Title: Strange bird : the Albatross Press and the Third Reich /
Authors: Troy, Michele K.,
Year: 2017
Subjects: Albatross Verlag History.; Publishers and publishing Germany History
Abstract: The first book about Albatross Press, a Penguin precursor that entered into an uneasy relationship with the Nazi regime to keep Anglo-American literature alive under fascism. The Albatross Press was, from its beginnings in 1932, a "strange bird": a cultural outsider to the Third Reich but an economic insider. It was funded by British-Jewish interests. Its director was rumored to work for British intelligence. A precursor to Penguin, it distributed both middlebrow fiction and works by edgier modernist authors such as D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and Ernest Hemingway to eager continental readers. Yet Albatross printed and sold its paperbacks in English from the heart of Hitler's Reich. In her original and skillfully researched history, Michele K. Troy reveals how the Nazi regime tolerated Albatross-for both economic and propaganda gains-and how Albatross exploited its insider position to keep Anglo-American books alive under fascism. In so doing, Troy exposes the contradictions in Nazi censorship while offering an engaging detective story, a history, a nuanced analysis of men and motives, and a cautionary tale.
Contents: Behind the door -- Tauchnitz has a rival -- Spies for England -- Winning the continent -- Un-German literature -- Made in Britain? -- The scissors in their heads -- A tale of two publishers -- The center will not hold -- The shell game -- Suspicion -- Dear reader -- Allegiances -- Faces of war -- Enemy books -- Return and departure -- Albatross under the occupation -- The Deutsche Tauchnitz -- English books abroad -- Rivals -- When the bombs fell -- Making peace -- Rising from the ashes -- Homecoming -- Longing.