Dr Rachel Calder
PhD, UCL, Book Trade History (Thesis title: ‘Mechanic’ to the book trade: Joseph Whitaker and information services in the Victorian book trade)
MA History, Open University (Thesis title: Macmillan & Co in Cambridge 1843-1857)
BA (Hons) English and American Studies, University of Hull
My interest in book trade history has been informed, sharpened, and deepened by many years of working in the book trade, mostly as a literary agent, and by my efforts to understand the economic, social, and cultural forces that influence its operations. My agency, the Sayle Literary Agency, was founded in 1896 by J. B. Pinker who was one of the key literary agents of the time which gives me a direct link to the past along with some previously unexplored archival documents. Many of the challenges affecting today’s highly competitive globalised publishing industry were discernible in earlier centuries, particularly in the Victorian period, and my research has focused on studying the some of the mitigations and solutions devised by the book trade to navigate choppy commercial waters and seize the opportunities resulting from technological and social change.
My research interests include:
• Nineteenth and twentieth century book trades (especially their organisation and regulation)
• Information and communication systems in the book trades
• J. Whitaker & Sons 1852-1999
• Macmillan & Co 1843-1900
• J. B. Pinker and the early literary agents
• Literary agents and the importance of rights sales for authors’ careers (20th century)
• Ronald Searle’s publishing history 1946-2011
• Bookselling and allied trades in Cambridge
Publications
‘'Higher than Snuff dealers’: The Bookseller and the formation of trade identity’ in Living Work for Living People. Work and the Nineteenth-Century Press eds. Andrew King,
Fiona Snailham, Elizabeth Tilley, forthcoming from Routledge in November 2022
‘The Book Trade Press’ in The Edinburgh History of the British and Irish Press 1800-1900, ed. David Finkelstein, Edinburgh University Press 2020
‘Macmillan & Co in Cambridge 1843-1858: A Provincial Start-up in the Victorian Book Trade’ in Publishing History 77, 2017