Faber & Faber

• In the late 1930s Faber took over the publication of the 'Shell Guides', under whose directorship?
  • Herbert Read
  • John Betjeman
  • G. K. Chesterton
• Which of the following titles was an early name for what became 'Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats'?
  • Cat Morgan's Russell Square Adventures
  • Growltiger and Skimbleshanks
  • Pollicle Dogs and Jellicle Cats
• Michael Roberts' seminal 1936 anthology 'The Faber Book of Modern Verse' was to be updated how many times over the next half-century?
  • 2
  • 3
  • 5
• 'It sounds like the work of a vegetarian lady novelist' was the comment from which poet on hearing his Faber editor had named his new collection without first consulting him?
  • William Empson
  • David Jones
  • W. H. Auden
• 'Surrealism may amuse you, it may shock you, it may scandalize you, but one thing is certain: you will not be able to ignore it.' Words written in 1936 by whom?
  • Andre Breton
  • Jean Cocteau
  • Le Corbusier
• In 1929, when Geoffrey Faber bought out Lady Gwyer and renamed the publishing company, which famous poet (so legend has it) suggested the repetition of the Faber name 'because you can't have too much of a good thing'?
  • Siegfried Sassoon
  • Walter de la Mare
  • T. S. Eliot
• What was the lead title in the very first Faber and Faber catalogue in the autumn of 1929?
  • The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot
  • Elnovia by Geoffrey Faber
  • Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man by Siegfried Sassoon
• Which author, whose book was at the time banned in the UK, was so frustrated by Faber's attempts to publish his book that he rechristened the firm 'Feebler & Feebler'?
  • James Joyce
  • W. H. Auden
  • Ezra Pound
• A publisher would never use such words to introduce a writer these days, but in 1935 which author was described thus - 'his work is intelligible but unpopular, and has pride and modesty of things that endure'.
  • Stephen Spender
  • W. H. Auden
  • Louis Macneice
• Even more intimidating was this blurb, in 1936: 'It is concerned with le miserable au centre de sa misere, and has nothing to offer to readers whose temperament attaches them to either an easy or a frightened optimism.' Which book was being described?
  • Pomes Penyeach by James Joyce
  • Draft of XXX Cantos by Ezra Pound
  • Nightwood by Djuna Barnes

I'm done