Latest news with #LiteratureforthePeople
Winnipeg Free Press
03-05-2025
- Business
- Winnipeg Free Press
Macmillan brothers' publishing path detailed
A pair of 19th-century Scottish brothers sought to raise themselves out of near poverty, turn a buck in the book business and bring affordable — and tendentially Christian — literacy to a broad swath of the British middle and working classes. They succeeded on all three fronts. The publishing house they created still stands today, known corporately as Pan Macmillan. Literature for the People Sarah Harkness's Literature for the People is a meticulous — though lacking in élan — chronicle of the genesis of that publishing business. Harkness's own genesis as a writer is noteworthy. She worked in senior positions in corporate finance for 20 years, latterly as a partner with accounting firm Arthur Andersen. This is her second crack at biography, having previously authored an account of English Victorian writer and artist Nelly Erichsen (A Hidden Life). The Macmillan siblings' overarching motive was, in Harkness's telling, a marriage of capitalism and religiosity. 'The Macmillan brothers could see that there was an enormous and growing market waiting to be tapped, and that the canny publisher who spotted the right opportunities would not only cater to the inner life of the working man, thus serving a social purpose, but also might make a fortune,' she writes. They actually began as London booksellers in 1843 but, seeing opportunity, shifted into publishing. The elder brother Daniel Macmillan did not live to see the firm prosper. He died in 1857. His younger sibling, Alexander, carried on and grew the business over the next nearly four decades. Where the story shines is post mid-19th-century, when the publishing firm's books and magazines engaged with contemporary intellectual currents and controversies. The Macmillan firm's history intersects with a virtual who's who of literary, scientific and political pooh-bahs. A mere partial list includes: Thomas Huxley, William Gladstone, Charles Darwin, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Thomas Carlyle, Lewis Carroll, Matthew Arnold, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Dante Gabriel and Christina Rossetti. When Macmillan set up a publishing arm in the United States in the 1860s, it encountered government opposition that echoes down to the Trumpian present. American customs officials frequently refused to permit release for sale of imported British books for months on end, usually on specious grounds, crippling the firm's cash flow. And when officialdom did finally release the held books, it slapped on tariffs that made them prohibitively expensive to buy in America. For all that, Alexander Macmillan eventually prevailed against Yankee protectionism, and the publisher became a success story on both sides of the Atlantic. Literature for the People's weakness lies in its academic origins. It grew out of its author's MA thesis, a 40,000-word dissertation that covered five years in the life of Alexander Macmillan — and it shows. There are passages in which Harkness relates an event or episode and then buttresses the narrative with a block quotation from correspondence between the brothers or their client authors. Some of these block quotations are lengthy, far too lengthy, and repetitive of what she's already just related. This may be appropriate in an academic text or thesis, but in a popular history it's dead weight. Still, it does a workmanlike job of what good biography is supposed to do: portray its subjects' experiences by highlighting as much intimate detail as possible and offering considered analysis of personality. It also deftly explores the brothers' lives and their firm's success within the context of the times and larger historical events. It's of note that the publisher of this bio is the very firm that it's about — Macmillan. It doesn't appear to be a commissioned work, which, ethically, would have to be disclosed. The acknowledgements at book's end merely states it was written with 'the encouragement and support of the Macmillan family.' Regardless, it would have been prudent and appropriate for Harkness to expressly underline that the Macmillan descendants and firm exercised no editorial control over its contents. Douglas J. Johnston is a Winnipeg lawyer and writer.
The Guardian
09-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
In brief: May Our Joy Endure; The Future of the Novel; Literature for the People
Kev Lambert (translated by Donald Winkler)Pushkin Press, £18.99, pp320 Winner of the Prix Médicis, Lambert's sharp, provocative third novel embeds ever-timely themes – greed, hypocrisy and privilege – in a narrative that blends satire and lyricism, whimsy and voyeurism. At its centre is Céline Wachowski, a charismatic celebrity architect who's all too credibly flawed. You won't be able to look away as her latest project – developing a disused industrial complex on the outskirts of Montreal – turns into a career-threatening calamity, mired in controversy over indigenous land rights and anti-gentrification protests. Simon OkotieMelville House, £9.99, pp144 Okotie offers a fresh and idiosyncratic take on that perennially fretted-over topic: the state of the novel. Conscientiously grounded in theoretical debate stretching back to the start of the 20th century, it's also arrestingly current, eyeing insights derived from cognitive literary studies and threats posed by generative AI. Throughout, the author's questing vitality makes space for lightheartedness, as he cheers on fiction writers prepared to experiment while offering personal insights born of his own novelistic failings. A bracing, positive read, it's recommended even – perhaps especially – to those whose own literary tastes tend to be more conventional. Sarah HarknessPan, £12.99, pp496 (paperback) The lives of the brothers who brought the likes of Thomas Hardy and Christina Rossetti to the Victorian masses make for illuminating stories themselves. The youngest of eight surviving children, Daniel and Alexander Macmillan were raised on a croft on the west coast of Scotland, leaving school early yet going on to found an international publishing house that thrives to this day. Their rags-to-riches ascent (within just two generations, they'd be able to claim a prime minister as one of their own) is brought to life with appropriate narrative flair and an appreciation for their shared curiosity as well as their galvanising moral purpose. To order May Our Joy Endure, The Future of the Novel or Literature for the People go to Delivery charges may apply
