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Posted by: Patrick Hastings
Although T.S. Eliot was never a full-fledged member of the Bloomsbury Group, he developed relationships with many of its members, including Virginia and Leonard Woolf. In fact, the Woolfs published many of Eliot’s most important works on the small press they operated out of their kitchen.
Posted in: 20th Century, Fine Press, Literature, Poetry, Publishing, type
Posted by: Patrick Hastings
1922 was a pivotal year in the modernist literary movement, highlighted by the first edition publications of both James Joyce’s Ulysses and T.S. Eliot’s groundbreaking poem “The Waste Land.” In Eliot’s negotiations over publication rights to the poem, he utilized and tested an emerging network of modernist institutions.
Posted in: 20th Century, History of the Book, Literature, Poetry, Publishing
![Williams, Jonathan. Ruff, David, Metal-engraver. Garbage litters the iron face of the sun's child. Jargon 1. [Jonathan Williams], [San Francisco], 1951](https://blogs.loc.gov/bibliomania/files/2025/07/mm-jargon-001-01a.jpg)
Posted by: Mark Manivong
The Jargon Society released its first publication numbered Jargon 1 in 1951, “Garbage Litters the Iron Face of the Sun’s Child,” a folded pamphlet with poetry by Jonathan Williams and an etching by David Ruff. Founded that same year by Williams and Ruff, the Jargon Society would go on to publish 115 titles, mostly by up-and-coming writers and photographers.
Posted in: 20th Century, Appalachia, Contemporary Book Arts, LGBTQIA+, Poetry, Publishing, Uncategorized
Posted by: Amanda Zimmerman
In creating Consider the Consequences! authors Doris Webster (1885-1967) and Mary Alden Hopkins (1876-1960) were toying with a new idea: write a book that provided readers with narrative options. The result was the first choice-based novel ever printed as well as the precursor to the Choose Your Own Adventure book series that would become popular later in the 20th century.
Posted in: 20th Century, Publishing, Sports and Games, Women in Book History, Women's Stories
Posted by: Mark Manivong
Andrew Holleran (pseud.) is an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer and a significant contributor to post-Stonewall literature. He was a member of the Violet Quill, a group of gay writers who assembled in the early 1980s to critique each other’s work and to develop strategies to overcome corporate publishers’ reluctance to publish gay-themed novels. The Rare Book and Special Collections Division collects the works of the Violet Quill writers, including Andrew Holleran, and holds the first editions of their works in the Gene Berry and Jeffrey Campbell Collection.
Posted in: 20th Century, LGBTQIA+, Literature, Publishing
Posted by: Mark Manivong
Guy Davenport was an American writer, translator, illustrator, painter, intellectual, and professor. This blog post provides a short biography and some examples of his work found in his collection.
Posted in: 20th Century, Appalachia, Publishing
Posted by: Mark Manivong
This post explores the life and work of poet, teacher, and publisher Naomi Cornelia Long Madgett (1923-2020), particularly her creative output and influence on publishing African American poetry.
Posted in: 20th Century, African American Poetry, Poetry, Publishing