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John Mackenzie Calder (25 January 1927 – 13 August 2018)[1] was aScottish-Canadian writer andpublisher who founded the companyCalder Publishing in 1949.
Calder was born inMontreal, Canada, into the Calder family associated with the brewing industry inAlloa, Scotland, and spent his childhood inKinross, and studied atBishop's College School inSherbrooke[2] before studying economics inZürich, Switzerland, in the late 1940s.[3]
About 1950, Calder went into partnership withNeville Armstrong in a short-lived publishing enterprise called Spearman Calder.[4]
Calder was a friend ofSamuel Beckett, becoming the main publisher of his prose-texts in Britain after the success ofWaiting for Godot on the London stage in 1955–56.[5][6] During the 1950s, Calder published the translated work ofAnton Chekhov,Leo Tolstoy,Fyodor Dostoevsky,Goethe andZola, including most of the work ofApril FitzLyon, and was the first publisher to makeWilliam S. Burroughs available in the United Kingdom.[5]
From 1963 to 1975, Calder was in partnership withMarion Boyars, and the company was known as Calder and Boyars.[7] The championing of freedom of speech led to Calder's involvement in a number of prosecutions for obscenity, including one in 1966 for publishingHubert Selby Jr'sLast Exit to Brooklyn.[8] While the initial trial resulted in a guilty verdict, the case was won on appeal, and effectively ended literary censorship in Britain.[9]
In 1964 Calder joined theWho Killed Kennedy Committee? set up byBertrand Russell.[10]
The last novelist to be signed to the company by John Calder personally wasCarole Morin whosePenniless in Park Lane[11] he published in 2001.[citation needed]
The imprint continues to publishHoward Barker,Tim Waterstone, and other figures of literature both past and present. In 2002, John Calder opened The Calder Bookshop Theatre at 51 The Cut,Waterloo, London.[12] To celebrate his fifty years in publishing, the arts and politics a festschrift[13] was produced. During 2006, Lou MacLoughlan and Louise Milne produced the documentaryJohn Calder: A Life in Publishing commemorating his life.[citation needed]
In April 2007, Calder sold his business to independent publishers Alma Books/Oneworld Classics; the imprint retained his name,[14] while the rights to the non-theatrical work of Beckett were acquired byFaber.
Calder was a co-founder of theTraverse Theatre inEdinburgh.[3][6] He was also responsible, along withSonia Orwell andJim Haynes, for devising and co-creating an International Writers' Conference held at theEdinburgh International Festival in 1962[15] and then a Drama Conference withKenneth Tynan in 1963.[5] These innovative events, intended to draw together writers from all over the world, were arguably a forerunner of theEdinburgh Book Festival, which was not founded for another twenty years. The experience of this first conference was revisited at a Book Festival discussion during the 2012 Edinburgh International Festival.[16]
Calder also led a hectic life outside publishing.[17] He was a major investor in thePartisan Coffee House, a radicalNew Left venue inSoho.[18] In 1970, he stood for election as a ScottishLiberal Party candidate forKinross and Western Perthshire, finishing fourth.[citation needed]
However, he was otherwise mainly known for his interests in the arts in general and his passion for opera in particular.[19] In 1963 he founded and ran for some ten yearsLedlanet Nights, a general festival of the arts, held in the hall of his then home, a baronial house at Ledlanet, nearMilnathort.[19][15]
He published his autobiography,Pursuit: the Uncensored Memoirs of John Calder,[20] in 2001, and various other works related to Beckett.[21]
Towards the end of his life Calder published three books of poetryWhat's Wrong? What's Right?: Poems (1999),Solo: Collected Poems 1997-2007 (2007), andBeing – Seeing – Feeling – Healing – Meaning (2012).
Calder was married to Christya Myling from 1954 to 1961. They have a daughter named Jamie (b. 1954). Calder andBettina Jonic were married in 1961. That lasted until 1975, and produced another daughter, Anastasia (b. 1963).[1] Calder had a long-term relationship with Muriel Leyner, mother of authorMark Leyner, from 1983 to 2005. Calder married Sheila Colvin,[15] who had been a friend and partner from his earliest involvement with the arts, and theTraverse Theatre in Edinburgh. She is a former associate director of the Edinburgh International Festival and director of theAldeburgh Festival. The couple lived in Edinburgh andParis.[15]
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