Autobiografia Literatura Kultura Media


ISSN: 2353-8694     eISSN: 2719-4361    OAI    DOI: 10.18276/au.2024.1.22-07
CC BY-SA   Open Access   DOAJ  ERIH PLUS

Issue archive / nr 1 (22) 2024
The Life behind the Books: Reconstructing the Przeworskis’ Biographies

Authors: Paulina Pająk ORCID
Uniwersytet Wrocławski
Keywords: J. Przeworski Publishing House the Przeworskis women publishers modernist publishing networks interwar print culture
Whole issue publication date:2024
Page range:14 (85-98)
Cited-by (Crossref) ?:

Abstract

Adopting critical and feminist archival approaches, this article reconstructs the dis/continuous biographies of the Przeworskis, intertwined with the activities of Wydawnictwo J. Przeworskiego (J. Przeworski Publishing House) that excelled at innovative life-writing and fiction, avant-garde aesthetics, works of progressive intellectuals, and bestsellers by women writers. As the Przeworskis were cultural mediators active in the global transfer of modernist works in Central Europe and in the UK, select UK and US archives act as substitute repositories, allowing to fill in some gaps in the scholarship on J. Przeworski. The article focuses on marginalised women publishers whose role in modernist publishing networks has been currently discovered. Drawing on publishing correspondence, the biographical reconstruction is supported by recollections of family, other people in the literary marketplace, and Holocaust survivors. The research findings highlight the need to re-investigate previous assumptions on interwar print culture, frequently based on limited data and reproducing the mechanisms of systemic violence.
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