Times Guilty Review & A Look Back At Cendrars by Cunningham

Over the weekend, Kate Sauders at the Times offered a brief, but positive view of Anna Kavan's Guilty – Guilty Times Review – and it helps the Kavan name out there. Meanwhile, in the Financial Times, another needlessly underexposed Peter Owen author, Blaise Cendrars, was namechecked along with our most celebrated designer Keith Cunningham. Kit Maude, himself a former Peter Owen stalwart, provided a perceptive look at Cunningham's art which is still influential for book designers today - FT Astonished Man. For those with an interest, check out the page on Cunningham on this site via the link above: and our redesigned Modern Classics also display the continued influence of Cunningham, in the eye-catching designs from Alex Parsonage - he is another part of the Peter Owen 'massive'. We may be a small independent but, you see, creative individuals has been the bedrock of the business and we like to give the impression that we're coming at you from all sides. Take a bow, everyone.

Actually, That Was Two Big Nights, Not One

We also should have mentioned that it was Ken Russell's birthday yesterday and Proud Gallery had a birthday party for him, doubling up as a launch for his new photographic exhibition. Proud Galleries are showing his Lost London Rediscovered 1951-1957 and we do recommend that you go and visit - you can also have a look at his Great Composers books published by us while you're there...

Elgar: The Erotic Variations
Beethoven Confidential

As for the party, our emissary from Peter Owen Publishers reported that it was a pretty full-on party, with the unheard-of (though not unimaginative) combination of beer and grapefruit juice on offer. But, as he did on Big Brother, Ken managed to find a good supply of champagne...

Ken Russell's Lost London Rediscovered

Meanwhile, a slightly different kind of evening took place at the London Review Bookshop. Our thanks goes not only to the bookshop itself, but also Doris Lessing, Virginia Ironside, Brian Aldiss and Christopher Priest (as well as compere Kit Maude) and all the guests who made sparkling and thought-provoking contributions to an evening celebrating the work of Anna Kavan. It was gratifying for us as publishers of Kavan's works - for decades now - to see so many admirers of the great lady there. The recent Guardian review did suggest that there is some kind of Kavan revival afoot and the sold-out notice was a sign of that: what was most interesting to us was the range of interest in Kavan's work. The general consensus was that Ice is the masterwork (though Doris Lessing holds The Parson in perhaps even greater esteem) but there was little doubt that the newly-published Guilty ranks with some of the best of her work. Interest in Kavan's short stories and early work was also high and we should point out to any of the people who attended last night reading our blog (or anyone interested in Kavan) that we do have some exclusive stock of her rarer items, so please get in touch if there is a particular title that you're looking for - we may well have a copy or two here. Furthermore, Peter Owen have been faithful to Kavan for many years, and are committed to keeping her works in print - till that Kavan revival really snowballs and she gets the recognition she deserves
Guilty

Big night tonight!

The Kavan event is sold out tonight. All very exciting.
For those who can't make it we'll try and put some kind of recording (that's all a 'podcast' is you know) up on the website. There was also a review in the Guardian on Saturday.


On a sadder note this will be the last post from this Peter Owen blogger who's moving on. Bring on the replacement!

More on Anna Kavan

This time from Lee Rourke on the Guardian book blog. We see that they've chosen to use the self portrait as illustration. It never fails, when people ask for a picture of Kavan we always send a selection and they always go for the self portrait. 'spose paintings have a bit more colour . . .
This is an under used photo:

Submissions

It was a morning going through submissions today. I mention this because there's been some controversy in the blogosphere over some delightfully honest remarks from Scott Pack backed up quickly by Susan Hill and Snow Books and probably others. It's not an easy job going through the submissions pile, not so much because the choices are difficult but because there are so many people who say that they are aware how hard it is to publish a book successfully and yet somehow think that this rule doesn't apply in their case. So many perfectly well written memoirs, fascinating to one's close family but not so much to everyone else and more enthusiastic novels that have obviously not come close to a second draft. Let alone the dozens that every book should go through before it sees the light of day.

It's sad but over the last year we've had at least five hundred unsolicited submissions and asked to see maybe five in their entirety. We have published two.

Russell reviewed and Miller interviewed

A nice piece in the Spectator about our Ken Russell books . It's been a while since we mentioned Ken, it's good to have him glowering up there again.

Miranda Miller has done an interview for The Book Depository . We really should be doing some more of that kind of thing.

News

Been awfully quiet over the past week for which apologies.

Our Anna Kavan event has been included into the Londonlitplus programme. This is a wonderful idea, I especially like their map of the alternative literary festival. We wonder whether an intrepid blogger might keep something like this up all year round? It could become quite a Scene (a favourite Peter Owen word).

We have a new cover for our latest Modern Classic, I Live Under a Black Sun :



The interesting thing about publishing this one was that we ddin't know whether we would make it a moderen classic or no – not because of the quality: it's a remarkable piece of work but because we weren't sure whether we had published it before. A book can't be a P.O.M.C. without our having published it previously. Peter was adamant that he had but he couldn't remember whether it was under the P.O. imprint or whether he had just bought copies from John Lehmann. When we found a finished copy from ABE books (see posts passim) it presented quite a conundrum: The cover was P.O. and the imprint pages were P.O. but the binding was John Lehmann. A free copy of the new edition to anyone who can explain how that happened . . .

P.S. Looks like we're going to publish a new collection of short stories by Mervyn Peake.