B. W. Huebsch

B. W. Huebsch

American independent publisher and then executive at Viking Press. After several years in the family's printing business, Huebsch founded his own publishing firm focusing on religion, political theory, and modern literature (notably an English translation of Hauptmann's dramatic works). His books featured a distinctive seven-candle menorah on the title page. Huebsch and JJ became acquainted when the publisher arranged for two stories from Dubliners to be published in the American magazine, The Smart Set (1915). He published A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in late 1916, and issued American editions of Dubliners (1916, 1917), Exiles (1918), and Chamber Music (1918). Though interested in publishing Ulysses, Huebsch's vacillation due to fears of prosecution for obscenity discouraged JJ: Huebsch would not risk publishing the book without changes, and JJ would not expurgate. Nevertheless, the two retained a cordial relationship throughout the rest of JJ's life. One of Huebsch's last publications under his own name was the first book-length examination of JJ's work, Herbert S. Gorman's James Joyce: His First Forty Years (1924). In 1925 he sold the firm to the newly-established Viking Press, where he became vice president and editorial director. In ensuing years, Viking became a prominent and influential literary publisher, with works by Dorothy Parker, Sean O'Faolain, Erskine Caldwell, John Steinbeck, Stefan Zweig, and posthumous works by D.H. Lawrence. Viking published JJ's Collected Poems in 1937 and, with Faber & Faber in London, co-published Finnegans Wake in 1939. During Huebsch's time with the firm following JJ's death in 1941, Viking continued as an important publisher of JJ, with The Portable James Joyce (1947), an expanded edition of Exiles (1951), The Letters of James Joyce (1957, 1966), The Critical Writings of James Joyce (1959), as well as Stanislaus Joyce's My Brother's Keeper: James Joyce's Early Years (1958). William Brockman