Auteur-Publishers Small Press Practices as Avant-Garde Writing

Abstract

An examination of the way in which small presses expanded authorship to include publishing practices as forms of avant-garde conceptual writingApplies the concept of auteurism to the work of small press publishersTraces the development of modernist publishing from Arts & Crafts to FluxusExplores small press publishing as a mode of conceptual poetryAuteur Publishers relocates authorial intention from the lone writer's vision to the publishers' arts and artisanal craft. Using the notion of auteurism, initially developed by François Truffaut to reframe authorship away from a script writer to a director's creative vision, this book looks at auteur-publishers working from the 1890s through to the present. These small independent book publishers acquired, designed and sometimes printed the books they published. Presses including William Morris with Way & Williams, Nancy Cunard's Hours Press, Kathleen Tankersley Young's The Modern Editions Press and Dick Higgin's Something Else Press played crucial roles in modern art and literary movements. Motivated by their idiosyncratic literary and aesthetic values, they cultivated publishing practices and, in retrospect, provide a lineage for publishers today: presses like Information As Material; Punctum Books; Siglio; Sublunary and Roving Eye Press are a few examples of the hundreds of small presses continuing the small press tradition.