Dedalus Books

Most of us here in the Chapel are familiar with Dedalus and the excellent work they have done over the years getting out original and reprint decadent literature. I stumbled upon my first Dedalus, a vampire novel called The Revenants many years ago (now, alas!, lost) and thereafter actively looked for that imprint. A Dedalus purchase has rarely been disappointing.

I found this message in my email this morning, and am passing it along in the hopes that one of you may be wealthy aesthete, sitting on a bag of cash. If so, perhaps you could give Marie a call.

DEDALUS NEEDS YOUR HELP

Thank you for signing our petition. About 2,300 persons from more than 60 countries signed our petition to the Arts Council, but to no avail. Dedalus lost its Arts Council funding in March 2008. Informa Plc, through its subsidiary Routledge Books, then most generously stepped in and gave us sponsorship for two years. That sponsorships ends in March 2010.

Thanks to Routledge Books, Dedalus has been able to continue as before as an alternative to the commercial publishing sector. Since losing our Arts Council annual grant Dedalus won both The Pen/Book-of-the Month-Club Translation Prize in the USA and The Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize in the UK for The Maias by Eca de Queiroz, translated by Margaret Jull Costa. Another of our books, The Bells of Bruges by Georges Rodenbach, translated by Mike Mitchell, was also on the short list of 6 for The Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize in 2008. This year Magnus by Sylvie Germain, translated by Christine Donougher, has been nominated for The American Library Association Notable Book Awards and shortlisted for The Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize. We continue to find new English authors of great talent and this year we published two first novels, The Father of Locks by Andrew Killeen and Jeremy Weingard’s Made in Yaroslavl. We have underway new translations, of both classic and contemporary fiction, from Danish, Estonian, Flemish French, German, Norwegian, Portuguese and Spanish.

However, to continue Dedalus’s role as a translation house and publisher of new fiction, we must find new sources of finance to replace Informa Plc’s sponsorship after March 2010. We have begun the search for new sponsors and also for patrons who will commit to giving Dedalus £1,000 (or more) per year for the next 3 years. We hope to establish a reserve fund, which will be available to support Dedalus. Dedalus has one full-time member of staff and one part-timer. The Dedalus directors receive no remuneration and Dedalus has never paid its shareholders a dividend. Any money Dedalus makes has always been reinvested in Dedalus’ s publishing programme. Everyone connected to Dedalus is motivated by cultural rather than purely commercial concerns. We hope that as someone who has signed our petition you or the institution/company you work for would like to become a Dedalus patron.

The more patrons we find, the stronger the case we can make for receiving public money in the future. We lost our Arts Council funding after a record year, so it is hard to imagine that we will have access to public funding in the foreseeable future.

If you would like to make a financial contribution to Dedalus, or, ideally, become a Dedalus patron, please contact Eric Lane at info@dedalusbooks.com or Marie at mariededalus@aol

I'll buy a lottery ticket today. Gods, let Dedalus receive my patronage tomorrow.

Ouch! How sad. I'm going to pick up a lottery ticket as well.

Very sad to hear Dedalus are in the soup.

Probability of 14m-1 suggests the lottery may be a sub-optimal path to further funding, great idea otherwise. Find a horse to back instead?

John Keats 3-1 favourite in the 3.10 @Haydock Pk let me down. Should have been each way. Hmm.

My purchases at Target yesterday added up to $77.77.

"You should buy a lottery ticket, ha ha." saith the clerke.

But - alas ! - sloth and inertia, the inseparable twins, overcame my money lust, so we shall never know if I would have been a winner.

Dedalus has a few interesting items in the works, particularly the Flemish and Estonian anthologies:

http://www.dedalusbooks.com/catalog.php?s=1&disp=1

Hooray! "Flemish" and "Estonian" are two tags I've been itching to use!

Thanks for the heads up.

Speaking of Estonian - you can get your hands on a Friedebert Tuglas's collection of stories, The Poet and the Idiot and Other Stories and use that tag now!

Speaking of Dedalus, has anyone figured out how to re-glue the backcovers back? I'm having trouble with my Book of Austrian Fantasy: The Meyrink year. I don't want to read because I'm afraid it's going to fall apart heh.

Dedalus has some cheap bindings. I use white glue and rubber bands to re-glue covers.

It's either the way the grain of the paper runs, or something to do with the glue used (I've got some large cardboard boxes which I use for storage and which came, indirectly, from a paperback printing factory. They used to contain "National: Hot Melt Adhesive" - that's the stuff); but UK paperbacks as a rule don't benefit from being opened flat; it's far better to peer in with the pages open at around 90°.

But yes, the cover of one of my Dedalus paperbacks came off as well. The text block was still sound, though. I repaired my book the same way as tros, using PVA glue. Just remember to put some scrap paper between the rubber bands and the book (on the spine and the opposite long edge - there's no need to wrap rubber bands around longitudinally), to stop the bands biting into the paper.

Thanks guys. I'll try it out. The only one that would not work on is The Dedalus Book of Decadence: Moral Ruins v. 1 as the text block completely disintergrated after one reading. Talk about decadent! I just got the kindle version of it afterwards. That's how they get you, lol.
I have a feeling it's the grain of the paper of the cover as well.

Hm. My Dedalus copies have held up pretty well on the whole, although the bindings are obviously cheap. And it's such a shame, because the selections are impeccable and deserve more enduring packages. But with reference to the OP, I understand the drive to economize.

We're on a low budget!
(I thought you said that.)

Toothpicks are handy for partly torn covers.

Speaking of disintegrating bindings, in museum lingo, an artifact's natural capacity to break down into its component elements is called Inherent Vice -- also a term used in maritime law. It is paradoxical that such a moralistic term would be used, because while decay is an inevitable fact of artifacts and documents, it is hardly a vice, at least from a moral standpoint.

16: I've got to ask what you do with the toothpick.

The delicate parts, like getting glue down a spine without tearing.
Gentle coaxing works wonders.

Of course! Thanks.

I was looking at their page today (like every other) hoping for something awesome and I got it. They're releasing a new translation of Ida Brandt by quasi-decadent Danish writer Herman Bang. A Baedeker of decadence by George C. Schoolfield has a long essay dedicated to the man and his novel a Denied a country.

For any who would like a quality copy of the Amery (Stableford) translation of M. de Phocas: http://www.tartaruspress.com/lorrain-monsieur-de-phocas.html

It is a slight sorrow that they did not or could not include the Henry Chapront illustrations.

>22 Randy_Hierodule:

Although it may be some consolation that the cover image is by "Alastair":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alastair_(Baron_Hans_Henning_Voigt)

It will have to do ;)

The two volumes of Brian Stableford's The Dedalus Book of Decadence have just been reprinted.

As far as I can tell volume two, (The Black Feast) hasn't been reprinted since 1992's first edition. Certainly I hadn't ever been able to find a copy.

The photo I've attached is of my copies. The first edition of volume one (which I did find second hand), now joined by my brand-new copy of volume two.

I can recall V2 being the more difficult of the pair to track down. Happy to see they did another run.