POETICS

ELSEVIER Poetics 25 (1998) 379-397

Authors' o e u v r e s as the backbone of publishers' lists"

Studying the literary publishing house after Bourdieu*
F r a n k de G l a s *
Department of Comparative Literature, Utrecht University,
Muntstraat 4, 3512 EV Utrecht, The Netherlands

Abstract

In this article, the term 'after Bourdieu' has a threefold significance. In the first place, the
main points of Bourdieu's sociology of cultural production will be reviewed briefly together
with the way Bourdieu has applied this sociological analysis to book publishing. In the sec-
ond place, several publications of his followers also dealing with book publishing are dis-
cussed, leading to the view that further application of Bourdieu's concepts to literary pub-
lishing should take the form of a much more precise study of the way literary publishers
exploit the work of authors. A main premise of this article is that the publishing house exerts
a powerful guiding influence in this exploitation. To illustrate the various dimensions of this
exploitation, results of an empirical study of the composition of the lists of two Dutch pub-
lishing houses are presented. This study focussed on the extent to which these houses have
succeeded in steadily attracting new, productive authors to their lists.

1. Introduction

Pierre B o u r d i e u ' s siting o f cultural actors (such as literary publishers) in a 'field'

of competing institutions has given new impetus to the study of the way these insti-
tutions function. Bourdieu's approach is distinctly different from other cultural soci-
ological approaches taking the production of cultural goods as their object, such as
those of H o w a r d Becker ('Art worlds', 1982) or Richard Peterson's 'production o f
culture perspective' (Peterson, 1985). The latter authors believe that the production
of works o f art should be studied as the sum of the various contributions of all those
who, through a cooperative division of labour, are involved in the material as well as

* This article was made possible by a subsidy from The Netherlands Graduate School for Literary
Studies (OSL) in Leiden. The School also enabled me to spend a period of research at the lnstitut
M6moire de l'Edition Contemporaine (IMEC) in Paris (from 15 April to 30 April, 1996). I am also grate-
ful to the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme for the hospitality I enjoyed during this period at the Maison
Suger in Paris.
* Phone: +31-30-2536519 (office), +31-30-6571399 (home); Fax: +31-30-2536167; E-mail:
frank.deglas@let.ruu.nl

0378-2166/98/$19.00 © 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved

SSDI 0304-422X(98)00005-9
380 F. de Glas / Poetics 25 (1998) 379-397

the immaterial production of works of art - for example, composer, musician, instru-
ment manufacturer, critics and public. In contrast to this principle of cooperation,
Bourdieu proposes that competition and struggle lie at the heart of the production of
art (Bourdieu, 1993a: 42); that the material and immaterial production of a work of
art are fundamentally implicated with each other. The agency which sees to the
material production of a work also plays a role in its symbolic production by passing
by acclaiming it as authoritatively as possible. From their various positions in the
cultural (literary) field, writers, journals, publishers and critics wage a struggle for
the legitimacy and influence of their judgement. The alleged artistic value of a work
or a text is, according to Bourdieu, pre-eminently a social product, and this is
reflected in his relational, anti-essentialist way of thinking. Bourdieu uses the term
'habitus', a system of social, environmental factors and dispositions which either
consciously or unconsciously directs the behaviour of those involved, to account for
the conduct of individuals within the institutions concerned.
The relevant question here is whether and to what extent Bourdieu or his follow-
ers have developed this framework of ideas - as it relates to book publishing - by
any empirical research.

2. Les l~ditions de Minuit vs. Robert Laffont

In a 1971 article, Bourdieu illustrates an argument about the relation between

habitus and position in the cultural field by referring to the activities of the literary
publisher (Bourdieu, 1993c: 133-136). In an essay of 1977, he looks more deeply
into the way that institutions in the 'field' of culture endeavour to consecrate their
preferred works and to impose these judgements as authoritatively as possible on
other institutions or persons. According to Bourdieu, a crucial element in this play is
the denial of any direct economic interest on the part of the institution in long-term
artistic recognition. Bourdieu distinguishes in this context entrepreneurs, on the one
hand, who try to make a profit in the short term, and on the other hand, those whose
primary interest is in cultural advantage, often at the cost of an immediate financial
profit. These two strategies, in his view, are also linked to rather different cycles of
production. The entrepreneur whose motive is economic profit puts out cultural
products that accommodate an evident demand in order to maximize profits over the
short term by means of a fast turnover. The entrepreneur whose aim is cultural pres-
tige rather than fast profit takes risks with his products, since it will only become
clear in the longer term whether they are to become highly rated (and sold) as cul-
tural objects. Bourdieu illustrates this contrast with examples from the French pub-
lishing world, Robert Laffont versus the l~ditions de Minuit. Laffont is a large, com-
mercial publishing house employing many people and producing many titles. The
publisher has an elaborate promotions apparatus and advertises widely. The high
overheads are offset by the output of a continual stream of best sellers, books that
often have reached already a large overseas (UK, US) public.
The l~ditions de Minuit, on the other hand, are situated at the opposite extreme
from Laffont. It is a small firm with a limited production of titles, low print runs and
 F. de Glas / Poetics 25 (1998) 3 7 9 3 9 7 381

a small advertising budget. According to Bourdieu, this publishing house is not inter-
ested in short-term profit, but rather invests in unknown talent whose cultural reputa-
tion will grow over a longer time span. Bourdieu gives the example of Beckett's
Waiting Jot Godot, which sold only 200 copies in 1952, but in 1977 exceeded the
500,000 mark. Whereas Laffont buys up the rights of new titles wholesale and
depends strongly on the mass media to make any book a success, Minuit relies on
their contacts with like-minded intellectuals and writers to draw their attention to new
talent. They have an important function in building up the reputation of new writers.
Finally, the teaching of literature in secondary schools likewise plays a key role in
the long-term appreciation of the kind of books published by houses such as Minuit.
What commentary, then, has Bourdieu's analysis provoked? Over the last
decades, Bourdieu's work has gained an international reputation; his concepts have
been met with considerable critical enthusiasm. But at the same time, several critical
points have regularly surfaced in the polemic surrounding his ideas. It is not just the
hermeticism of his writings that has from time to time occasioned dissatisfaction, but
also the rather schematic character of his conceptions. Furthermore, Bourdieu's key
terms are not always clear, and the empirical underpinning of his theories has been
labelled inadequate (Munnichs and Van Rees, 1986). In particular, in connection
with the comparison - outlined above - between Laffont and l~ditions de Minuit,
Verdaasdonk has conducted further research into the relation between short-term and
long-term cycles of production and particular kinds of book. An analysis of the cycle
of exploitation of the Dutch translations of best-selling authors Alistair MacLean and
Desmond Bagley demonstrated that these books had a very long life and that Bour-
dieu's opposition between a short commercial and a culturally motivated, long cycle
of exploitation required at least some qualification (Verdaasdonk, 1987: 251-252).
Against the same background of Bourdieu's Laffont/Minuit comparison, Tilborghs
compared the strategy of a Dutch literary publishing house (characterized by its pol-
icy of long-term, culturally prestigious orientation) with a Dutch publisher of
'romantic fiction'. Again, Bourdieu's allegedly sharp opposition between 'culturally"
and 'commercially' oriented publishing houses were put into a rather different per-
spective. The Dutch literary publishers not only made just as much use of sales pro-
motion apparati as did the 'commercial' publishers, they also differentiated between
products, a higher proportion of their output consisted of best-sellers and they went
to extreme lengths to keep their titles available. These titles were not older, but more
recent than those from the publishers of 'commercial' romantic fiction (Tilborghs,
1991 : 227-228).
Another dubious assumption is the way Bourdieu connects individual publishing
houses with particular ('highbrow' or 'lowbrow') public groups. Recent empirical
research into cultural stratification has suggested that the old distinction between an
elite concerned with cultural, highly regarded products and a mass public which pre-
ferred 'commercial' or 'popular' works no longer holds. To an ever increasing
extent, it would seem that what formerly was considered to be for elite consumption
has now become part of a mass, omnivorous consumption (Peterson, 1992).
Although Peterson's work concerned the musical domain - and one should not with-
out further qualification equate the manner and intensity of the consumption of dif-
382 F. de Glas / Poetics 25 (1998) 379-397

ferent art forms - this is nevertheless a trend which also seems to have affected
reading.
A further question mark set against Bourdieu's analysis of publishing houses con-
cerns the rather abstract level of aggregation of this analysis. Bourdieu divided pub-
lishing houses "according to the distribution of their commitments between risky,
long-term investments (Godot) and safe, short-term investments, and, by the same
token, according to the proportion of their authors who are long-term or short-term
writers" (Bourdieu, 1993a: 98). This criterion leads Bourdieu subsequently to clas-
sify Minuit and Maspero (in the French situation of 1977) in the long-term circuit in
contrast to Gallimard, with l~ditions du Seuil in between. At the same time, all these
publishers as a single group are contrasted with the medium-sized and large publish-
ing houses such as Flammarion, Albin Michel and Laffont, Hachette and Presses de
la Cit6 (Bourdieu, 1993a, note 28). It has been indicated earlier that Bourdieu was
characterizing publishers' lists in only a general fashion, but what is lacking is any
further study of particular sections of an author's body of works within a list (De
Glas, 1992: 104).
Neither these doubts nor the critical testing of Bourdieu's pronouncements on
book publishing, however, should be taken as a repudiation of the new impetus
given to research into publishing by Bourdieu's ideas. His conceptions of the literary
field, of the objective position as well as the subjective 'position-taking' by institu-
tions and individuals within that field, have led to new, intriguing questions. How-
ever, his approach leaves most of the spade work to cultural sociology and literary
studies. So far, as far as literary publishing is concerned, this empirical labour has
hardly begun. In an essay of 1991, Bourdieu again raised the question of how the lit-
erary field works, but publishing itself was barely mentioned (Bourdieu, 1991). In
his extensive study of Flaubert (Bourdieu, 1992), the question of publishing is dis-
cussed, but Bourdieu merely reiterates in the relevant passages the same position as
that set out in 1977 without adding much new.

3. Echoes of Bourdieu in other studies of publishing

Ever since the seventies, Bourdieu's ideas have attracted a following both in
France and beyond and have led to empirical studies on many fronts: in the sociol-
ogy of the production and participation in culture, the sociology of religion, the soci-
ology of the professions and the sociology of education. In France itself, the journal
Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales provided an important forum for these
studies. In relation to literature, Bourdieu's disciples looked at literary genres and
trends, popular literature, proletarian literature, comic strips, literature produced dur-
ing the wartime occupation of France and during the Algerian war of liberation (for
a survey see the index of these articles that appeared in the centenary number of this
journal in 1994). In addition, there have been a range of monographs both within and
without France in which Bourdieu's body of ideas has been used for the analysis of
literary trends, groups of writers and literary criticism. What is remarkable is that the
publishing house has scarcely featured at all as an object of study. It is true that, in
 F. de Glas / Poetics 25 (1998) 379-397 383

the seventies and eighties, there appeared various new books on publishers and pub-
lishing houses, but these were either written in the context of the traditional approach
of national literary studies or as literary historical monographs. These traditions,
however, are theoretically rather weak, with scarcely any connections to link them
with the theoretical discourse on cultural institutions (developed by Bourdieu and
others). In France, for example, Anne Simonin published a study of the l~ditions de
Minuit during the period 1942-1955 (Simonin, 1994) without making a single refer-
ence to Bourdieu's account of the same publishing house, let alone engaging in dis-
cussion with his ideas or attempting to develop them further.
It would be incorrect, however, to assume that Bourdieu's ideas have left more
recent publications on literary publishing totally untouched. In the monumental edi-
tion of the Histoire de l'Edition Franqaise, a titanic labour supervised by the editors
Roger Chartier and Henri-Jean Martin, the influence of Bourdieu's ideas is clearly
evident. His concept of the 'literary field' recurs both by name and implication in
several contributions dealing with the 18th and 19th centuries (Walter, 1983; Charle,
1985). One of these contributions is particularly relevant here - that of Anna
Boschetti, who applies Bourdieu's concepts to the 20th century publishing house.
This essay discusses the arrival of the new literary publishing houses in France fol-
lowing the 1914-1918 war, and deals particularly with the rivalry between Grasset
and Gallimard (Boschetti, 1986).
Boschetti portrays Bernard Grasset (1895-1955) as one of the first publishers to
introduce modern methods of recruiting authors and promoting literary books.
In Boschetti's opinion, Grasset's approach could succeed all the more in a climate
where the influence of the old literary elite, of the taste-forming society of the liter-
ary salons and the Acad6mie Franqaise was already waning.
From 1913, however, Grasset had competition in the person of Gaston Gallimard
(1881-1975). Initially, Gallimard entered the scene as the publisher of the Nouvelle
Revue Franqaise, founded in 1909, but increasingly he became known as the pub-
lisher of the books issuing from the circle of writers associated with the NRF. A cen-
tral theme in Boschetti's analysis is how to explain the fact that Gallimard emerged
as the victor in the struggle that ensued between the two rivals, and became the
uncontested, authoritative literary publishing house between the two world wars. In
the first place, she identifies several sociological factors involved; but secondly it
was also a matter of significant differences in publishing strategy.
Gaston Gallimard came from a well-to-do aristocratic Parisian milieu, according
to Boschetti, and moved easily among authors of similar social background. Grasset,
who came from the provinces, lacked this background. Beside this, the connection
with the NRF gave Gallimard the advantage. The central figure behind the NRF,
Andr6 Gide, managed to influence various rising literary stars to publish in the jour-
nal. Under Gide's direction, the NRF took a certain distance from the fashionable
salons, from the 'Boulevard' society and the 'rive droite', and also from the
Acad6mie Fran~aise. This repudiation, according to Boschetti, also incidentally
explains why the NRF group initially rejected Marcel Proust's ,4 la recherche du
temps perdu, simply because the novel was associated with the wrong literary soci-
ety, the wrong authors and the wrong publishers.
384 F. de Glas / Poetics 25 (1998) 379-397

The NRF put 'pure literature' first, kept political discussion out of the paper and
at the same time distanced itself artistically from the old guard of the Mercure de
France, seen by then as a journal that had passed its peak. Gide's journal set an alter-
native agenda, constructed a different network of institutions and salons and had its
own sympathizers in the literary papers and panels, mediators, book dealers, readers,
meeting places (Pontigny), including even its own publishing house. When Gaston
Gallimard set up this publishing house, he not only made use of the creativity of the
young authors writing for the NRF, he also discretely went beyond this circle in
search of new talent.
From 1919, when the 'Librarie Gallimard' was established, the publishing house
had become the crossroads for the whole of literary France. Gallimard's 'comit6 de
lecture', which had originated in the way that the NRF operated, was also a factor
here. Boschetti contrasts Gallimard's diplomacy in all this with Grasset's often
rather clumsy approach. Grasset, according to Boschetti, proved less adept at orient-
ing himself within the literary circuit; he lacked any direct relation with an influen-
tial group of writers; sometimes he choose well, often he misjudged, bringing too
many disparate authors together in his list. He chose the wrong authors, those out of
sympathy with current literary trends, authors who were politically dubious; he
asked the wrong authors to perform services for his publishing house, pressured
authors to go in a certain direction or to introduce changes in their work and
appended uninvited prefaces to books. Gallimard was thus in a better position to
attract prominent authors and to keep them, to build up a network of relations that
would be enormously useful in establishing the literary reputations of these authors.
In 1932, Gallimard negotiated a profitable merger with Hachette, which expanded
both the financial and distributive scope of the operation, enabling Gallimard to
become the biggest literary publishing house in France and to take over other lists,
such as the P16iade series. Boschetti sees the success of Gallimard's strategy under-
lined by the fact that, in the interwar period (1919-1939) he landed the Prix
Goncourt eight times, against Grasset's twice, and by the fact that in purely eco-
nomic terms his house did far better than Grasset.
In her analysis, Boschetti is treading explicitly in the footprints of Bourdieu
when she takes as her starting point the evolution of the structure of the 'champ de
production'. Social renewal alters this structure, which in turn determines the posi-
tions that groups of writers and publishers can take. On this point, both Bourdieu
and Boschetti criticize the approach of traditional 'literary studies' which have
mainly approached the development of an author's oeuvre as the realization of an
original authorial project. In reality, according to both, the reverse is the case. It is
the structure of the literary field which determines the possible positions of authors
(and, according to Boschetti, of publishers), not the other way round. Boschetti
takes the view that the case of the Surrealists is a perfect example of the importance
of habitus:

"[...] c'est a dire l'ensemble des dispositions socialement acquises qui caract6risent chaque position
et assurent la coh6rence des pratiques'" [... that is to say, the ensemble of socially acquired disposi-
tions which characterize each position and ensure the coherence of practices] (Boschetti, 1986:
5O4).
 F. de Glas / Poetizes25 (1998) 379-397 385

In presenting themselves, the Surrealists were opposing a NRF that was by now run
by men in their fifties, whereas they were on average some thirty years younger and,
artistically, the representatives of another generation. Most of them had prematurely
broken off their studies, but they had a thorough knowledge of the literary tradition
and of the avant garde that had preceded them. They were not well-to-do, but they
had numerous contacts in the literary world. Their emphasis on a permanent break
with the existing order, however, not only led to continually unorthodox choices,
schisms and regroupings, polemics and scandals. As a result of their attitude and
their rejection of the existing publishing houses, they had to rely on various tempo-
rary outlets: editions they produced themselves, smaller or larger journals such as
Litt~rature and Commerce. Those authors who did place their publications with Gal-
limard later found themselves in conflict with this publishing house.

4. Stronger and weaker aspects of this analysis

What is interesting in Boschetti's analysis is the linking of an artistic evolution to

an institutional context. The connection of social conditions with the changes in the
institutional context makes her study one of the most stimulating applications of
Bourdieu's analytical categories to actual publishing enterprises that has so far
appeared. It should also be said that her analysis of publishing and publishers' strate-
gies is much more subtle than Bourdieu's own blanket opposition in the Minuit/Laf-
font comparison.
On the other side, one may well doubt the weight attached by Boschetti to the sys-
tematics of the literary 'field' - when she speaks, for instance, in the case of the Sur-
realists, of 'la loi des hors-la-loi'. It is highly doubtful whether one can legitimately
speak of 'laws' that determine the latitude and the possibilities of those involved.
Elsewhere, Bourdieu himself indicated that the literary world differs from other
social sectors precisely in that the diverse circles and hierarchies in the literary world
cannot be sharply demarcated. It differs, for example, form the university world, in
that formal entry requirements (diplomas etc.), or codified positions, have no place
in the Republic of Letters; there is no formal protection of the positions of those
involved in conflict, no institutions of arbitration (Bourdieu, 1991: 15,19: 1993a:
43).
Another less than convincing point in Boschetti's analysis is that her typology of
the publishers' lists discussed remains highly schematic. The lists of Grasset, Gal-
limard and Deno~l for the period under discussion include hundreds of titles from
scores of authors. In this perspective, the pigeonholesJshe use to classify these lists
are extremely casual. She scarcely acknowledges the discrepancies in these lists.
Her analysis of the French Republic of Letters between the wars relies on a great
deal of tacit knowledge and casual assumption; the empirical underpinning is not
exactly strong. The development of Bourdieu's key terms ('position', prise de
position, 'habitus') is inadequate. On closer inspection, these terms turn out to be
rather vague and ambiguous, and certainly need refining for further empirical
research.
386 F. de Glas / Poetics 25 (1998) 379-397

The approaches of Bourdieu and Boschetti present the challenge of developing

those elements of their analyses that have not yet delivered on their original
promise: specifically, to study in detail what publishers actually do with the work of
their authors, how they also build this up and exploit it. Although Bourdieu and
Boschetti give publishing houses a more important role in the Republic of Letters
than was usually the case before, they seem implicitly to maintain the assumption of
a division of labour between author and publisher. The author writes the work, the
publisher brings it before the public.
My central thesis is that the publishing house plays a much more directive role; it
is not merely a gate-keeper, certainly not the mere gate-maker it is alleged to be. Its
involvement goes much further. From the very beginning and in various ways the
publishing house decisively influences the creativity of the author. The publishing
house determines who is 'part of the scene', who can call themselves a 'writer'; the
publishing house regulates the appearance of works on the market, coaches the
author, decides who will continue to be published. The publishing house determines
the final version in which the text is published and has the last word over cover
design and presentation. Furthermore, the publisher chooses a specific strategy of
exploitation, whether to publish a hardback edition, paperback, book club edition,
reissue in a cheaper series, admission to a 'Classics' series, or in relevant cases the
issue of a Collected Works. In addition, the publishing house can play a role from
the outset in the symbolic production, by setting text and author in the frame of a
trend or genre, relating it to other established names, etc.. Boschetti, in her study of
Gallimard and Grasset, identifies various social factors that have influenced the
power relations in the 'literary field', such as the growth of the reading public, the
changing social position of authors and the appearance of new groups of 'taste-set-
ters'; but once again, interesting as this is, what is required is a more precise study
of the effects of these changes on the actual strategies of literary publishing houses,
and of the way in which books are distributed to their readers. Such studies are still
lacking.
It is worth noting that in recent years, both in the history of the book and in liter-
ary historiography in separate language areas (e.g. American Studies), more atten-
tion is being paid to the role of publishing houses. This emerges, for example, from
studies of the role of publishers/editors in the work of individual authors, or of pol-
icy behind publishers' series. But what is required here are case-studies in their own
right. On the one hand, it seems that within literary historiography there is scarcely
any systematization, let alone any theorising of the role of publishers in this area. On
the other hand, such research makes far too little systematic use of the possibilities
of an interdisciplinary approach, e.g. by investigating which initiative this research
on the literary publishing house might be able to use from the sociology of cultural
production. I am not only thinking here of the work of Bourdieu, but also of that of
Coser and Powell (Coser et al., 1982; Powell, 1985), DiMaggio (1987) and Peterson
(1985).
 F. de Glas / Poetics 25 (1998) 379-397 387

5. The composition of a publisher's list as determinant of its position

At the beginning of this article, we drew attention to Bourdieu's basic assumption

that there is a direct correlation between the two tasks of the literary institution, that
of the material production and of the symbolic production. "The artistic field is a
universe o f belief. Cultural production distinguishes itself from the production of the
most common objects in that it must produce not only the object in its materiality,
but also the value of this object, that is, the recognition of artistic legitimacy. This is
inseparable from the production of the artist or the writer as artist or writer, in other
words, as creator of value" (Bourdieu, 1993b: 164). Literary publishing houses,
again according to Bourdieu, assume this double task from a certain position in the
field, which is determined by its relations with other publishing houses, authors, crit-
ics and other taste-setters: "... the entire structure of the field interposes itself
between producers and their work" (Bourdieu, 1993c: 136). Although Bourdieu
takes pains to formulate the reciprocal influences between these agencies subtly and
with care, he characterises the various publishing houses under very crude terms:
'commercial', 'consecrated', 'avant-garde' (Bourdieu, 1993c, 134). The 'position' of
a publishing house is apparently defined here by the final verdict of influential taste-
setters; but in this context, the broad terminology does not reveal the fact that pub-
lishers' lists can also include highly variable and partly conflicting elements.
To know whether Bourdieu's concepts of the 'position' and 'position-taking' are
workable instruments, we must first try to clarify them through a more accurate
analysis of the way in which the literary publishing house exploits authors' oeuvres.
The extent to which authors' continuing productions form the backbone of a list is
important for both the symbolic and the economic position of the publishing house,
A publishing house which no longer succeeds in attracting and keeping authors can,
after all, hardly survive.
One can first express the contribution of authors to the core of the list by the num-
ber of their works introduced. A second dimension of this contribution is the eco-
nomic significance of an author's oeuvre; and thirdly, one can also estimate the
author's contribution to the prestige of a publishing house. Determining the distinc-
tive character of a publisher's list is not only a matter of the continuity ensured by
authors maintaining their literary output, but also of the exclusiveness of these
authors' attachment to this rather than to other publishing houses.
I want therefore to illustrate these two facets of authors' production (their conti-
nuity and exclusiveness) in relation to their publishers with the results of empirical
research based on the analysis of two rather different publishers' lists. The first is the
list of the publishing firm W.L. & J. Brusse, first established in Rotterdam in 1903,
which survived till 1965. The firm was set up by two brothers, Johan Brusse (born
in 1868) and Willy Brusse (born in 1879), the sons of a Rotterdam stockbroker.
Willy, who around the turn of the century was active in the Dutch Social Democra-
tic Labour Party, had learned the business of publishing through publishing and sell-
ing party political pamphlets. When they started the business in 1903, they chose
Rotterdam as the seat of their operation, an industrial city and seaport which was
greatly overshadowed as a cultural centre by the capital, Amsterdam. During the 62
388 F. de Glas / Poetics 25 (1998) 379-397

years of its existence, the firm published both fiction and non-fiction, 1026 new titles
in all, of which 301 were works of fiction and 725 non-fiction, and in addition
almost 400 re-prints (De Glas, 1993: 19). I shall concentrate here on one section of
the list in particular, that of fiction (both prose and poetry) written by living Dutch
authors.
What was the context of these fiction titles in the Brusse list? The publishers'
non-fiction list had a scholarly and popular-scientific bias: art, architecture, design,
the exact sciences and history made up the major part, with the publishers also
putting out many school and text-books. In addition, the list had a decidedly Rotter-
dam orientation: books on the history of the city, on the problems of 'dark Rotter-
dam' at the turn of the century, on urban life in big cities, also tourist guides, year-
books and commemorative books celebrating Rotterdam institutions. The
contributions of living Dutch authors dominated the fiction list. From time to time,
the publishers issued a few classics of world literature in Dutch translations (the Let-
ters of Ab61ard, Quevedo's Busc6n, the Tales of Hoffmann, Romain Rolland's Jean
Christophe); and also published several translations of William Morris and John
Ruskin and a number of French and German scholarly works. These translations,
however, remained relatively few in number.
In the dominant Dutch-language fiction, three emphases stand out: authors mani-
festing some connection or sympathy with socialism; authors who in one way or
another had a Rotterdam connection; and authors seeking to connect with the Dutch
version of the 'Neue Sachlichkeit' ('New Realism'). The 'New Realism', or 'new
objectivity' was a movement which developed in Germany among writers and
painters following the First World War. As a reaction against expressionism they
strove for the clear reflection of a concrete reality in a style which also embraced
elements of modern techniques. Writers associated either briefly or for longer peri-
odes with the New Realism included Franz Werfel, Carl Zuckmayer, Upton Sinclair,
and among painters Otto Dix and George Grosz.
The reader should realize that by now the majority of the Brusse writers men-
tioned below have disappeared into oblivion both in The Netherlands and Flanders.
What is at issue here, however, is simply the method of my analysis.
Why is it important, in analyzing authors' oeuvres in a publishers' list to pay par-
ticular attention to the contribution of enduring authors' oeuvres? The answer is that
these oeuvres are important for the economic continuity of a publishing house; not
only because this makes it easier to build up a body of readers for a particular author,
but also, it would seem, because the symbolic production of an author's reputation
requires that an author's oeuvre should continue to be supplemented and that new
titles should renew active interest in the writers earlier work. The weight of long-
lasting oeuvres is also constantly emphasized by publishers: we are not publishing
books, but authors. Die Autoren sind das A und das 0 in einem Buchverlag [Authors
are the be-all and end-all in publishing] (R6hring, 1992: 31). It is therefore all the
more important to find out to what extent a publishing house succeeds in bringing in
authors and keeping them over longer periods. Not all the authors published by a
particular publishing house necessarily produce many titles. Indeed, some authors
build up a long-lasting and rich oeuvre, while others remain limited to a few titles,
 F. de Gla.~ / Poetics 25 (1998) 379-397 389

sometimes a single book; and because this future productivity cannot be predicted in
advance, it is expedient for a publishing house to launch at least a number of new
authors each year. The publisher then hopes that there will always be one or a few
writers among them who will go on to produce more titles for the house over a
longer term. In this way, the publisher hopes over time to give new solid support to
his list to ensure the future well-being of the house. Bernard Grasset articulated this
principle as early as 1929:

"Une maison d'edition qui ne marche pas avec son temps, qui n'est pas constamment rajeunie par l'ap-
port des gdn6rations nouvelles, perd vite en effet route action sur le public et ne tarde pas h ~tre oublide"
[A publishing house which does not keep abreast of its time, which is not constantly rejuvenated by the
influx of new generations, soon looses public interest and ends up being forgotten] (Grasset, 1929:
52-53).

To what extent did this in fact succeed in the case of the Rotterdam publishing
house? Fig. 1 sets out diagramatically those Dutch-language authors of fiction who
made a substantial contribution to Brusse's fiction section. (By 'substantial' here I
mean three or more titles.)
The numbers in the diagram indicate how many new titles (first editions) the rel-
evant authors published with Brussse in the year concerned. The survey does not
include data on reprints of these titles, nor titles by the same authors published by
other publishers.
What interpretations does this scheme admit? In the first place, it is evident that
the titles of the productive authors in the diagram constitute something over 50% of
all 301 fiction titles in the list. This suggests considerable dissipation, since many
fiction titles (145 in fact, slightly under half) come from authors who contribute no
more than one or two titles. Secondly, the socialist poets C.S. Adama van Scheltema
(1877-1924) and Henri~tte Roland Holst (1869-1952) can be seen to have deter-
mined the complexion of the fiction list over a long period and to have contributed
new titles to the list extremely regularly right up to their deaths. Authors who were
to make a substantial contribution to Brusse's fiction were entering the list up to
1933. Ben Stroman was the last. Over the whole period of 1903-1933, the publish-
ing house attracted 28 productive writers of fiction, an average of just less than one
a year. The best period, in retrospect, for attracting and keeping authors who were
productive was 1903 to 1908; after Hans Martin, newly recruited fiction authors pro-
duced fewer titles and on average contributed to the Brusse list over a shorter period.
The influx of productive authors was interrupted from 1919 to 1924. After 1933. the
importance of fiction titles in the whole Brusse list declined until, after 195 l, none
of the major authors were producing any new titles (Roland Holst was the last).
These observations allow several general patterns to be discerned. Brusse's fiction
list as a whole is fragmented. The base of sustained authorial production is, in this
part of the list, a small one. From the point of view of recruiting authors, three peri-
ods can be distinguished within the fiction list: the first (1903-1908) witnessed a rel-
atively good beginning, bringing in a new author annually (up to the arrival of Hans
Martin) who would contribute a substantial number of titles. The three most produc-
tive authors (Speenhoff, Adama van Scheltema and Henri~tte Roland Holst) all
 19- 03 04 06 08 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40 42 44 46 48 50 52 O

Speenhoff, J.H. 1 2 3 2 l 2 1 1
Brusse, M.J. 2 1 1 1
Adama van Seheltema, C.S. 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Roland Hoist, H. 1 1 21 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2121 1 1 1 I 1
Leonhard, Fr. 1 2 1 1 1 1
Dekking, H. 1 1 1
Martin, H. I 1 1 21 111
Van Gogh-Kaulbach, A. 1 1 1
Buurman, H.C. 1 1 1
Carbin, L. 1 1 1
Leopold, J.H. 1 1 1
Van Oudshoorn, J. 1 1 1
Van Loon, H. 1 1 I 1
Gijsen, Marie ! ! 1 1
Gregory, J.L. 1 1 1
Van Lokhorst, E. I 1 1 1
De Boer, LW. 1 1 1 1
Fo
Forest, E. 1 1
Lange, L. van 1 3
Kuylman, H.E. 1 1 1 1 I
Verhoog, P.H.G. 1 1 1 1 1 1
Valkema Blouw, J.P. 121112
Gerversman, H. 1 11
De Vries, Manrits 11111 -,q
Brusse-van Huizen, J. 1 l 1
Dommisse, Fr6 1 1 1
Last, Jef 1 1 1 1
Stroman, Ben 1 1 1

03 04 06 08 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40 42 44 46 48 50 52

Fig. 1. Productive fiction authors in the list of W . L . & J. B r u s s e between 1903 and 1965.
 F. de Glas / Poetics 25 (1998) 3 7 9 - 3 9 7 39l

arrived the same year that the publishing house was founded. In the second period,
from 1909 to 1927, this influx faltered. Between 1919 and 1924, no new author was
recruited who would prove to be or remain productive. In 1927, several different
problems arose simultaneously, with a number of authors both older and younger
withdrawing. Of the 19 older productive authors (from Speenhoff to Van Lange),
only one (HenriEtte Roland Holst) continued to produce a steady stream of titles:
four others contributed only one more title, the rest none at all. J.P Valkema Blouw
was the last new author to exceed six titles. In the third period it would seem that the
decline of the fiction section was irrevocable. Only a handful of productive new
authors were recruited, and these produced on average fewer titles, stopped writing
earlier or left for another publishing house.

6. The material basis of a cultural position

In our analysis of the enduring authors' o e u v r e s in the list of the publishers Brusse,
we looked only at new titles. The analysis of editions and reprints ought to give a
more precise picture of the firm's economic position. It is clear from the diagram
that the authors associated with the house from the beginning were the most produc-
tive and the most loyal. This might indicate a situation where the fortunes of the pub-
lishing house turned on the continual reprinting of a limited number of older authors.
Perhaps their success was able to mask the fact that the publishers were not actually
succeeding in attracting new, productive authors who would be equally successful
and would remain loyal to the publishing house. Further analysis of the Brusse list
reveals that this was indeed the case, and that the house chose to subsidize internally
the production of non-fiction books, specifically low-priced school books.
The pattern of enduring authors' o e u v r e s provides an important basis tbr the
analysis of the cultural status of the publishing house and of the 'symbolic produc-
tion' of the o e u v r e s of the authors in question. This aspect is not developed here; but
one could also use the material history of the development of individual authors to
chart their 'symbolic production'. According to Bourdieu, symbolic production
involves not only the influence of the publishing house on the author's reputation,
but conversely also the influence of the stable of authors (Bourdieu's 6 c u r i e ) carried
by the list on the reputation of the publishing house itself. In this context, the degree
of exclusiveness a publishing house has over the publication of an author's work is
also important: are all the titles of the author concerned in the list, or does he/she
also publish with other publishing houses? In the case of the publishing house
Brusse, it did become a problem to maintain this exclusiveness and to keep their own
stable of authors. In this respect, the imbalance due to a preponderance of older pro-
ductive authors (who had long given the list its prestige) served to mask the fact that
few young authors, who might introduce new idioms or stylistic influences, were
being recruited. It is evident that, from the twenties onward, the Brusse list experi-
enced a long decline.
On the basis of this pattern, the next logical step would be to ask which of these
authors who left Brusse continued to publish, and with which other publishing
392 F. de Glas / Poetics 25 (1998) 379-397

houses did they place their new titles? Do the authors themselves say anything
explicitly about their motives for switching publishers? Can one see other factors
that might explain such an exodus? In the case of Brusse, one can point to the depar-
ture in 1934 and the subsequent death in 1937 of the founder Willy Brusse, the ani-
mating force behind the fiction list. One could also point to the fact that the image
of the list was heavily determined by pre-war authors, and that as a result of the rad-
ical social, political and cultural upheavals of the time, a younger, post-1918 gener-
ation of writers felt themselves too far distanced from these exemplary figures.
Purely practical factors may also have damaged the position of a publishing house;
we have already mentioned the fact that the firm was far removed from the literary
centre of Amsterdam (a problem repeatedly advanced by the publishers themselves).
An additional cause for Brusse's loss of authors may well have been the appearance
of new publishing houses after 1918. Literary authors of socialist leaning were
increasingly attracted to the Amsterdam publishers Querido. The Utrecht group asso-
ciated with the journal and the publishing house De Gemeenschap promoted them-
selves as the leading publishers of Dutch representatives of the 'Neue Sachlichkeit'
('New Realism'). Among the circles of prominent literary figures in the thirties
(round the journal Forum, for example) there was a tendency to reject any direct
connection with any political movement; whereas the Brusse list was still strongly
associated with a militant social democracy due to the preponderance of the poetry
of Adama van Scheltema and HenriEtte Roland Hoist.

7. The exclusiveness o f a stable of a u t h o r s

To illustrate further the way in which authors' oeuvres are the mainstays of a pub-
lisher's list, similar material will now be presented from the analysis of a second list,
that of the Dutch publishers 'Society for the Distribution of Inexpensive Quality Lit-
erature/World Library ('Maatschappij voor Goede en Goedkoope Lectuur/Wereld-
bibliotheek'), founded in Amsterdam in 1905. Between 1905 and 1939, the publish-
ing house put out a total of 1333 titles, fiction as well as non-fiction, both original
Dutch-language and translated (De Glas, 1989).
To get a precise picture of the significance of enduring authors' oeuvres in this
list, a section of the Dutch-language fiction list was analyzed in detail. Over the
period 1905-1939 there were 324 titles written by 132 different authors, whose con-
tribution varied from 1 to 18 titles per person. First, we looked at whether these were
debutantes, or whether they were authors who had already published several books
with other publishing houses or had already published a substantial number of titles.
These data tell us something about the degree of exclusiveness of the association of
the publishing house in question with these authors on its list. We subsequently
looked to see which authors stood out as productive fiction-writers (i.e. had pro-
duced 4 or more works of fiction).
Similarly, to get a better idea of the extent to which these authors were writing
exclusively for the World Library, they were divided into two groups. In the first
were ranked those authors (known as 'house authors') who had published more than
 F. de Glas / Poetics 25 (1998) 379-397 393

50% of their fictional output with this publishing house. The second group com-
prises those who had published less than 50% with this house, publishing the rest
elsewhere. Fig. 2 shows the contribution of these two groups. Each bar represents
the fiction o e u v r e of one author; each dot representing a single book. It does not
matter that most of these authors, even in the Netherlands and Flanders, have fallen
into oblivion, since they serve here merely to clarify my method of analysis.

House authors 1905

ii11
08 10
~
12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 39
I I
G v. Hulzen 1860-1940

J SLrnonsMees1863-1948 09 • • • 1
M Antmk 1869-1957 O0 • OJ

C SchaFlen/M. Antink 1878-1950 • ~ 0,~ gO0. "O."

N. v. Suchtelen 1878- 1949 o•o~ j] O •

L. Simons 1862-1932 l i p
A. Salomons 1885-1980 Io
Ern. Claes ]885-1968 • • ;ooT

I
Guest authors I
19%1 ,% do, 12 ,1,, ,16 ,,8, ?0 72, ,2, ?6 ?8 ?0, 72, 3~ s6,, ?9,
H He,termans1864.1924 {, am • ol
J l~igenhu,s 1866-1944 o[~* • • I
H Te,rhnck 1879 .1967

A v Gogh.Kaulbach 18691960 {o • • o~

Hb{~ne Swarth 1859-1941 ~ooo • • • • I

H v Booven 1877 1964 • . ooo • 01

Carry v Bruggen 1881-1932 • • o7

W SchLirmann 18761915
Is Quer,do18721932 Lo • • 5 oool

J Walch18791947 E • a
Cees v Bruggen 18741960 I, • • ol
Mar,e Smbtz 18831972 Io • • • • •

Fig. 2. P r o d u c t i v e h o u s e authors a n d g u e s t authors in the World Library list.)

The analysis of the findings relating to the aforementioned dimensions shows,

firstly, that the publishing house in fact introduced new authors regularly, some three
or four every five years. At the same time, the analysis reveals that the subsequent
work of these authors constituted a real problem; indeed, few first novels were fol-
lowed by any subsequent works, but where there were subsequent novels, it would
seem that the publishing house found it difficult to expand the production of these
writers into substantial, continually developing oeuvres. In this context, it makes lit-
394 F. de Glas / Poetics 25 (1998) 379-397

tie difference whether the author, for his part, fell silent or left for another publisher,
or whether the publishers themselves would accept no new titles.
Secondly, the analysis of the contribution of established authors (who had already
published a substantial number of titles elsewhere) shows that this group contributed
half of all titles in the section of the list comprising living Dutch-language authors.
In these cases, the publishers thus tried to profit from the reputations which these
authors had built up elsewhere. But even here it is evident that the publishing house
found it difficult to persuade these authors to switch allegiances permanently.
Thirdly, the diagram of house and guest authors sheds light on the breadth of the
publishers' own stable of authors. The diagram shows that the number of exclusive
house authors provided a rather slight basis for the list. Out of 138 authors given as
contributors to the total fiction list of living Dutch-language authors, only 8 were
both truly productive and published the majority of their work with this house; and
the list becomes even smaller when one takes into consideration that Leo Simons
and Nico van Suchtelen held editorial positions and sat on the board of directors, and
that Josine Simons-Mees was the wife of the former. The number of productive
guest authors was slightly higher: twelve; but the number of titles contributed per
guest author was much lower, and the period over which these authors were placing
their titles with the World Library was considerably shorter. Similarly, they were dif-
ficult to keep. It is interesting, furthermore, to look at the entire population of pro-
ductive house authors and guest authors and analyze the years in which these authors
were acquired by the publishing house (e.g.A. Salomons in 1913, Cees van Bruggen
in 1916 etc.). It turns out that in fact, over the entire period, the house was only able
to attract productive authors of fiction in the years up to the First World War. After
1916, only Marie Schmitz and Ernest Claes were recruited. Over the whole period of
1921 to 1939 not a single Dutch-language author of fiction was recruited who was to
contribute four or more titles. One has to conclude that the publishing house must
have remained attractive to young authors for only a very short time. After the First
World War, the World Library missed the boat and quite failed to connect with the
new generation of writers or new trends.
A question that arises in this context is whether publication of new titles in the
authorial oeuvres also enhanced the availability of older work. Maintaining produc-
tivity, one might think, should keep an author constantly in the public eye and have
a positive influence on his or her symbolic rating. In recent times, there seems to
have been a constant displacement of older books by new titles in the publishers'
lists. Unfortunately, the further analysis of both publishers' lists dealt with here
allowed no conclusions to be reached on this aspect. Literary publishers in the pre-
war Netherlands maintained their older work in stock and on their lists for decades.
(Storage costs appear scarcely to have counted.) This older work was theoretically
still obtainable, though it is difficult to say whether in fact these titles could actually
be produced. There would seem to be a great difference here with the current world
of publishing, where many new fiction titles disappear from the market much more
rapidly.
 F. de Glas / Poetics 25 (1998) 379-397 305

8. From individual case-studies to general patterns

In several places in his work, Bourdieu has indicated criteria by which to compare
the positions of literary publishers (e.g. "the distribution of their commitments
between risky, long-term investments [Godot] and safe, short-term investments, and
[...] according to the proportion of their authors who are long-term or short-term
writers" (Bourdieu, 1993a: 98)). I have argued above that these indications are too
vague. The starting point of my study of both Dutch publishers' lists was that Bour-
dieu's concept of the material and symbolic production of literature does indeed pro-
vide an interesting framework of analysis, but that one needs to analyze much more
precisely how publishers construct such a list and therefore one needs to develop the
appropriate instrument. Analysis of two Dutch publishers' lists according to parame-
ters of continuity and exclusiveness allows us to analyze more keenly the specific
nature as well as the problems of these two publishing houses. However, if we try to
determine the position of a publishing house in the literary field, in Bourdieu's
sense, by using such instruments, we have no fixed coordinates by which everything
can be measured. Publishing research must therefore provisionally settle for com-
parisons of publishing lists with each other. In the long term one might develop
indices that would allow a classification of publishing houses (according to the
wealth of established oeuvres, the intake of young authors etc.) as an aid to assign-
ing positions to publishing houses.
The present analysis of long-term authorial oeuvres also clarifies another aspect of
Bourdieu's concept of the literary field, that of the diverse time cycles that play a rol
in the material and symbolic production of literature. Bourdieu refers briefly to this,
pointing out that (in the short term) newcomers are constantly appearing on the
scene; on the other hand, he proposes that the publishing house whose principal long
term aim is to build up symbolic capital eventually develops two divergent
economies (the one based on novel risk-taking, the other on the exploitation of the
firmly established (Bourdieu, 1993a: 104). Bourdieu also suggests that the dropping
out of the original founder of the publishing house might have been a factor here,
albeit not a decisive one.
Analysis of publishers' lists as proposed here allows one to talk in much more
concrete terms about the rate of admission of newcomers by individual publishing
houses and the way the particular emphases and complexion of their listst are cre-
ated. It shows that different time cycles operate within the Republic of Letters. We
see the long cycle of the career of the most productive authors, which may be of 40
to 50 years (the most prestigious authors often go together with the longest produc-
tivity). There is also a shorter cycle of 5 to 10 years related to the appearance of
younger generations of writers; and between the two is the cycle of the particular
complexion given by the person of the publisher that is so vital to the image of the
house, a cycle of 25 to 40 years. This lack of synchrony gives rise to two crucial
questions: can the ageing publisher still manage to recruit younger generations to his
stable? And secondly, can the publishing house independently survive the succes-
sion of generations without loosing its power to attract writers into its own stable?
These two questions, in my view, provide an important touchstone for judging the
396 F. de Glas / Poetics 25 (1998) 379-397

p o s i t i o n o f a p u b l i s h i n g h o u s e in the literary field. T h i s is the w a y , I b e l i e v e , in

w h i c h the p a t h o p e n e d up b y B o u r d i e u c a n be best f u r t h e r e x p l o r e d .

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