 | |
| Parent company | The Overlook Press |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1971 |
| Founder | Carl R. Proffer and Ellendea C. Proffer |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Headquarters location | New York City |
| Publication types | Books |
| Official website | www |
Ardis Publishing (until 2002,Ardis Publishers) began in 1971, as the only publishing house outside of Russia dedicated to Russian literature in both English and Russian, Ardis was founded inAnn Arbor, Michigan, United States, by husband and wife scholarsCarl R. Proffer andEllendea C. Proffer.[1] The Proffers had two goals for Ardis: one was to publish inRussian the "lost library" of twentieth-century Russian literature which had been censored and removed fromSovietlibraries (Bulgakov,Mandelstam,Tsvetaeva,Nabokov, among others); the other was to bring translations of contemporary writers working in the Soviet Union to the West.[1] Ardis has published around 400 titles, roughly half inEnglish, half inRussian.
Ardis became important in the Soviet Union, and then acclaimed in the new Russia, because it published, in Russian, many works which could not be published there until the dawn ofGlasnost. Such authors asNabokov,Sokolov,Brodsky,Bitov,Iskander,Aksyonov and many others published in Russian with Ardis, and the books were smuggled back into theSoviet Union. Besides publishing new translations of the classics as well as academic guides, notable publications such as theRussian Literature Triquarterly, and all but one of the main books of poetry by Brodsky, Carl Proffer facilitated Brodsky's coming to the United States, by assuring him of a job at theUniversity of Michigan.[2]
In English, among many other titles, Ardis published the complete letters ofDostoevsky, major prose collections ofPlatonov,Remizov,Mandelstam andTsvetaeva, and the first annotated translation ofBulgakov'sThe Master and Margarita, as well as major histories of eighteenth-century literature and the most inclusive anthology of Romantic literature. Translations of Bulgakov's major plays were also published by the Proffers, with Indiana University Press (rights have now reverted to Ellendea Proffer). The range of titles was very broad, ranging from Nabokov's translation of A Hero of our Time to Razgon's memoirs of the camps.
A professor at the University of Michigan, Carl Proffer died in 1984 ofcolon cancer at age 46. His wife Ellendea continued publishing and was awarded aMacArthur Fellowship in 1989.
The name Ardis comes from the novelAda or Ardor: A Family Chronicle byVladimir Nabokov.See: Ardis 25 years of Russian Literature, catalog for exhibit at the Library of Foreign literature, Moscow, May 28, 1996.
Some, but not all of Ardis's English-language titles were sold toThe Overlook Press in 2002,[3] which has begun reprinting selected titles of the Ardis back catalog. Ardis Publishing is animprint owned by an Americanindependent publisherOverlook Press. It should be mentioned that Overlook Press purchased only the rights to certain English-language titles, as well as the English-language name of Ardis Publishers. Ardis at Overlook specializes in English translations ofRussian literature, and has so far reprinted 26 of the original Ardis titles.
The archive of the original Ardis Publishers is now housed at the Special Collections Library of the University of Michigan.[4]