Abstract/Summary

This thesis is a historical and exploratory study of Wyndham Lewis’ relationship with the publisher Chatto and Windus 1926-32. Based on original, aggregated, primary research from both publishers’ and authorial archives, this thesis documents the extended relationship between Lewis and Chatto by referencing letter books, ledger books and other historical documentation from The Archive of British Publishers and Printers (Reading), and Lewis’ author archives (Cornell, Buffalo). The title, ‘Wyndham Lewis for Sale’, references the fact that Lewis has been traditionally understood as an avant-garde artist who resisted commercial ventures, and whose relationship to the work of art as commodity was diagnostic and detached. This thesis, by contextualising Lewis’ relationship with his publishers, suggests that Wyndham Lewis was far from the highbrow isolate suggested by many scholars; that in fact, his creative output was informed by questions of commodified art far more explicitly and extensively than any of his peers. This thesis argues that Wyndham Lewis should be properly understood as an artist and writer whose work analytically dramatises the avant-garde’s attempts to control the direction of an increasingly commodified book culture, especially because he did not succeed in attaining a position of institutionalised cultural authority as did some of his peers. It also shows, through a newly unearthed empirical history, that his relationship with Chatto and Windus is an overlooked and valuable record of commercial publishing’s engagement with the traditional avant-garde.