Research and write-up a biography of up to 1000 words of a lesser-known author, publisher or distributor of the period, based on an incomplete entry in the MAPP project. The purpose of your biography is to inform your audience about an author, editor, publisher, translator, or distributor involved in the early C20 book trade and to provide further reading materials. Subject to peer review, there is the possibility for this work to be published in MAPP.

Your biography should include evidence of:

Going beyond the typical dust jacket author biographies. If your person of interest is famous (and, for example, already has a Wikipedia entry that covers the basics and/or a full-length biography), write a brief publishing life focusing on the person’s career as it relates to publishing of all kinds (ie: T. S. Eliot was an editor at Faber, published with The Hogarth Press, The Egoist, etc.).

  • Provide further reading materials and/or links to other archival sources or published biographies. You should also highlight connections to other people, publishers, and organizations profiled on MAPP.
  • A Works Cited (not included in word count): This should include, where possible, a list of relevant archival holdings, a short list of secondary works and full-length biographies, and a list of relevant primary publications
  • A short list (perhaps up to 5 works) of further reading selected from the full bibliography. These should be the works that you found the most useful in constructing the entry and that you would recommend to other researchers as entry points for information about this person/publisher.
  • If you find portraits or images, please include these along with their citation information (and their copyright information) along with the entry. A very helpful resource with often reproducible images is the UK National Portrait Gallery, which you can find here: https://www.npg.org.uk/.
  • Please include a list of 5-10 important relationships (including the following: acquaintance, business partner, classmate, co-author, collaborator, colleague, editor, employee, employer, enemy, family member, frenemy, friend, lover, mentor, parent, patron, printer, publisher, reviewer, sibling, spouse, and translator), especially if they also exist in MAPP’s site (you can determine this by using the “search” function from the homepage)