After the digital revolution: Working with emails and born-digital records in literary and publishers’ archives

After the digital revolution: Working with emails and born-digital records in literary and publishers’ archive

Rewriting Tarr ten years later: Wyndham Lewis, the Phoenix Library and the domestication of modernism

Rewriting Tarr ten years later: Wyndham Lewis, the Phoenix Library and the domestication of modernis

Shucks, we've got glamour girls too! Gertrude Stein, Bennett Cerf and the culture of celebrity

© The Trustees of Indiana University. September 1933 was a turning point in Gertrude Stein's career. That month, Alfred Harcourt published The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas and Bennett Cerf issued Three Lives in the Modern Library, a series of cheap reprints marketed as "the world's best books." While most scholars have linked Stein's celebrity to the Autobiography, the publication of her experimental texts by the Modern Library and Random House has been largely overlooked. This article is organized around two central claims. First, it shows that unlike Alfred Harcourt, Cerf adopted a long-term strategy by publishing Stein's difficult writings, as well as her more accessible texts. Second, from 1934, Cerf used new media to position Stein as an atypical literary star. After the publication of Three Lives, he organized her tour in America and promoted her using his knowledge of the Hollywood entertainment industry. Blurring the boundaries between print and broadcasting, Cerf created a unique strategy for marketing Stein, a strategy that enabled her to stand out in a crowded literary marketplace

Pacifist writer, propagandist publisher: Rose Macaulay and Hodder & Stoughton

Pacifist writer, propagandist publisher: Rose Macaulay and Hodder & Stoughto

Blurring the boundaries: Fourteen great detective stories and Joyce's a portrait of the artist as a young man in the modern library series

This article examines the simultaneous publication of James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and a collection of detective stories in the Modern Library series in March 1928. The Modern Library, a uniform series of reprints sold for only 95 cents, did not make any difference between the two books. Not only did they share a similar physical format, but they were also advertised in the same periodicals, and reviewers showed no surprise at the juxtaposition of “high” and “low” culture. Drawing on extensive research in Random House archives at the Columbia Rare Book and Manuscript Library, this essay uses a book-history approach to show that the Modern Library contributed to the blurring of boundaries between modernist and popular fiction

The new publishers of the 1920s

The new publishers of the 1920

“Introductions by Eminent Writers”: T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf in the Oxford World’s Classics Series

“Introductions by Eminent Writers”: T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf in the Oxford World’s Classics Serie

Myth maker: Malcolm Bradbury and the creation of Creative Writing at UEA

When did creative writing courses really appear in the UK? The usual story is that the first creative writing programme was launched in 1970 at the University of East Anglia, under the leadership of Malcolm Bradbury. Ian McEwan is often presented as the first student in creative writing, a role he has always rejected – insisting that he studied for an MA in literature with the option to submit creative work for the final dissertation. As Kathryn Holeywell has shown, creative writing was already offered for assessment at UEA in the 1960s. This article tells a more complete history of creative writing in Britain, a history that takes into account the experimentations of the 1960s and the rise of literary prizes in the 1980s – without ignoring Bradbury’s important role

From New York to Shanghai: global modernism, cheap reprint series and copyright

From New York to Shanghai: global modernism, cheap reprint series and copyrigh

Are Users of Digital Archives Ready for the AI Era? Obstacles to the Application of Computational Research Methods and New Opportunities

 Innovative technologies are improving the accessibility, preservation and searchability of born-digital and digitised records. In particular, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is opening new opportunities for archivists and researchers. However, the experience of scholars (particularly humanities scholars) and other users remain understudied. This article asks how and why researchers and general users are, or are not, using computational methods. This research is informed by an open-call survey, completed by 22 individuals, and semi-structured interviews with 33 professionals, including archivists, librarians, digital humanists, literary scholars, historians, and computer scientists. Drawing on these results, this article offers an analysis of user experiences of computational research methods applied to digitised and born-digital archives. With a focus on humanities and social science researchers, this article also discusses users who resist this kind of research, perhaps because they lack the skills necessary to engage with these materials at scale, or because they prefer to use more traditional methods, such as close reading and historical analysis. Here, we explore the uses of computational and more ‘traditional’ research methodologies applied to digital records. We also make a series of recommendations to elevate users’ computational skills but also to improve the digital infrastructure to make archives more accessible and usable