Literary Staff of “Ukrainian News” (1945, Germany – 2000, USA)

The objective of this article is to find out names and activities of literary staff (editorial staff and freelance writers) of the newspaper ”Ukrainian News”/“Ukrainski Visti” from the perspective of publications of this emigration edition, which first appeared in Germany (1945–1978) after WWII and later in the United States (1978–2000). In order to achieve this objective, the biographies and creative achievements of its staff who rallied around this newspaper and determined its ideological core were investigated. In particular, the pre-emigration and emigration paths of authors and staff of the newspaper and their journalistic experience were studied, it was proved that the high educational level of authors had a direct impact on the level of their materials, and therefore on the level of the edition as a whole, and further contributed to enlargement of its thematic spectrum. It is noticeable that for many authors the collaboration with the newspaper lasted for decades, namely the whole emigration period of their lives. The main method of research was to analyze the materials we searched for on the front pages of the newspaper. Thus, in the course of this task implementation, the new information about the authors was obtained, the peculiarities of creative biographies of the newspaper’s employees were clarified, the names of editorial staff were clarified, the publications about the literary staff were analyzed, the contents of their materials were examined, a list of the most active authors was made. It was found that the life and professional experience, educational level of literary workers and ideological platform of the newspaper built up in time and aimed at gaining independence of Ukraine, became those factors that allowed in a short period of time, despite the difficulties of “new conditions” in which the Ukrainians found themselves after the Second World War, to establish first a regular issue of the edition, and then to lay the foundation of strength, which allowed in a difficult period of lives in a strange land to publish a mother-tongue newspaper, which was destined for decades being a voice and a platform of the Ukrainian political emigration.

Charles Williams and T.S. Eliot: Friends and Rivals

Williams and Eliot were close in age and both worked in publishing as well having careers as poets and freelance writers. However, their backgrounds were very different: Williams came from humble origins and was not able to complete a university degree, whereas Eliot at first seemed to set to become an academic philosopher. They first met in the early 1930s, by which time Williams had been both confused and influenced by The Waste Land. Eliot started to read Williams's novels and was in turn greatly influenced by them. They became increasingly close until Williams's death in 1945. Eliot showed the greatest influence of Williams in his 1949 play The Cocktail Party. Their Christian sensibility had some important features in common and, in the end, Williams's concept of the Affirmative Way became a great influence on Eliot.

THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY'S PUBLISHING STRATEGIES AND THE FINANCIAL UNDERPINNINGS OF ACTIVISM, 1968–1975

Historians of America's post-war social movements have said little about the financial underpinnings of activism, and this article aims to address this oversight. It focuses on the Black Panther Party, which was formed in Oakland, California, in 1966, and was soon one of America's most visible, and controversial, black power organizations. The article sketches the array of funding sources from which the party drew, and reconstructs the apparatus it fashioned to steward those resources. It condenses the discussion to one of the organization's most lucrative streams, that of book publishing, and relates this to the period's literary culture, which, in the US, witnessed a ‘black revolution in books’. Between 1968 and 1975, members of the party published some ten books, which together raised $250,000 in advances, and additional sums through their sale, serialization, and translation. The production of these works relied on the assistance of several freelance writers, and was guided by the party's commercial agency, Stronghold Consolidated Productions. By recovering the role of these groups and the infrastructure they fashioned, the article shows how publishing was connected to the wider financial structure of the organization, and prompts us to see that the Panthers’ books were not just accounts of their activism, but examples of it.

Cultural Work as a Site of Struggle: Freelancers and Exploitation

This paper argues that Marxist political economy is a useful framework for understanding contemporary conditions of cultural work. Drawing on Karl Marx’s foundational concepts, labour process theory, and a case study of freelance writers, I argue that the debate over autonomy and control in cultural work ignores exploitation in labour-capital relationships, which is a crucial process shaping cultural work. To demonstrate the benefits of this approach, I discuss two methods media firms use to extract surplus value from freelance writers: exploitation of unpaid labour time and exploitation of intellectual property through aggressive copyright regimes. I argue that a Marxist perspective can uncover the dynamics that are transforming cultural industries and workers’ experiences. From this perspective, cultural work is understood as a site of struggle.

Cultural Work as a Site of Struggle: Freelancers and Exploitation

This paper argues that Marxist political economy is a useful framework for understanding contemporary conditions of cultural work. Drawing on Karl Marx’s foundational concepts, labour process theory, and a case study of freelance writers, I argue that the debate over autonomy and control in cultural work ignores exploitation in labour-capital relationships, which is a crucial process shaping cultural work. To demonstrate the benefits of this approach, I discuss two methods media firms use to extract surplus value from freelance writers: exploitation of unpaid labour time and exploitation of intellectual property through aggressive copyright regimes. I argue that a Marxist perspective can uncover the dynamics that are transforming cultural industries and workers’ experiences. From this perspective, cultural work is understood as a site of struggle.

Freelance Writers and the Changing Terrain of Intellectual Life in Britain, 1880–1980

The terrain of British intellectual life in the twentieth century was dominated by two major features: freelance writers and university scholars. At the elite level, as Noel Annan showed, the two types—independent thinkers and academics—can be treated as one class, linked by personal connections and by common attitudes arising largely from the old school tie. However, when intellectuals beyond the elite stratum are surveyed, it becomes clear that the fortunes of these two features of the intellectual landscape differed sharply. The university teachers grew rapidly in number and made themselves into what Harold Perkin calls “the key profession.” But as John Gross has contended, freelance writers, despite a rich heritage from the nineteenth century, seemed, especially in their own eyes, to form an old and decaying mountain range. From 1880 to 1980 freelance writers experienced a pervasive and intensifying sense of crisis in their trade and in their cultural role. John Wain, a successful novelist and critic, stated the matter plainly in 1973: contemplation of the difficulties of “being an author,” he said, always threw him into “a black depression in which I could slash my wrists.”How can one explain the pessimism of freelance writers, their sense of being increasingly marginalized? Were their complaints simply habitual expressions of a writerly pose common since the romantic period? After all, many of the broad social and cultural trends in Britain between 1880 and 1980 should have been advantageous to independent writers.