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 &mdash 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.

Atlas has remained a small press, stubbornly so in fact. Our independence has ensured that we can publish exactly what we wish. However, over the last few years the book trade has been undergoing rapid changes for the worse. The corporatisation of publishing and, more importantly, of retail book-selling, has steadily imposed intolerable restrictions both on what can be published, and then on what can be sold. The result is a new censorship, plain and simple, and a drastic reduction in the availability of publications which resist being subsumed into mass-marketing structures — precisely the material we wish to publish. Fortunately, the arrival of the Web has provided an alternative means of distribution and contact, and so, after more than 20 years, we are gradually withdrawing various of our titles from trade outlets and concentrating on web and direct sales. This is the only way we can preserve the integrity of our project.

More recently we detect a resurgence in independant bookselling, the chain-storesaccountancy-based approach to bookselling — they might as well be selling potatoes — is beginning to falter, and good riddance. Independent booksellers and independent publishers form a natural alliance, which we hope to foster…

Most of our books will henceforth be available from the principal on-line booksellers, especially 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 museum shops around the UK. Trade customers in the UK will continue to be able to buy many of our titles from Turnaround Distribution.