Marion Boyars Publishers History:
Marion Boyars Publishers began in the 1960s as Calder and Boyars, and was run jointly by Marion Boyars and John Calder. Together they published a number of authors and works considered controversial at the time, such as Georges Bataille, Henry Miller's long-banned Tropic of Cancer, Alexander Trocchi's Cain's Book, and Hubert Selby's Last Exit to Brooklyn, which became the subject of a famous obscenity trial in the late 1960s. (Calder and Boyars won the case on appeal, represented by none other than John Mortimer, who had previously only worked on marital cases.)
More Recent History:
In 1975, Calder and Boyars split and Marion Boyars Publishers was formed. Boyars continued to grow the press, using her keen business sense to promote avant-garde fiction and nonfiction titles by authors such as Ken Kesey, Kenzaboro Oe, and John Cage. She was known for her commitment to publishing books she loved, regardless of their commercial value. According to the Guardian, she always championed her authors, "stubbornly disregarding the hard commercialism of the modern book trade."
Second Generation:
When she died in 1999 at the age of 71, the company passed to her daughter, Catheryn Kilgarriff, who maintained the company's reputation for publishing cutting-edge literature as well as its tradition of supporting its authors. "If a book is totally unusual and about a world unknown to most English and American readers, for example, The Flea Palace by Elif Shafak, we will jump over all the hurdles to publish it well."
End of an Era:
Kilgarriff led the press successfully into the new millennium, and only in the thick of the economic recession did she announce that the firm would be closing. She told the Guardian that she "blamed the closure on the changed structure of the book trade, which is now 'all about discounting,' on the lessening influence of press exposure, and on the proliferation of literary prizes, diluting the effect which a shortlisting can have."
