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Samuel Beckett Resources and Links
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John Calder (pictured left outside his newly-opened bookshop) started his publishing house in 1949 when manuscripts were plentiful and many books that were in demand were out of print - the immediate post war years paper was scarce and severely rationed.
During the 1950s he built up a list of translated classics which included the works of Chekhov, Tolstoy, Dostoievsky, Goethe and Zola among others. Calder then began to publish American titles. As a result of Senator Joe McCarthy's "witch-hunt" he was able to acquire significant American authors as well as books on issues of civil liberty which main-stream publishers in New York were afraid to keep on their lists. This led to the development of close ties with those smaller American firms who resisted the McCarthyite pressure. John Calder commissioned Alger Hiss to write a personal account of his trial for treason, which many believed to have been a frame-up. Other books about British and European issues followed, including Lord Altrincham's controversial "Is The Monarchy Perfect?" and "Gangrene" - exposing atrocities in both British and French colonies which led directly to the closing of the Hola camps in Kenya. There were books in other African regimes such as Henri Alleg's "The Question" which was banned in France but became as best-seller in Britain - raising public awareness of the issues behind the war in Algeria and helping to bring down the French government and return de Gaulle to power.
By the late 1950s, Calder was publishing a group of new writers who were changing the face of twentieth century literature. One of these was Samuel Beckett; of whom Calder published all his novels, poetry, criticism, and some of his plays. Others became synonymous with the school of the "nouveau roman" or "new novel". These included Alain Robbe-Grillet, Marguerite Duras, Claude Simon (Nobel Prize 1985), Nathalie Sarraute and Robert Pinget. Other European novelists, playwrights and poets included Heinrich Böll (another Nobel Prize winner), Dino Buzzati, Eugène Ionesco, Fernando Arrabal, René de Obaldia, Peter Weiss and Ivo Andric. Calder was soon launching new experimental British writers such as Ann Quin, Alan Burns, Eva Tucker and R.C. Kennedy - who, influenced by their European counterparts, became part of the avant-garde of the early 1960s.
