Grove Press
Grove Press is an American publisher founded in 1951. Imprints include: Black Cat, Evergreen, Venus Library, Zebra. Grove Press is not to be confused with Concord Grove Press, a publisher of spiritual and philosophic texts.
History
In 1951 Barney Rosset purchased a small publishing company called "Grove Press".
Over the next years, he would turn it into an influential alternative book press in the United States.
Ann Getty and George Weidenfeld acquired Grove Press in 1985. The Atlantic Monthly Press, under the aegis of its publisher, Morgan Entrekin, merged with Grove Press in 1991. Grove is now an imprint of the still-independent publisher, Grove/Atlantic Inc., where its traditions continue.
The Lady Chatterley's Lover case
In 1959, Grove Press published an unexpurgated version of Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence. The United States Postal Service confiscated copies sent through the mail. Lawyer Charles Rembar sued the New York City postmaster and won in New York and then on federal appeal. In 1965, Tom Lehrer was to celebrate the erotic appeal of the novel in his cheerfully satirical song "Smut" with the couplet "Who needs a hobby like tennis or philately? I've got a hobby: rereading Lady Chatterley."
The Tropic of Cancer case
Henry Miller's 1934 novel, Tropic of Cancer, had explicit sexual passages and could not be published in the United States; an edition was printed by the Obelisk Press in Paris, and copies were smuggled into the United States. (As of 2003, used book dealers asked $7500 and up for copies of this edition.) In 1961, Grove Press issued a copy of the work and lawsuits were brought against dozens of individual booksellers in many states for selling it. The issue was ultimately settled by the Supreme Court's 1973 decision in Miller v. California. In this decision, the court defined obscenity by what is now called the Miller test. The Wikipedia article on pornography notes that "In the United States, hardcore pornography is legal unless it meets the Miller test of obscenity, which it almost never does."
The Naked Lunch case
The William S. Burroughs novel Naked Lunch was forbidden from being published in some parts of the world for approximately ten years, presumably due to the vividness of some of the material, though it found a quick release in France where Olympia Press published it soon after completion. The first American publisher to take a chance with the novel was Grove Press. The book was banned by Boston courts in 1962 due to obscenity, but that decision was reversed in a landmark 1966 opinion by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. This was the last major literary censorship battle in the US.
Upon publication, Grove Press added to the book supplementary material regarding the censorship battle as well as an article written by Burroughs on the topic of drug addiction. Grove would publish several editions of the novel over the next four decades, including a "Restored Text" version in 2002. Grove also published the first American paperback editions of other controversial Burroughs' works including The Soft Machine, Nova Express and The Ticket That Exploded. Grove would also publish the final collection of the author's writings, the posthumously published Last Words: The Final Journals of William S. Burroughs.
External links
- Grove/Atlantic, Inc. Official website (Grove Press and Atlantic Monthly Press; with links also to Atlantic Books, Ltd., Canongate Books, Ltd., and Open City Magazine)
- Interview with Barney Rosset by Don Swaim of CBS Radio conducted in 1984; 29 min., 43 sec. (RealAudio)
- J. A. Lee's "Checklist of titles issued by Grove Press, 1949-1959" (no home page or further information accessible from this webpage)
- William Ashley's list of Grove Press Black Cat Paperbacks (commercial site of titles for sale)
- William Ashley's list of Grove Press Venus Library titles (commercial site of titles for sale)
- William Ashley's list of Grove Press Zebra Library titles (commercial site of titles for sale)
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