‘Parasitic publishers’? Tauchnitz, Albatross and the Continental Diffusion of Anglophone Modernism

Abstract

In 1933, Ezra Pound deplored modernism’s transition from “small honest magazines” to large-scale publishing houses. He described Tauchnitz and Albatross as “parasitic publishers,” eager to exploit James Joyce’s fame to make money. But this story leaves aside a central element: the fact that Joyce and Pound had eagerly courted publishers of cheap editions. Only when the interest of these publishers was no longer in doubt did Pound dismiss them as parasites eager to cash in on the growing popularity of modernism. This chapter is organised chronologically, starting with Joyce’s early relationship with Tauchnitz. It shows that the transnational nature of Tauchnitz, a German publisher of Anglophone literature, particularly appealed to expatriate modernists such as Joyce. The chapter then turns to the period from 1929 to 1932, at the time when Max Christian Wegner was manager-in-chief of Tauchnitz and attempted to modernise the company before co-founding Albatross. Wegner understood that titles by Joyce, Woolf and Lewis could appeal to a wide audience in Europe. The last section is on Albatross, a publisher that not only helped to popularise modernist texts, but was also shaped by the modernist movement. Its stylish covers and intrinsic cosmopolitanism exemplify modernism’s growing influence on mainstream culture in the 1930s.