Strange Bird

The Albatross Press and the Third Reich

Troy Michele K.

The first book about Albatross Press, a Penguin precursor that entered into an uneasy relationship with the Nazi regime to keep Anglo-American literature alive under fascism

The Albatross Press was, from its beginnings in 1932, a "strange bird": a cultural outsider to the Third Reich but an economic insider. It was funded by British-Jewish interests. Its director was rumored to work for British intelligence. A precursor to Penguin, it distributed both middlebrow fiction and works by edgier modernist authors such as D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and Ernest Hemingway to eager continental readers. Yet Albatross printed and sold its paperbacks in English from the heart of Hitler's Reich.

In her original and skillfully researched history, Michele K. Troy reveals how the Nazi regime tolerated Albatross – for both economic and propaganda gains – and how Albatross exploited its insider position to keep Anglo-American books alive under fascism. In so doing, Troy exposes the contradictions in Nazi censorship while offering an engaging detective story, a history, a nuanced analysis of men and motives, and a cautionary tale.

About the Author

Michele K. Troy is professor of English at Hillyer College at the University of Hartford. She studies Anglo-American literary modernism in continental Europe in the decades between the two world wars. She lives in Hartford, CT.

Reviews

"'Strange Bird' reads like a highbrow thriller, where editors are double agents and all the great modern authors put in cameo appearances. That, along with Michele Troy's engaging and personal style of writing, makes this book a page-turner" – Jonathan Rose, author of "The Literary Churchill"

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