Anvil Press Printed Collection
Date range: 1965-2014
Medium: Printed
Number of items: 424 items.
The printed portion of the Anvil Press Archive, purchased from the press’s founder, Peter Jay, in 2016. Founded in 1968, the Anvil Press was an independent poetry publisher which specialized in modern and contemporary poetry in English from around the world, including poetry in translation. The press moved to Greenwich, London in 1969, where it remained until its merger with Manchester’s Carcanet Press in 2015.
Consisting mainly of monographs, the collection includes works by individual writers, plus anthologies. Poets well-represented include the British authors Carol Ann Duffy, Harry Guest (1932-2021) and Peter Levi (1931-2000); Ireland’s Dennis O’Driscoll (1954-2012); the American, Edward Kissam; Anglo-Caribbean poet E. A. Markham (1939-2008), and the German-British writer Michael Hamburger (1924-2007).
There are also numerous publications from the Press’s translation programme. These include poets from Eastern and Western Europe, eg Paul Celan (1920-70), Vasko Popa (1922-91), Ivan V. Lalić (1931-96) and George Seferis (1900-71), plus writers from the Indian subcontinent, Latin America and China. Additionally, there are a number of modern translations of pre-1900 poetry, eg by Charles Baudelaire (1821-67), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) and Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843), designed to bring these works to new audiences.
The collection also includes nine out of ten issues of New Measure: A magazine of poetry (1965-9), a student publication which Jay edited while studying English and Classics at the University of Oxford. The Anvil Press arose from New Measure with the help of a small grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. A small assortment of ephemera associated with the Press includes posters, catalogues, membership forms and promotional leaflets.
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