World Editions

Last updated
World Editions
Founded2013 [1]
Founder Eric Visser
Country of originNetherlands, USA, UK
Headquarters locationAmsterdam, New York, London
DistributionIngram Publisher Services (USA)
Turnaround Publisher Services (UK) [2] [3]
Publication typesBooks
Official website www.worldeditions.org

World Editions (WE) is an independent publishing house that focuses on bringing Dutch and international literature to an English readership. WE originates from the independent and respected Netherlands-based publishing house De Geus that was founded in 1983 by Eric Visser, founder and publisher of WE.

Contents

History

World Editions promotes voices from around the globe by publishing books from many different countries and languages into English translation. Through our work, we aim to enhance dialogue between cultures, foster new connections, and open doors which may otherwise have remained closed.

World Editions was founded in 2013 by Eric Visser, publisher of Dutch literary house De Geus―home to many Nobel Prize-winning authors. Since 2016, World Editions has been part of the independent Libella Group, a European publisher with bases in Switzerland, France, and Poland, led by the renowned Vera Michalski. Judith Uyterlinde, Publishing Director of World Editions since 2017, is passionate about literature and languages, and dedicated to bringing attention to outstanding writers from around the world. Today World Editions has offices in New York, London, and Amsterdam, after successfully launching in the US in March 2018.

World Editions publishes long-established authors, such as recent winner of the Alternative Nobel Prize, Maryse Condé, and the internationally acclaimed Paolo Maurensig, alongside promising debut novelists, such as rising stars Adeline Dieudonné and Pierre Jarawan.

World Editions was officially launched in January 2015. The first titles were Craving by Esther Gerritsen translated by Michele Hutchison, Gliding Flight by Anne-Gine Goemans translated by Nancy Forest-Flier, and Saturday’s Shadows by Ayesha Harruna Attah. In 2015, World Editions published books translated from the Dutch, Swedish, Icelandic, Russian, Norwegian, and Chinese. In 2016, Turkish, Italian, French, and Spanish were added to the list.

Non-translated titles

Though the focus is on translations, World Editions also publishes novels that were originally written in English. In September 2018, World Editions published the powerful and intimate memoir Always Another Country by Sisonke Msimang; a book that has received enthusiastic reviews from both US and UK press. [4] In 2016, World Editions published four Carol Shields novels: The Stone Diaries, Happenstance, Mary Swann, and The Republic of Love. These will be the first republications from the publisher. [5]

Design of books

Tessa van der Waals (Netherlands) is responsible for the cover design, cover typography, and art direction of all World Editions books. She works in the internationally renowned tradition of Dutch Design. Her bright and powerful visual aesthetic maintains a harmony between image and typography, and captures the unique atmosphere of each book. She works closely with internationally celebrated photographers, artists, and letter designers. Her work has frequently been awarded prizes for Best Dutch Book Design.

World Editions covers are edited by lithographer Bert van der Horst of BFC Graphics (Netherlands).

Suzan Beijer (Netherlands) is responsible for the typography and careful interior book design of all World Editions titles.

The text on the inside covers and the press quotes are set in Circular, designed by Laurenz Brunner (Switzerland) and published by Swiss type foundry Lineto.

All World Editions books are set in the typeface Dolly, specifically designed for book typography. Dolly creates a warm page image perfect for an enjoyable reading experience. This typeface is designed by Underware, a European collective formed by Bas Jacobs (Netherlands), Akiem Helmling (Germany), and Sami Kortemäki (Finland). Underware are also the creators of the World Editions logo, which meets the design requirement that ‘a strong shape can always be drawn with a toe in the sand.’

World Editions authors

World Editions translators


  1. "About us". World Editions. Retrieved 5 September 2021.
  2. Editions, World. "Contact". World Editions. Retrieved 2019-03-01.
  3. Editions, World. "Contact". World Editions. Retrieved 2019-03-01.
  4. Gyarkye, Lovia (9 November 2018). "When Home is 'Always Another Country'". The New York Times.
  5. "World Editions to reissue Carol Shields' backlist". The Bookseller. 22 January 2016.

Related Research Articles

<i>Max Havelaar</i> 1860 novel by Multatuli

Max Havelaar; or, The Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company is an 1860 novel by Multatuli, which played a key role in shaping and modifying Dutch colonial policy in the Dutch East Indies in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. In the novel, the protagonist, Max Havelaar, tries to battle against a corrupt government system in Java, which was then a Dutch colony. The novel's opening line is famous: "Ik ben makelaar in koffie, en woon op de Lauriergracht, Nº 37.".

David Winner is an English writer and journalist. He lives in Kilburn, London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pushkin Press</span> British-based publishing house

Pushkin Press is a British-based publishing house dedicated to publishing novels, essays, memoirs and children's books. The London-based company was founded in 1997 and is notable for publishing authors such as Stefan Zweig, Marcel Aymé, Antal Szerb, Paul Morand and Yasushi Inoue, as well as award-winning contemporary writers, including Andrés Neuman, Edith Pearlman, Ayelet Gundar-Goshen, Eka Kurniawan and Ryu Murakami.

<i>The Diary of a Young Girl</i> Diary by Anne Frank

The Diary of a Young Girl, often referred to as The Diary of Anne Frank, is a book of the writings from the Dutch-language diary kept by Anne Frank while she was in hiding for two years with her family during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. The family was apprehended in 1944, and Anne Frank died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945. Anne's diaries were retrieved by Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl. Miep gave them to Anne's father, Otto Frank, the family's only survivor, just after the Second World War was over. The diary has since been published in more than 70 languages. First published under the title Het Achterhuis. Dagboekbrieven 14 Juni 1942 – 1 Augustus 1944 by Contact Publishing in Amsterdam in 1947, the diary received widespread critical and popular attention on the appearance of its English language translation, Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Doubleday & Company and Vallentine Mitchell in 1952. Its popularity inspired the 1955 play The Diary of Anne Frank by the screenwriters Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, which they adapted for the screen for the 1959 movie version. The book is included in several lists of the top books of the 20th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maryse Condé</span> Guadeloupean, French-language author (born 1934)

Maryse Condé is a French novelist, critic, and playwright from the French Overseas department and region of Guadeloupe. Condé is best known for her novel Ségou (1984–85).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phaidon Press</span> British book publisher

Phaidon Press is a global publisher of books on art, architecture, design, fashion, photography, and popular culture, as well as cookbooks, children's books, and travel books. The company is based in London and New York City, with additional offices in Paris and Berlin. With over 1,500 titles in print, Phaidon books are sold in over 100 countries and are printed in English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Mandarin, and dozens of other languages. Since the publisher's founding in Vienna in 1923, Phaidon has sold almost 50 million books worldwide.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cees Nooteboom</span> Dutch novelist, poet and journalist

Cees Nooteboom is a Dutch novelist, poet and journalist. After the attention received by his novel Rituelen, which received the Pegasus Prize, it was the first of his novels to be translated into an English edition, published in 1983 by Louisiana State University Press of the United States. LSU Press published his first two novels in English in the following years, as well as other works through 1990. Harcourt and Grove Press have since published some of his works in English.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph Athias</span>

Joseph Athias was a merchant, bookprinter and the publisher of a famous Hebrew Bible which was approved by States-General of the Dutch Republic and both Jewish and Christian theologians.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Piet Zwart</span>

Piet Zwart was a Dutch photographer, typographer, and industrial designer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aletta Jacobs</span> Dutch physician and feminist (1854–1929)

Aletta Henriëtte Jacobs was a Dutch physician and women's suffrage activist. As the first woman officially to attend a Dutch university, she became one of the first female physicians in the Netherlands. In 1882, she founded the world's first birth control clinic and was a leader in both the Dutch and international women's movements. She led campaigns aimed at deregulating prostitution, improving women's working conditions, promoting peace and calling for women's right to vote.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Saskia Noort</span> Dutch author and journalist

Saskia Noort is a Dutch crime-writer and freelance journalist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American University in Cairo Press</span> Academic publisher

The American University in Cairo Press is the leading English-language publisher in the Middle East.

Gerrit Noordzij was a Dutch typographer, typeface designer, and author. He started teaching letters and calligraphy at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague in 1960. Motivated to make type accessible to his students, he identified the stroke of the pen as the central idea in the making of letter forms. What began as a method to make his students into better graphic designers grew, in various iterations and publications, into a comprehensive approach to type design. The contrast cube became an iconic model of his ideas. Noordzij recognised the possibilities of the computer in type design early on. He encouraged his students to not only study the pens and their shapes, but also adopt a critical view on making digital tools. By the time Noordzij retired in 1990, his methods were in use in type classes and workshops all over the world. His book The Stroke has been translated in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, Croatian and Russian. And of course, it has been the practical and theoretical foundation of the KABK TypeMedia master for over twenty years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brill Publishers</span> Dutch international academic publisher

Brill Academic Publishers is a Dutch international academic publisher founded in 1683 in Leiden, Netherlands. With offices in Leiden, Boston, Paderborn and Singapore, Brill today publishes 275 journals and around 1200 new books and reference works each year all of which are "subject to external, single or double-blind peer review." In addition, Brill provides of primary source materials online and on microform for researchers in the humanities and social sciences.

<i>Gilles de Geus</i>

Gilles de Geus is a Dutch humoristic/historical comics series, created by Hanco Kolk and Peter de Wit in 1983. It is set in the 16th and 17th centuries during the Eighty Years' War and features the adventures of Gilles, a brave but not always too bright resistance fighter who is part of the Geuzen, an army who fight the Spanish oppressor in the Netherlands. The series has been compared to Asterix for being a humoristic comics series set in a historical time period, containing a lot of satirical winks and references.

Eric Visser is the founder of both the Dutch publishing house De Geus and the Dutch-based publishing house World Editions.

<i>Windward Heights</i> 1995 novel by Maryse Condé

Windward Heights is a novel by Maryse Condé, written in French and first published in 1995 by Robert Laffont. The English translation, by Condé's husband Richard Philcox, was first published in 1998. The novel is a reworking of Wuthering Heights set in Cuba and Guadeloupe at the turn of the twentieth century.

Fitzcarraldo Editions is an independent British book publisher based in Deptford, London, specialising in literary fiction and long-form essays in both translation and English-language originals. It focuses on ambitious, imaginative, and innovative writing by little-known and neglected authors. Fitzcarraldo Editions currently publishes twelve titles a year. Three of Fitzcarraldo's authors have gone on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature: Svetlana Alexievich (2015), Olga Tokarczuk (2018) and Annie Ernaux (2022).

The Gerritsen Collection is a diverse collection of women's archival materials and feminist records covering fifteen languages and over 4,700 volumes. Acquired by the John Crerar Library of Chicago in 1903, it was subsequently sold to the University of Kansas in 1954. In the 21st century, the holdings were digitized and are now widely available through subscription to libraries worldwide.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jacob van Liesvelt</span> Flemish publisher and book printer (1489 – 1545)

Jacob van Liesvelt or Jacob van Liesveldt, was a Flemish printer, publisher and bookseller. His printing press put out publications in a wide range of genres, including poetry by Anna Bijns, Roman Catholic literature, such as an anti-heresy decree, and publications that conflicted with Catholic teachings. He published the first complete Dutch translation of the Bible in 1526. It was largely based on Martin Luther's translation. He was eventually executed for publishing unauthorised versions of the Bible.