Olympia Press
Olympia Press was a Paris-based publisher, launched in 1953 by Maurice Girodias as a rebranded version of the Obelisk Press he inherited from his father Jack Kahane. It published a mix of erotic fiction and avant-garde literary fiction, and is best known for the first print of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita.
It specialized in books which could not be published (without legal action) in the English-speaking world, and correctly assumed that the French, who were unable to read the books, and were more sexually tolerant, would leave them alone. They were books to buy if your travels took you through Paris.
94 Olympia Press publications were promoted and packaged as "Traveller's Companion" books, usually with simple text-only covers, and each book in the series was numbered. The "Ophelia Press" line of erotica was far larger, using the same design, but pink covers instead of green.
Olympia Press was the first publisher willing to print William S. Burroughs's avant-garde, sexually explicit Naked Lunch, which soon became famous. Other notable works included J. P. Donleavy's The Ginger Man; Samuel Beckett's French trilogy Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable; Henry Miller's trilogy The Rosy Crucifixion, consisting of Sexus, Nexus and Plexus; A Tale of Satisfied Desire by Georges Bataille; Story of O by Pauline Réage; Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg's Candy; and a critical book on Scientology, Inside Scientology/Dianetics by Robert Kaufman. The South African poet Sinclair Beiles was an editor at the publisher. Other authors included Alexander Trocchi, Iris Owens (Harriet Daimler) and John Stevenson (Marcus Van Heller).
Girodias had troubled dealings with his authors including copyright issues; Nabokov was not satisfied with the publisher and its reputation, and another long-running dispute over the rights to The Ginger Man ended with Donleavy's then-wife Mary buying out Girodias at what was intended to be a closed auction. Having to leave France because he managed to annoy powerful people, Girodias briefly reestablished Olympia Press in New York in the 1960s, and in London in the early 1970s.
Grove Press in the U.S. would later print The Olympia Reader, a best-selling anthology containing material from some of Olympia's most popular works, including material by Burroughs, Miller, Trocchi and others. Another well-known collection was The Best of Olympia, first published by the Olympia Press in 1963 and reprinted by New English Library in 1966.
Other incarnations of the company, some with Girodias' support, emerged in Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Olympia Press has been re-established and is currently operating out of Washington, London, and Frankfurt.
Works in the Traveller's Companion Series[edit]
- The 120 Days of Sodom by Marquis de Sade
- A Bedside Odyssey by Homer and Associates
- The Carnal Days of Helen Seferis by Alexander Trocchi
No. | Title[1] | Author |
---|---|---|
1 | The Enormous Bed | Henry Jones |
2 | Rape | Marcus Van Heller (John Stevenson) |
3 | School for Sin | Frances Lengel (pseudonym for Alexander Trocchi) |
4 | The Libertine | Robert Desmond |
5 | Play This Love With Me | Willie Baron |
6 | Tender Was My Flesh | Winifred Drake |
7 | The Ginger Man | J. P. Donleavy |
10 | What Frank Harris Did Not Say | Alexander Trocchi |
11 | The Loins of Amon | Marcus Van Heller (John Stevenson) |
12 | The Chariot of Flesh | Malcolm Nesbit |
14 | White Thighs | Alexander Trocchi |
17 | Fanny Hill | John Cleland |
18 | How to do it | Gustav Landshot |
19 | Darling | Harriet Daimler |
20 | The small rooms of Paris | Ezra de Richarnaud |
21 | Until She Screams | Mason Hoffenberg |
22 | The Itch | Steven Hammer |
23 | Roman Orgy | Marcus Van Heller (John Stevenson) |
24 | Heaven, hell and the whore | Robert Desmond |
25 | Thongs | Alexander Trocchi |
26 | Who Pushed Paula? | Akbar Del Piombo |
28 | Sarabande for a bitch | Mickey Dikes |
29 | Helen and Desire | Alexander Trocchi |
30 | Cruel Lips | Marcus Van Heller (John Stevenson) |
31 | Kama Houri | Ataullah Mardaan |
32 | The Pleasure Thieves | Harriet Daimler |
33 | Innocence | Harriet Daimler |
35 | The Wantons | Marcus Van Heller (John Stevenson) |
36 | Our Lady of the Flowers | Jean Genet |
37 | The House of Borgia | Marcus Van Heller (John Stevenson) |
39 | Sexus | Henry Miller |
42 | Deva Dasi | Ataullah Mardaan |
43 | THE DOUBLE-BELLIED COMPANION | Akbar Del Piombo |
44 | The Torture Garden | Octave Mirbeau |
47 | The world of sex | Henry Miller |
48 | Sodom, or the Quintessence of Debauchery | John Wilmot |
51 | The White Book | Jean Cocteau |
56 | Juliette | Marquis de Sade |
61 | The Woman Thing | Harriet Daimler |
62 | Teleny | Oscar Wilde |
64 | Candy | Terry Southern |
65 | Classical Hindu Erotology | Ram Krishnanada |
66 | Lolita | Vladimir Nabokov |
68 | Plexus | Henry Miller |
70 | Two Novels: The Amorous Exploits of a Young Rakehell; The Debauched Hospodar | Guillaume Apollinaire |
71 | Molloy; Malone Dies; The Unnamable | Samuel Beckett |
73 | The Fetish Crowd | Akbar Del Piombo |
74 | Zazie dans le Metro | Raymond Queneau |
75 | Glædeshuse | Sinclair Beiles |
76 | Naked Lunch | William S. Burroughs |
77 | The Black Book | Lawrence Durrell |
78 | The Thief's Journal | Jean Genet |
79 | Fuzz Against Junk: The Saga of the Narcotics Brigade, and, The Hero Maker | Akbar Del Piombo |
80 | The Young and Evil | Charles Henri Ford |
85 | The American Express | Gregory Corso |
86 | The Shy Photographer | Jock Carroll |
88 | The Soft Machine | William S. Burroughs |
91 | The Ticket That Exploded | William S. Burroughs |
92 | Busy bodies | Ed Martin |
93 | Murder vs. murder: The British legal system and the A.6 murder case | Jean. [from old catalog] Justice |
94 | Sextet | j. Hume Parkinson |
101 | Stradella | James Sherwood |
102 | I Hear Voices | Paul Ableman |
104 | The Gaudy Image | William Talsman |
105 | The Story of Venus and Tannhauser | Aubrey Beardsley |
107 | The best of 'Olympia': An anthology of tales, poems, scientific documents and tricks which appeared in the short-lived a | Maurice Girodias |
109 | Young Adam | Alexander Trocchi |
112 | Night | Francis Pollini |
114 | Junky | William S. Burroughs |
115 | Gordon | Edith Templeton |
205 | The Sexual Life of Robinson Crusoe | Humphrey Richardson |
206 | A bedside odyssey | Gerald Williams |
210 | Sin for Breakfast | Mason Hoffenberg |
214 | My Mother Taught Me | Tor Kung |
301 | The Watcher and the Watched | Thomas Peachum |
429 | Crazy Wild breaks loose. | Jett Sage |
434 | Bishop's gambol | Roger Agile |
440 | Frankenstein '69 | Ed Martin |
450 | Acid temple ball | Mary Sativa |
456 | A satyr's romance | Barry N. Malzberg |
465 | Sookey | Angelo D'Arcangelo |
467 | Thrust | C.S. Vanek |
470 | Jyros | J. Joth |
505 | Run Little Leather Boy | Larry Townsend |
2218 | THE ORGANIZATION | Harriet Daimler |
2220 | Whip Angels | Selena Warfield |
References[edit]
- ^ "Publisher Series: Traveller's Companion Series". Library Thing. Retrieved 1 January 2015.
External links[edit]
![]() |
This French corporation or company article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |