In publishing news, recent months have been dominated by international coverage of the feverish activities of the Nobel, Booker, and Samuel Johnson prize committees. After coverage of these events, any white space left between the leaves of arts journals has quickly been claimed as a soap-box for traditionalists decrying the growth of digital book sales or bemoaning the disappearance of independent bookshops from high-streets. But the world of books, in 2013, has been peppered with a number of overlooked or forgotten occurrences also.
The year began with the minor controversy surrounding the publication of this cover to the Faber edition of Sylvia Plath’s semi-autobiographical, The Bell Jar. The colourful design and playful font choice were seemingly not to the tastes of readers of this seminal novel about clinical depression and oppressive patriarchy.
In February, whilst speculation surrounded the possible shortlists of more prestigious awards, the literary calendar was not marked by news of the Diagram Prize, a decoration awarded for “an undervalued art”, the oddest book title of the year. This year’s victorious title, the tongue-in-cheek manual, Goblinproofing One’s Chicken Coop, joined a hall of fame that contains such former winners as Highlights in the History of Concrete and Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice.
In more worthy news, 2013 saw the first English translation of the long overlooked Giacomo Leopardi’s Zibaldone. The text, affectionately known by aficionados of the genre as a hodgepodge book, is the collection of private diaries and sundry literary sketches of the author, whose ideas have been described as going “beyond those of every other European man of letters, from Goethe to Paul Valéry”.
Meanwhile, in Leopardi’s country of origin, archaeologists amused themselves this summer by planting vineyards in accordance with techniques described in Virgil’s Georgics. Utilising wooden tools of Roman design and terracotta pots hermetically sealed with beeswax in place of barrels during fermentation, the experimental specialists hope to produce 70 litres of Bacchanal-worthy wine after their first harvest.
Last month, Tennyson’s “Blow Bugle Blow, set the wild echoes flying” became the first line of poetry to feature on a British coin. However, in Irish currency literature has fared less successfully of late. In April, Ireland’s Central Bank launched a commemorative coin intended to honour the work of James Joyce by quoting a passage from Ulysses. But where Joyce originally composed, “Signatures of all things I am here to read …”, the coin’s designers apparently felt it necessary to include a wayward “that” in this last sentence. Mark Traynor, curator of the James Joyce Centre has encouraged fans of the author to see the “humorous side to it”, adding, “even after the cessation of copyright on Joyce’s major works – you still can’t reproduce a couple of sentences without causing a bit of scandal”.