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1 results

  • 17 - The Lure of Postwar London

  • from (II) - Disappointed Citizens
  • Edited by Susheila Nasta, Queen Mary University of London, Mark U. Stein, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Black and Asian British Writing
    Published online:
    19 December 2019
    Print publication:
    16 January 2020, pp 278-295

  • Summary

    Partly due to their British colonial education, many writers were lured to the postwar metropolis to find publishers and a wider audience for their work. This chapter discusses the contradictory stances of the publishing industry in the 1950s and 1960s. It traces the interactions between editors, audiences, and other cultural networks that made London an international publishing capital for ‘new’ Commonwealth authors (as they were then known). It was in London that Amos Tutuola or Wilson Harris were first noticed by Faber and Faber, and Sam Selvon’s A Brighter Sun (1952) or George Lamming’s In the Castle of My Skin (1953) first appeared. This interest soon waned, however, as issues of race, nation, and identity began to dominate, and sharp divisions were apparent, partially due to the myopia of some publishers and the parochial reception of some critics. The chapter also points forwards to the social and political contexts which provoked the vital growth of smaller and more radical publishing houses such as New Beacon (1966) in the 1970s and 1980s.