Trade Publisher Archives: Repositories of Monolingualism? Race, Language, and Rejected Refugee Manuscripts in the Age of Total War

Abstract

In recent years, monolingualism has become an object of renewed scholarly scrutiny. Divergent as they may be, accounts of its entrenchment typically concur that trade publishers, especially their Anglophone variety, have acted as catalysts in the process. This article questions the assumption by zooming in on the case of an established Boston-based house, Houghton Mifflin, during World War II, i.e. the time when paper rationing and apprehensions about language loyalty did not bode well for the large numbers of literary submissions from American minorities and the many fresh-off-the-boat European refugees. Can Houghton Mifflin’s wartime archive—in particular, the so-called editorial blanks (papers recording the receipt of each manuscript, reader reviews, and the verdict)—count as a substantive repository of monolingualism at this critical point in history? More broadly, what can this archive’s World War II-era content tell us about the interdependencies between language, race, and trade publishing?