[BRIEF NOTE] On Coach House Press

[rfmcdonald]

Coach House Press (official site, Wikipedia) is one of the few independent book publishing companies left in Canada. Known for its publication of avant-garde works, it has lasted for 44 years. Murray Whyte at the Toronto Star recently wrote a feature article examining the press and centering upon founder Stan Bevington.

Consider: Coach House deals in tiny print runs, from 200 to 2,000, in a publishing climate where conventional wisdom suggests volume is central to survival. It prints all of its books on two ancient Heidelberg presses on the ground floor of its crammed-full print shop-cum-offices in an industry where printing is fully automated, and laser-guided mass production is the norm.

And Coach House publishes Canadian authors exclusively, many of them poets – no cash cows such as kids' books, cookbooks, romance or science fiction allowed.

There's a purity of mission here, reflected in its history, and Bevington's, too. On paper, at least, Coach House has never been more than a plucky, independent-minded business venture; in spirit as well as practice, it's been the unofficial clubhouse for at least two generations of Canadian authors, artists and cultural renegades.

As Bevington describes it, the book publication business slowly expanded, from silkscreen T-shirts to books to a fully-fledged firm. Charlotte Tombs at the University of Toronto's Varsity, with her article "Coach House makes it a home", notes that the press has recently puchased the buildings where it resides from the University of Toronto and now has a physically and economically secure place in the city as well as culturally.

Coach House helped launch the careers of such acclaimed authors as Michael Ondaatje and Anne Michaels, and every year it continues to choose unique and interesting writing by up-and-coming authors. In explaining the type of literature they seek, Wilcox mentions that they “try to do stuff that’s a little more unconventional, not straightforward historical fiction or something. We try to do stuff that’s a little more adventurous, experimental, avant-garde.”

“We look for novels that creatively use language to make a story that we would have never expected,” adds Bevington, “whereas many publishers accept the narrative as the way to do a novel.”

In addition to reprints and new literature, Coach House Press takes on special projects, such as publishing the Hart House Review and many of U of T’s literary journals. Furthermore, the press creates catalogues for the Fisher Rare Book library. “We do some beautiful work for the Fisher Rare Book Library,” notes Bevington. “They choose us because they want really prestigious work. We get to look at the finest books in the library and [make] catalogues of entire collections. Right now we’re doing a [catalogue] about Darwin—all of the books that Darwin ever published are going to be on display in the fall—and we’re going to do a catalogue that has an overview of all of [them].”