The British Book Trade: An Oral History (review)

With an interest in oral history as well as book history, this reviewer could not have failed to be attracted to this title. It is difficult to convey how enjoyable this wonderfully paced collection is to read: interviews to savour, which are perceptive, poignant, frequently moving, and often hilarious.

Far richer than the reconstructions in Peter Isaac and Barry McKay’s book on The Human Face of the Book Trade: Print Culture and its Creators (1999), this edited volume on the book trade reproduces testimonies recorded for the oral history project ‘Book Trade Lives’, which itself derives from a larger ‘National Life Stories’ project at the British Library Sound Archive, collecting and preserving ordinary people’s stories across various industries and trades.

Asking Penelope Lively to provide the foreword was inspired: as an interviewee for a different, forthcoming National Life Stories project, Authors’ Lives, she writes with both the authority of someone who has contributed to oral history research and as someone who, as an author, is directly affected by the decisions, practices, and traditions of those in the book trade. Not given to hyperbole, the measured tone of her forward is exemplary. The book also includes a comprehensive and highly usable index, notes on contributors, and suggestions for further reading. Informative yet unobtrusive footnotes assist readers by contextualizing extracts.

Following the practice of Studs Terkel (and recalled by an interviewee, p. 146), who was arguably the most famous exponent of oral history, Sue Bradley has opted for a thematic organization of extracts on particular topics, rather than extended stretches of talk by individuals, with quotations used as chapter headings. Like most oral histories, readers are not provided with enough detail regarding method or recording practices, the extent of any editorializing or over-writing, the selection of interviewees, nor the selection of extracts. Regardless of occasional, italicized questions within the text, it is not usually made clear how interviews are collaborative achievements by interviewer and interviewee, nor is there acknowledgement of the difference, articulated by Harvey Sacks (Lectures on Conversation, 1992), between ‘product’ sentences and ‘process’ sentences: how talk is rendered in oral histories versus how people actually talk. In addition to introductory notes, readers are referred to the final chapter for comments about the interview process, but these are limited. The editor has eschewed methodological remarks in favour of content. There are obvious benefits to this decision (more talk) but it has its drawbacks, as readers are required to make allowances for the presentation; but this critical approach to the text does not last as the reader is drawn in by the voices of informants, and the stories they tell.

While Bradley (pp. xiv–xv) laments the absence of Rayner Unwin — a prime mover of the project, who died before giving an interview — and an informant (p. 118) wishes Una Dillon had been alive to contribute also, one could also point to the internet as a lacuna. Since it has had such a profound effect on publishing and selling, why has it not been included — pace the handful of informants who refer to Amazon in passing, for example? However, The British Book Trade provides us with a series of snapshots (contributions range from the 1920s to the present), a cumulative history told by people who were incumbents of elevated and more humble positions within the book trade.

Not that the book is of purely historical interest: The British Book Trade is clearer than any management textbook on skills that are required by the trade and acquired through participation: business acumen, imagination, leadership, teamwork. Readers see the division of labour expressed by its participants — trades within the trade, if you will. Indeed, people talk about much more than the book trade, providing a wealth of material on generic themes (altruism, friendship, loyalty, professionalism, tradition, trust, as well as the importance of a seriously good lunch) and to an extent the loosely thematic chapters reflect these.

Bradley has selected a...