The Greatest Literary Value

By Author: gill
Total Articles: 286
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Hence readers of the National Observer could learn 'how and when' Alec D'Urberville 'won' Tess, but not readers of the Graphic; that is to say, members of 'the select literary class', not 'the common market! Given how incoherent less became without its most important scene, Hardy's divergent publishing practice represents one familiar example of how the late-Victorian common reader could, under the logic affirmed in the Vizetelly rulings, be denied access to literary value. Among the most compelling instances of this phenomenon, though, are Replica Breitling two lesser-known publishing initiatives that responded expressly to Vizetelly's imprisonment: William Heinemann's 'International Library', and the Lutetian Society's limited issue of six unexpurgated Zola novels.

By launching a series of two-shilling, single-volume English translations of modern European novels in 1890, Heinemann (1863-1920) seemed to be championing literary freedom against the odds, given that one year earlier Vizetelly had been accused of 'reprint[ing]... all the filth... ...
... in the literature of the world' merely to 'turn a dirty penny owing to the demand for dirt'. It was the kind of risk that would conceivably have appealed to a start-up publisher in his twenties; but if Heinemann was shrewd enough to see that the demise of an experienced rival represented a business opportunity, he also recognised the need to insure himself against the allegations that had ruined Vizetelly. For example, where Vizetelly had promised uniquely unabridged translations, Heinemann's publicity pledged to expurgate offensive material. Heinemann also Breitling Replica Watches sought to redress the diminished cultural value of mass-market translation, appointing Edmund Gosse to edit the series (presumably) in the hope that the critic's name would guarantee its literary merit. But the general preface that Gosse contributed only revealed the extent to which the Vizetelly case had compromised the very idea of literary merit in English:

It is not difficult... it is certainly not impossible to discard all which may justly give offence, and yet to offer to an English public as many of the masterpieces of European fiction as we can ever hope to see included in this library. It will be the endeavour of the editor to search on all hands and in all languages for such books as combine the greatest literary value with the most curious and amusing qualities of manner and matter. [italics mine] More than a commitment to propriety, this was a tacit surrender to the successful legal argument that European literary standards could not apply to mass-market fiction in English (where there could be 'no question of literature'). As such, the promise to 'search on all hands' for 'the greatest literary value' was ironic at best: in judging a book's suitability for translation, Gosse's job was risk assessment, not aesthetic appraisal. What he wrote next suggested that his responsibility to withhold offensive 'masterpieces' was the direct bequest of the Vizetelly rulings.