John Calder - Biography

Biography

John Calder was a friend of Samuel Beckett, becoming the main publisher of his prose-texts in Britain after the success of Waiting for Godot on the London stage in 1955-56. During the 1950s, Calder published the translated work of Anton Chekhov, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Goethe and Zola, including most of the work of April FitzLyon, and was the first publisher to make William S. Burroughs available in the United Kingdom.

From 1963 to 1975, Calder was in partnership with Marion Boyars, and the company was known as Calder and Boyars. The championing of freedom of speech led to Calder's involvement in a number of prosecutions for obscenity, most notably perhaps in 1966 for Last Exit to Brooklyn. The case was won on appeal.

The imprint continues to publish Howard Barker, Tim Waterstone, and other figures of literature both past and present. In 2002, John Calder opened The Calder Bookshop Theatre at 51 The Cut, Waterloo, London. To celebrate his fifty years in publishing, the arts and politics a festschrift was produced. During 2006, Lou MacLoughlan and Louise Milne produced the documentary John Calder: A Life in Publishing commemorating his life.

In April 2007 it was announced that John Calder is passing the business on to Oneworld Classics; the list will retain his name, although the rights to the non-theatrical work of Beckett have been acquired by Faber.

Calder was also responsible. along with Sonia Orwell and Jim Haynes, for devising and co-creating an International Writers' Conference held at the Edinburgh International Festival in 1962 and then a Drama Conference in 1963. These innovative events, intended to draw together writers from all over the world, were arguably a forerunner of the Edinburgh Book Festival, which was not founded for another twenty years. The experience of this first conference was revisited at a Book Festival discussion during the 2012 Edinburgh International Festival.

John Calder has also led a hectic life outside publishing. He was a major investor in the Partisan Coffee House, a radical New Left venue in Soho. In the 1960s, he stood for election as a Liberal candidate.

However, he is otherwise mainly known for his interests in the arts in general and his passion for opera in particular. In 1963 he founded and ran for some ten years Ledlanet Nights, a general festival of the arts, held in the hall of his then home, a baronial house at Ledlanet near Milnathort.

As his publishing activity lessened, Calder has developed his own writing. He published his autobiography, Pursuit: the Uncensored Memoirs of John Calder, in 2001, and various other works related to Beckett. He still writes poetry and is currently working on a biography.