Marion Ursula Boyars, ''née'' Asmus (26 October 1927 – 1 February 1999), was a British book publisher who in 1975 founded her own imprint,

Marion Boyars Publishers Marion Boyars Publishers is an independent publishing company located in Great Britain, publishing books that focus on the humanities and social sciences Social science (often rendered in the plural as the social sciences) is one of the b ...

Biography

She was born Marion Asmus in New York, daughter of German publisher Johannes Asmus. Peter Owen
"Marion Boyars obituary"
''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'', 2 February 1999.

Sarah Lyall Sarah Lambert Lyall is an American journalist who has long written for ''The New York Times'', currently as a writer at large and including an 18-year period as the paper's London correspondent. Biography Raised in New York City, Lyall attended t ...

"Marion Boyars, Publisher Of Eclectic Books, Dies at 71"
''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'', 4 February 1999. She attended school in New York and Switzerland, living with her mother and sister, before going on to

Keele University Keele University is a Public university#United Kingdom, public research university in Keele, approximately from Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, England. Founded in 1949 as the University College of North Staffordshire, it was granted uni ...

to read for a degree in politics, philosophy and economics. After graduating, she married George Lobbenberg and had two daughters. The marriage ended in divorce, and in the 1960s she married poet and translator Arthur Boyars. In 1960, she answered an advertisement in ''

The Bookseller ''The Bookseller'' is a British magazine reporting news on the publishing industry. Philip Jones is editor-in-chief of the weekly print edition of the magazine and the website. The magazine is home to the ''Bookseller''/Diagram Prize for Oddes ...

'' that led her to buy a 50 per cent stake in the small independent publishing company run by John Calder in London. The resultant publishing house, Calder and Boyars, published books by authors including

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 ...

Marguerite Duras Marguerite Germaine Marie Donnadieu (, 4 April 1914 – 3 March 1996), known as Marguerite Duras (), was a French novelist, playwright, screenwriter, essayist, and experimental filmmaker. Her script for the film ''Hiroshima mon amour'' (1959) ea ...

Henry Miller Henry Valentine Miller (December 26, 1891 – June 7, 1980) was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist. He broke with existing literary forms and developed a new type of semi-autobiographical novel that blended character study, so ...

, Eugene Ionesco, Peter Weiss and

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 ...

, until the firm split in 1975. She then formed

, and working with her husband Arthur (described as her "literary guide and cheerleader")Nicholas Jacobs
"Arthur Boyars, gifted poet and publisher with a passion for music"
''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...

'', 14 August 2017. built up an eclectic list of translated fiction (including by such authors as Julio Cortázar, Latife Tekin,

Vasily Shukshin Vasily Makarovich Shukshin (; 25 July 1929 – 2 October 1974) was a Soviet Russian writer, actor, screenwriter and film director from the Altai region who specialized in rural themes. A prominent member of the Village Prose movement, he beg ...

and

Witold Gombrowicz Witold Marian Gombrowicz (August 4, 1904 – July 24, 1969) was a Polish writer and playwright. His works are characterised by deep psychological analysis, a certain sense of paradox and absurd, anti-nationalism, anti-nationalist flavor. In 1937, ...

), as well as books on music and cinema. She died of

pancreatic cancer Pancreatic cancer arises when cell (biology), cells in the pancreas, a glandular organ behind the stomach, begin to multiply out of control and form a Neoplasm, mass. These cancerous cells have the malignant, ability to invade other parts of ...

at her home in London in 1999, aged 71. On her death, her younger daughter Catheryn Kilgarriff took over the running of Marion Boyars Publishers."About Marion & Arthur Boyars"
Marion Boyars Publishers. Retrieved 7 December 2020.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Boyars, Marion 1927 births 1999 deaths 20th-century British businesspeople 20th-century British businesswomen Alumni of Keele University British book publishing company founders British people of German descent Deaths from pancreatic cancer in England 20th-century people from New York (state) Women book publishers (people)