Atlas Press began publishing in 1983, and our list of publications exceeds a hundred titles. These are books that doubtless would never have appeared otherwise, since commercial considerations have never been our principal concern or motivation. Instead our attention has focused on the representation of an alternative canon, an “anti-tradition” of dissenting art and literature, that stretches back to the German Romantics at the turn of the 19th century and which has informed the more belligerent avant-gardes of the last 200 years. We have published collections and individual works by writers associated with Romanticism, Symbolism, Expressionism, Dada, Surrealism, Pataphysics and any number of the continental European post-war avant-gardes.

The writing we publish is irrefutably modern — albeit from the last two hundred years — but never solemn; experimental, but not mere exercises in formalism; humorous but not (often) frivolous; it is extremist, demanding, delectable, sometimes appalling… One of our titles, Aurora by Michel Leiris, has a preface which includes this description:

What I like about this work is the appetite it expresses for an unattainable purity, the faith it places in the untamed imagination, the horror it manifests with regard to any kind of fixity… in fact, the way almost every page of it refuses to accept that human condition against which some will never cease to rebel, however reasonably society may one day be ordered.

This is a statement whose intransigence we find attractive and which could easily encapsulate an important aspect of our agenda. And yet some of our books are also funny, even whimsical.

WHERE TO BUY OUR BOOKS
Many of our titles are available from the principal on-line booksellers, (Amazon.co.uk, rather than .com). All of them will continue to be available from this website; and from a single independent retail outlet in London, bookartbookshop, and by mail order directly from us. Our trade titles will be found in the better bookshops, particularly the independents, and in museums.

Distribution in the UK by TURNAROUND: www.turnaround-uk.com. Unit 3, Olympia Trading Estate, Coburg Road, Wood Green, London, N22 6TZ. Tel: 020 8829 3000 Fax: 020 8881 5088

Distributed in the USA by ARTBOOK/D.A.P.: www.artbook.com. 155 Sixth Avenue, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10013. Tel: (212) 627-1999 Fax: (212) 627-9484.

COMPANY INFORMATION
Registered name: Atlas Press Limited
Place of registration: England
Registered Office: 17 Pitfield st., London N1 6HB
Company no.: 5633050
Contact phone no.: 07770784185 (not for sales, orders or other daily business)
Email contact: abrotchie@virginmedia.com