacy skills of their students: Low test scores. Few students reading for pleasure. Their inability to think incisively or write coherently. Here in the metropolitan Omaha area, however, there is a major effort under way to support the reading and writing skills for high school and middle school students. For the past year, an organization called METLink — a partnership of UNO’s College of Education and College of Arts and Sciences with area middle and high schools — has been actively working with area English teachers to help improve the ways they teach students

Re-evaluating syndicalist opposition to the First World War

It has been argued that support for the First World War by the important French syndicalist organisation, the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT) has tended to obscure the fact that other national syndicalist organisations remained faithful to their professed workers’ internationalism: on this basis syndicalists beyond France, more than any other ideological persuasion within the organised trade union movement in immediate pre-war and wartime Europe, can be seen to have constituted an authentic movement of opposition to the war in their refusal to subordinate class interests to those of the state, to endorse policies of ‘defencism’ of the ‘national interest’ and to abandon the rhetoric of class conflict. This article, which attempts to contribute to a much neglected comparative historiography of the international syndicalist movement, re-evaluates the syndicalist response across a broad geographical field of canvas (embracing France, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Britain and America) to reveal a rather more nuanced, ambiguous and uneven picture. While it highlights the distinctive nature of the syndicalist response compared with other labour movement trends, it also explores the important strategic and tactical limitations involved, including the dilemma of attempting to translate formal syndicalist ideological commitments against the war into practical measures of intervention, and the consequences of the syndicalists’ subordination of the political question of the war to the industrial struggle

\u3ci\u3e Fiction and the American Literary Marketplace: The Role of Newspaper Syndicates in America, 1860-1900\u3c/i\u3e

Conventional literary history has virtually ignored the role of newspaper syndicates in publishing some of the most famous nineteenth-century writers. Henry James, Rudyard Kipling and Mark Twain were among those who offered their early fiction to Syndicates , firms that subsequently sold the work to newspapers across America for simultaneous, first-time publication. Charles Johanningsmeier shows how the economic practicalities of the syndicate system governed the consumption and interpretation of various literary texts. His study revises the conception of traditional literary history by examining the ordinary reader\u27s response to some of the major writers of the nineteenth century.https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/facultybooks/1033/thumbnail.jp

World War I, Anti-German Hysteria, the “Spanish” Flu, and My Ántonia, 1917–1919

At first glance, My Ántonia might seem to have nothing to do with World War I. Despite the fact that Cather’s fourth novel was written between the fall of 1916 and June 1918, the war is nowhere mentioned in it, and no evidence exists to suggest that Cather consciously intended to embed any type of commentary about the war within its pages. Nevertheless, My Ántonia is inextricably connected to the war, chiefly because its early sales and reception among American readers were very likely heavily influenced by the xenophobic attitudes that the war exacerbated

The Midwestern Moment: The Forgotten World of Early-Twentieth-Century Midwestern Regionalism, 1880-1940

Review of The Midwestern Moment: The Forgotten World of Early-Twentieth-Century Midwestern Regionalism, 1880-1940 edited by Jon K. Lauc