Faber 80 :
In 1929 Faber and Faber was founded, with an inaugural list that included the finest poets of the day. Now, 80 years later, the Faber list has grown to include many award-winning novelists, playwrights and screenwriters, children's authors, and non-fiction writers. To mark our anniversary as one of the great independent publishing houses, we are celebrating with 'Faber 80': a year-long festival of special events and publications (80 in all) looking back over eight decades of cultural endeavour.
Faber 80 will draw together many strands across our publishing, our new business ventures and our e-book and audio programmes. It will reflect on our history as well as placing emphasis on beginnings: those debut publications that each decade have established the next Faber generation.
T. S. Eliot
2009 will see a major focus on T. S. Eliot, one of Faber’s founding fathers, whose influence on the poetry of the 20th century was unparalleled, both as a poet and an editor. November through to January 2009 sees the Donmar Warehouse staging The Family Reunion as the centrepiece of a landmark festival celebrating T. S. Eliot. The festival also includes the Four Quartets, rehearsed readings of Murder in the Cathedral and The Cocktail Party and readings of Eliot’s verse.
Famously Eliot also liked to indulge in light verse, and his poems for his godchildren about ‘jellicle dogs’ and ‘policle cats’ became Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats: first published in 1939, an international bestseller and the basis for the musical Cats. We are delighted to be bringing out a new edition of Old Possum’s with specially commissioned artwork by the master illustrator, Axel Scheffler, in September.
At the same time the British Library’s exhibition on 'Eliot as Publisher' will shed light on Eliot’s extraordinary work in his editorial capacity at Faber, and will include material never before displayed from the British Library collections, the Faber Archive and the Eliot Estate.
Faber Poetry
The year will bring a rich list of poetry, with new collections from Alice Oswald, Hugo Williams, Don Paterson, Andrew Motion and a striking first collection from Emma Jones. 2009 will also see the publication of Heaney’s work in e-book format as part of Faber’s ongoing digital publishing programme.
Faber will also be launching a major project to publish the work of debut poets with the support of the Arts Council England, the first four pamphlets to be published in 2009. Our audio list will also include 'Poets in their Own Words': a celebration of Faber poets reading their own work from across the span of 80 years . Also on the audio list will be The Sunday Sessions, (January) a never-before-released recording of Philip Larkin reading his own work. And in May we will be bringing out editions of Auden, Betjeman, Yeats, Eliot, Plath and Hughes as beautiful £8 hardbacks with specially commissioned print cloth jackets.
Our new Faber Finds imprint will reissue one of the seminal and ground-breaking works of its time - The Faber Book of Modern Verse - edited by Michael Roberts and first published in 1936.
Golding & Beckett
2009 will also see the publication - 55 years after Lord of the Flies first stunned readers - of the first major biography of William Golding, by celebrated writer and academic John Carey (September).
Following the acquisition from the Estate of Samuel Beckett of rights in the complete writings of Samuel Beckett, Faber will begin publishing a uniform edition of the Collected Works, in 17 volumes, from Spring 2009, together with scholarly editions of selected texts.
Faber Firsts
As part of our anniversary publishing, the Paperback Team presents 'Faber Firsts': a beautiful repackaging of ten first novels by ten of our key writers. Faber Firsts provide an opportunity to celebrate Faber's identity as a home for writers to grow - and also to showcase our new crop of debut novels for 2009, which we believe will be read for decades to come.
The ten novels will be published as B format paperbacks in May priced at £8. The strength and diversity of this list - which includes both firm classics and lesser known works - is a testament to Faber's fiction, both past and future.
The ten books are as follows:
Cover Her Face by P. D. James
New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The White Castle by Orhan Pamuk
A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro
Such a Long Journey by Rohinton Mistry
The Barracks by John McGahern
Bliss by Peter Carey
Faber Art Director, Donna Payne, has identified ten key strands of Faber's design history, and each of the novels will have a new cover designed by a contemporary designer which is influenced by one strand. They will all be two-colour and will be branded as a 'Faber First', ensuring continuity but also particularity across the series.
The marketing will focus on a website which will both promote these ten titles and connect these established, acclaimed writers with our 2009 debut novelists, through interviews and other exclusive content. Faber Firsts will be supported by a year long reading promotion throughout libraries nationwide, one of our projects with The Reading Agency for 2009.
Faber Design
Specially commissioned publications include a beautiful Faber and Faber 2009 Diary in full colour, including jacket reproductions, archive material, and the highlighting of key dates of interest; and Faber and Faber: 80 Years of Book Cover Design by Joseph Connolly, an impassioned guide-cum-love-letter to the designers, artists and authors at the heart of Faber’s design history. The V & A will be supporting the publication with a library display.
2009 will also mark the launch of Faber Made: a collaboration with Art Meets Matter to produce a range of beautiful mugs, prints, playing cards and other items that draw on Faber’s rich design heritage.
Events Calendar
We will also be unveiling an exciting programme of events involving a range of collaborative partners. A few highlights:
• The Faber Academy in a special collaboration with the Charleston Festival on their 20th anniversary will run a series of themed creative writing workshops, inspired by the Charleston setting, during the Festival
• In tandem with Arvon Foundation for their own 40th anniversary, Wendy Cope, Daljit Nagra and Rebecca Lenkiewicz will be reading on 18th January at King’s Place
• At the Bath Festival three of our leading contemporary poets will discuss the work and legacy of three giants of 20th-century poetry: James Fenton (holder of the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry) on W. H. Auden, Lavinia Greenlaw on T. S. Eliot, and poet, critic and broadcaster Tom Paulin on Ted Hughes
• The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival will be hosting a Faber quiz with exciting prizes, chaired by accomplished quizmaster James Walton
• The Guardian Hay Festival will host a Faber event on its closing weekend, bringing together Faber writers who have enjoyed a special connection to Hay. An event also to be announced in partnership with the Edinburgh Book Festival
• The South Bank Centre will be programming a range of special events throughout the year, including a poetry extravaganza in a QEH event
• There are also special events to be announced in Sydney and in Ireland, other partners to include Faber Music, New Writing North and the Poetry Society