John Mackenzie Calder (25 January 1927 – 13 August 2018) was a

Scottish-Canadian Scottish Canadians () are people of Scottish descent or heritage living in Canada. As the third-largest ethnic group in Canada and amongst the first Europeans to settle in the country, Scottish people have made a large impact on Canadian cultur ...

writer and

publisher Publishing is the activities of making information, literature, music, software, and other content, physical or digital, available to the public for sale or free of charge. Traditionally, the term publishing refers to the creation and distribu ...

who founded the company

Calder Publishing Calder Publications is a publisher of books. Since 1949, the company has published many books on all the arts, particularly subjects such as opera and painting, the theatre and critical and philosophical theory. Calder's authors have achieved ...

in 1949.

Biography

Calder was born in

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

, Canada, into the Calder family associated with the brewing industry in

Alloa Alloa (Received Pronunciation ; Scottish pronunciation /ˈaloʊa/; , possibly meaning "rock plain") is a town in Clackmannanshire in the Central Lowlands of Scotland. It is on the north bank of the Forth at the spot where some say it ceases to ...

, Scotland, and spent his childhood in

Kinross Kinross (, ) is a burgh in Perth and Kinross, Scotland, around south of Perth, Scotland, Perth and around northwest of Edinburgh. It is the traditional county town of the Counties of Scotland, historic county of Kinross-shire. History Kinro ...

, and studied at

Bishop's College School Bishop's College School or BCS is an English-language non-profit independent school, independent boarding school, boarding College-preparatory school, prep school in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada for students in Grades 7 to 12.Thomson, Ashley; L ...

Sherbrooke Sherbrooke ( , ) is a city in southern Quebec, Canada. It is at the confluence of the Saint-François River, Saint-François and Magog River, Magog rivers in the heart of the Estrie administrative region. Sherbrooke is also the name of a territ ...

before studying economics in

Zürich Zurich (; ) is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich. , the municipality had 448,664 inhabitants. The ...

, Switzerland, in the late 1940s. About 1950, Calder went into partnership with

Neville Armstrong Neville Spearman Armstrong (20 October 1913 – September 2008) was a British soldier, literary agent, and publisher. In the 1940s and early 1950s he was in partnerships with others, then from 1955 he operated his own publishing company called N ...

in a short-lived publishing enterprise called Spearman Calder. Calder was a friend of

Samuel Beckett Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish writer of novels, plays, short stories, and poems. Writing in both English and French, his literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal, and Tragicomedy, tra ...

, becoming the main publisher of his prose-texts in Britain after the success of ''

Waiting for Godot ''Waiting for Godot'' ( or ) is a 1953 play by Irish writer and playwright Samuel Beckett, in which the two main characters, Vladimir (Waiting for Godot), Vladimir (Didi) and Estragon (Gogo), engage in a variety of discussions and encounters w ...

'' on the London stage in 1955–56. During the 1950s, Calder published the translated work of

Anton Chekhov Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (; ; 29 January 1860 – 15 July 1904) was a Russian playwright and short-story writer, widely considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his b ...

Leo Tolstoy Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy Tolstoy pronounced his first name as , which corresponds to the romanization ''Lyov''. () (; ,Throughout Tolstoy's whole life, his name was written as using Reforms of Russian orthography#The post-revolution re ...

Fyodor Dostoevsky Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. () was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and journalist. He is regarded as one of the greatest novelists in both Russian and world literature, and many of his works are considered highly influent ...

Goethe Johann Wolfgang (von) Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German polymath who is widely regarded as the most influential writer in the German language. His work has had a wide-ranging influence on Western literature, literary, Polit ...

and Zola, including most of the work of April FitzLyon, and was the first publisher to make

William S. Burroughs William Seward Burroughs II (; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist. He is widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major Postmodern literature, postmodern author who influen ...

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, including one in 1966 for publishing

Hubert Selby Jr Hubert "Cubby" Selby Jr. (July 23, 1928 – April 26, 2004) was an American writer. Two of his novels, ''Last Exit to Brooklyn'' (1964) and '' Requiem for a Dream'' (1978), explore worlds in the New York area and were adapted as films, both of ...

's ''

Last Exit to Brooklyn ''Last Exit to Brooklyn'' is a 1964 novel by American author Hubert Selby Jr. The novel takes a harsh, uncompromising look at lower class Brooklyn in the 1950s written in spare, stripped-down prose. Critics and fellow writers praised the b ...

''. While the initial trial resulted in a guilty verdict, the case was won on appeal, and effectively ended literary censorship in Britain. In 1964 Calder joined the ''Who Killed Kennedy Committee?'' set up by

Bertrand Russell Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, and public intellectual. He had influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, and various areas of analytic ...

. The last novelist to be signed to the company by John Calder personally was

Carole Morin Carole Morin is a Glasgow-born novelist who lives in Soho, London. She has had five novels published: ''Lampshades'', ''Penniless in Park Lane'', ''Dead Glamorous'', ''Spying on Strange Men'' and ''Fleshworld''. Morin's fiction is critically ac ...

whose ''Penniless in Park Lane'' he published in 2001. The imprint continues to publish

Howard Barker Howard Barker (born 28 June 1946) is a British playwright, screenwriter and writer of radio drama, painter, poet, and essayist, writing predominantly on playwriting and the theatre. The author of an extensive body of dramatic works since the ...

Tim Waterstone Sir Timothy John Stuart Waterstone (born 30 May 1939) is a British bookseller, businessman and author. He is the founder of Waterstones, the United Kingdom-based bookseller retail chain, the largest in Europe. Early life Timothy John Stuart Wat ...

, and other figures of literature both past and present. In 2002, John Calder opened The Calder Bookshop Theatre at 51 The Cut,

Waterloo, London Waterloo () is a district in Central London, and part of the Waterloo and South Bank (ward), Waterloo and South Bank ward of the London Borough of Lambeth. It is situated east of Charing Cross. The area is part of a List of business improvement ...

. 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, Calder sold his business to independent publishers Alma Books/Oneworld Classics; the imprint retained his name, while the rights to the non-theatrical work of Beckett were acquired by

Faber Faber may refer to: People * Faber (surname) Companies * Faber & Faber, publishing house in the United Kingdom * Faber-Castell, German manufacturer of writing instruments * Faber Music, British sheet music publisher * Eberhard Faber, German ...

. Calder was a co-founder of the

Traverse Theatre The Traverse Theatre is a theatre in Edinburgh, Scotland. It was founded as The Traverse Theatre Club in 1962 by John Calder, John Malcolm, Jim Haynes, Richard Demarco, Terry Lane, Andrew Muir, John Martin and Sheila Colvin. The Traverse Th ...

Edinburgh Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh ...

. He was also responsible, along with

Sonia Orwell Sonia Mary Brownell (25 August 1918 – 11 December 1980), better known as Sonia Orwell, was the second wife of writer George Orwell. Sonia is believed to be the model for Julia, the heroine of ''Nineteen Eighty-Four''. Sonia worked with the I ...

and Jim Haynes, for devising and co-creating an International Writers' Conference held at the

Edinburgh International Festival The Edinburgh International Festival is an annual arts festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, spread over the final three weeks in August. Notable figures from the international world of music (especially european classical music, classical music) and ...

in 1962 and then a Drama Conference with

Kenneth Tynan Kenneth Peacock Tynan (2 April 1927 – 26 July 1980) was an English theatre critic and writer. Initially making his mark as a critic at ''The Observer'', he praised John Osborne's ''Look Back in Anger'' (1956) and encouraged the emerging wave ...

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. Calder also led a hectic life outside publishing. He was a major investor in the

Partisan Coffee House The Partisan Coffee House was a radical venue of the New Left, at 7 Carlisle Street in the Soho district of London. It was established by historian Raphael Samuel in 1958 in the aftermath of the Suez Crisis and the Soviet invasion of Hungary. It cl ...

, a radical

New Left The New Left was a broad political movement that emerged from the counterculture of the 1960s and continued through the 1970s. It consisted of activists in the Western world who, in reaction to the era's liberal establishment, campaigned for freer ...

venue in

Soho SoHo, short for "South of Houston Street, Houston Street", is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Since the 1970s, the neighborhood has been the location of many artists' lofts and art galleries, art installations such as The Wall ...

. In 1970, he stood for election as a Scottish

Liberal Party The Liberal Party is any of many political parties around the world. The meaning of ''liberal'' varies around the world, ranging from liberal conservatism on the right to social liberalism on the left. For example, while the political systems ...

candidate for Kinross and Western Perthshire, finishing fourth. However, he was 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 Milnathort is a small town in the parish of Orwell in the county of Kinross-shire, Scotland and since 1996, the local council area of Perth and Kinross. The smaller neighbour of nearby Kinross, Milnathort has a population of around 2,000 people. ...

. He published his autobiography, ''Pursuit: the Uncensored Memoirs of John Calder'', in 2001, and various other works related to Beckett. Towards the end of his life Calder published three books of poetry ''What's Wrong? What's Right?: Poems'' (1999), ''Solo: Collected Poems 1997-2007'' (2007), and ''Being – Seeing – Feeling – Healing – Meaning'' (2012).

Personal life

Calder was married to Christya Myling from 1954 to 1961. They have a daughter named Jamie (b. 1954). Calder and

Bettina Jonic Bettina, also spelled Betina, is a female name predominantly found in the Italian and German languages. This name has various interpreted meanings and origins. In Italian, Bettina originated as a diminutive of the names Elisabetta and Benedetta ...

were married in 1961. That lasted until 1975, and produced another daughter, Anastasia (b. 1963). Calder had a long-term relationship with Muriel Leyner, mother of author

Mark Leyner Mark Leyner (born January 4, 1956) is an American postmodernist author. Biography Mark Leyner was born in Jersey City, NJ to a Jewish family. He is the son of Joel and Muriel (née Chasan) Leyner, who had divorced by 1997. Leyner received a B ...

, from 1983 to 2005. Calder married Sheila Colvin, who had been a friend and partner from his earliest involvement with the arts, and the

in Edinburgh. She is a former associate director of the Edinburgh International Festival and director of the

Aldeburgh Festival The Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts is an English arts festival devoted mainly to classical music. It takes place each June in the town of Aldeburgh, Suffolk and is centred on Snape Maltings Concert Hall. History of the Aldeburgh Festi ...

. The couple lived in Edinburgh and

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

References

External links

Calder Publications
– archived version of website as it was on 23 May 2002.
Calder and Boyars Manuscripts
– Lilly Library Manuscript Collections, Indiana University *Louise Jury, "Publish and be damned: A defender of free speech" – a profile of John Calder, ''The Independent on Sunday'', 21 March 2007. *Tom Tivnan, "I am Legend", a feature on John Calder on his sixtieth anniversary in publishing,''The Bookseller'', 30 January 2009.

Biography

Personal life

References

External links

See also