Robert Langenfeld  editor

Purdue University, with it comfortable red brick and familiar Gothic spires, was a serene place in the late 1940s. So was the American academy at large. Professors lived in their own special class of genteel poverty. The canon, the gamesmanship of publish or perish, and the bureaucracy of professional administrators were mostly unheard of. Change was nearby, however. A few rebellious sorts, with intriguing names like Crowe Ransom and Penn Warren, had begun to agitate the tranquil air, floating renegade ideas on how to interpret literature, advancing something called "New Criticism."

At Purdue a different kind of resistance to established views was forming. Two members of the faculty, Hal Gerber and Maurice Beebe, were questioning conventional judgments about literary history. They were displeased with the historical divisions of literary study devised by the Modern Language Association. Their late-night discussions encouraged them to try and influence matters by editing new literary magazines. Beebe founded Modern Fiction Studies and, later, the Journal of Modern Literature. Gerber had an unusual idea for a journal. It was linked to his teaching of Victorian and Modern British literature. 

He asked himself what now seem elementary questions. Why were Thomas Hardy's novels taught in a nineteenth-century novel course, Hardy's poetry in a twentieth-century literature course? Don't the works of Conrad, Yeats, and Shaw, to mention a few, present similar dualities? "Apparently," Gerber said, "some writers have dared to bridge the centuries and defy the neat calendar division of literary periods in the MLA bibliography." What of those other writers: Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling, Sarah Grand, Arthur Symons, Olive Schreiner, George Moore? They were well known in their day. Little attention was given to them in the 1940s and 50s, even though the letters, notebooks and autobiographies of figures like Yeats were filled with conversation about them. The conventional wisdom ignored their influence on modern literature. Said Gerber:

Indifference to a considerable quantity of what seemed to me important, if not always great, literature was rather superficially justified. Pater was a writer of purple prose who encouraged indiscriminate subjectivity. Wilde was a plagiarist, at best a dandy about literature, and saved from obscurity only by the sensationalism of his life. Moore was Zola's ricochet and at best wrote one commendable realistic novel and an amusing, gossipy but dated autobiography--and so on. 

Gerber selected twenty-five people who had written dissertations on some aspect of the literature published between 1870 and 1920. He asked if they would be interested in petitioning MLA for a session on writers of this time. To his surprise the response was unanimous. The session that ensued in the fall of 1957 was attended by a small but enthusiastic group of scholars.

Gerber wrote an article that reviewed the MLA discussion and solicited responses from those who attended. He, his wife Helga, and several Purdue colleagues typed stencils, hand-collated and stapled a forty-three-page mimeographed issue of what was initially called English Fiction in Transition. The first issue went to about forty scholars. Word got around. The next issue was mailed to about 175 people. Interest continued to grow. Gerber had to charge $1 for Volume 2, subscribed to by 400 individuals and institutions, some from overseas. By 1969 the journal, more accurately titled English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, was printed in a new format and distributed to 600 subscribers.

In time Gerber assembled an Advisory Board of scholars to help judge articles. He also nurtured a different kind of editorial philosophy. ELT declined university and private foundation funding to ensure its independence. The editor's name was clearly printed beneath the masthead. He was responsible for the final decisions and the tenor of the journal. Scholars and their essays were given close attention; their submissions were not numbered and filed by some anonymous person. Personal letters with evaluative comments by readers from the Board and Gerber were included with rejected essays. Whenever possible, he would try to guide authors through revisions if he thought that might produce publishable articles.

The journal should have "something of the human touch of an autobiography," he said. Each issue included a brief essay, the "Editor's Fence," an informal meeting place where the editor could talk to friends. "My fence," said Gerber, "affords the opportunity occasionally to talk of cabbages and kings, sour grapes and sweet."

Other things followed that first MLA session in 1957. Gerber organized 19 more ELT Seminars at MLA, eventually leading to the MLA Division of Late-Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century English Literature. He started a special series of ELT issues to make available previously unpublished manuscripts, and helped prepare a three-volume series of period texts on the short story, drama, and poetry (published by Pegasus). He was also general editor of a series of annotated bibliographies (published by Northern Illinois University Press).

Hal Gerber died of a heart attack in April of 1981. Though he was gone, the enthusiasm and loyalty he instilled in his graduate students was not. He wanted us to carry on with the journal, and so did his colleagues. I became editor and have tried to remain faithful to Gerber's editorial vision; there are no form letters or two-sentence e-mail rejections. When it seems promising, I work with scholars to try and help them fashion a revision that will be publishable. But of course changes in ELT were to be expected. Some reflect the evolution in personal computers and the startling advances in printing technology. For years ELT text was set with an electric typewriter for photo-offset printing: no page proofs and a predictably pedestrian look. Since our funding has always been based on subscriptions, we could never afford the precious craft of the typesetter.

In 1983 I purchased a computer, an Osborne "portable"; it weighed 30 pounds and now seems an amusing museum piece. I ran proofs on a dot matrix printer. Final copy was done with a daisy wheel printer, but I had to tote the computer to one or another place on campus to find a machine that was available since we couldn't afford one. The next substantial change in appearance came with the introduction of the Apple LaserWriter in the fall of 1985.

Roll over, Mr. Gutenberg, as they say. In March of 1986 we produced our first "desktop published" issues, using an IBM PC with the now long-defunct word processing program, WordStar. I could only print six or seven pages at a time.

The hassle was worth it to us in those days. Volume 29:1 and 2 wouldn't win any awards in typography, but at the time they seemed ravishing. There have been more upgrades in software and hardware in the last fifteen years than I can recall. Another contemporary publishing venue is of course the internet. Our web site first appeared in 1997 and was far less detailed than what we do presently. 

Much has changed in the production of the journal but the mission has not: to keep the journal affordable while creating a typography that never intrudes, one that enhances the connection between author and reader.

There have been other changes that are also important. The coverage in ELT has broadened to include generous book review sections. Readers find them helpful in assessing the scholarship. The length of a volume doubled, so not only do we publish as many book reviews in one issue as some journals manage in a year, but we allow space for well-developed articles and bibliographies. We also print drawings and photographs of our 1880-1920 authors. Some drawings are by contemporary artists, some by artists of the Transition era. And of course in recent years ELT has gone online with MetaPress, Project Muse, ProQuest, and Ebsco's Periodicals for Public Libraries to make the journal available to more institutions and raders than ever before, our list some 1600 subscribers (online and print).

In 1988 ELT Press was founded here in the English Department at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Its 1880-1920 British Author Series is an extension of ELT. For more than a decade, but especially in the last few years, university presses have become more trade-oriented, a trend that will continue to expand. Their budgets and editorial policies make it difficult for them to support even short runs of books on Transition authors. Like the journal, then, ELT Press was created to fulfill a need for a community of scholars. Our cloth-bound and paperback books--runs of 500, printed on acid-free paper to endure a measure of time--are distributed throughout the United States and Europe. Our first e-book of the out-of-print Pater in the 1990s appeared in 1999. In 2001 The Editions of Dorothy Richardson's 'Pilgrimage' appeared on our website. With the publication of Helena Kelleher Kahn's Late 19th-Century Ireland's Political and Religious Controversies in the Fiction of May Laffan Hartley we "reprinted" as an e-book Hogan, M.P., one of Hartley's novels. In 2007 we added another e-book to the website, Professor Thomson's latest contribution to Richardson scholarship, Dorothy Richardson: A Calendar of Letters. In an ideal world these books would be printed in the 1880-1920 British Authors series. It's not an ideal world, especially these days in the land of scholarly mongraphs. This is the venue for certain books, and no doubt in a short time it will be the venue for many books of scholarship in many areas of study.

No recollection of ELT's origins and subsequent good fortunes would be entire without comment on the people associated with the journal and press. To be successful, any publishing venture remains people-oriented. That has been especially true of ELT. It began as a friendly gathering place for a community of scholars interested in poets, novelists, essayists, and playwrights whose work had fallen into neglect. Over the years that spirit has continued. People here and abroad have always shared their fascination with the period.

Members of the Advisory Board (some of recent years, some who have served from the beginning) give freely of their time and expertise to read essays and book manuscripts and offer me advice. Book reviewers evaluate the scholarship and share their specialized knowledge. Graduate students bring renewed enthusiasm to the tedious work of preparing the journal for publication. Loyal readers subscribe and advance the reputation of the journal. This collaboration will remain constant. Without it the journal would be of little value.

ELT's past and present is rich in fond memories and good colleagues. The support you've offered me since 1983 when I became editor is genuinely appreciated. I've made more than my share of mistakes. You've been patient, and I've tried to return your understanding by always giving my sincere effort and striving to be fair-minded. I think you know I enjoy the work, the challenge of orchestrating each new issue, and the promise of encountering fresh ideas and interesting people. I looked forward to the year 2007, Volume 50. That milestone is passed, and I much appreciate all the good words about the journal from people here and abroad.

Now I look ahead to ELT and the press in 2008: perhaps beyond .