Faber & Faber The Untold Story

A Faber & Faber The Untold Story namesake and descendant delivers a richly detailed biography of the distinguished British publishing house. After World War I, returning veteran Geoffrey Faber found himself relieved from a job for which he did not have much talent, running a brewery and talked his way into a medical publishing house, setting about diversifying the list with a literary magazine, works of fiction, and “legal cram books.” Geoffrey eventually shaped a list dominated by literature, publishing many of the greats. As he wrote to a friend, the company’s new premises on Russell Square provided an incentive “to build up as fine a publishing business as we can to inhabit it!” Geoffrey was fortunate in taking on the American poet T.S. Eliot, so much an Anglophile as to be more English than the English, as an early editor. Eliot often rejected submissions but he also encouraged work by poets such as W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood, helping make Faber a major presence in the literary world from the 1930s onwards. At the same time, other editors and directors brought in notable writers and wonderful scripts such Lord of the Flies. The author has provided the fiscal details of publishing, opening with the old adage that the way to make a small fortune in the business is to start with a large one. The book is an interesting read particularly for followers of modernist literature and publishing history will find this a pleasure. TW