Role in Publishing
Poetry was a prime element in the Faber list and under T. S. Eliot's aegis W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Louis MacNeice soon joined Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore, Wyndham Lewis, John Gould Fletcher, Roy Campbell, James Joyce and Walter de la Mare.
Under Geoffrey Faber's chairmanship the board in 1929 included T. S. Eliot, Richard de la Mare, Charles Stewart and Frank Morley. This young and highly intelligent team built up a comprehensive and profitable catalogue, and the dust jackets and cover designs of the firm's art director Berthold Wolpe gave the books a distinctive yet unified appearance. Faber published biographies, memoirs, fiction, poetry, political and religious essays, art and architecture monographs, children's books, and launched a pioneering ecology list. It also published T. S. Eliot's literary review, The Criterion. T. S. Eliot rejected two books by George Orwell, A Scullions Tale (the first version of Down and Out) and Animal Farm.
In the Second World War, paper shortages meant profits were large, but almost all went in taxes and subsequent years were difficult. However, with recovery a new generation joined Faber, bringing in writers such as William Golding, Lawrence Durrell, Robert Lowell, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, W. S. Graham, Philip Larkin, P. D. James, Tom Stoppard and John Osborne. These last two, first published in the 1960s, represented the firm's growing commitment to modern drama.
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