Modernism, translation and book publishing

This chapter explores how modernism’s internationalism was materially produced through the translation and publication of foreign works in English. Far from an organic flowering of global exchange, modernism in translation depended on early twentieth-century publishing infrastructures—most notably Everyman’s Library, the Modern Library, and presses such as Knopf, Secker & Warburg, Chatto & Windus, Jonathan Cape, and the Hogarth Press. These ventures selected, packaged, and marketed translations of authors like Strindberg, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Proust, Gide and Mann shaping a version of “world literature” that was largely European in scope. Translation thus emerges not merely as a linguistic act but as a process embedded in commerce, pedagogy, and canon formation. By examining how copyright law, market demand, and series branding determined what was made accessible to Anglophone readers, the chapter argues that modernism was also a product of publishing — curated, branded, and sold through translation.<p></p>