Dial Publishing has two new imprints :

* edgewise : for new novels and cutting-edge nonfiction.
* Hermitage : for philosophy and spirit.

Dial Publishing itself will specialize in business and digital publishing. Its first title will be :

The Syntagma Story, followed by Superdemocracy : The Art of Corporate Governance, both by John M Evans.

Other titles to be announced in due course.

The Cornish Review

In 1972 Val Baker began a productive association with the publisher William Kimber that ultimately produced six further novels, nine collections of his own short stories and twenty three edited anthologies of short stories by such writers as Edna O’Brien, Alan Sillitoe, Hammond Innes, Fay Weldon, Winston Graham, Margaret Drabble, Daphne Du Maurier et al. In fact, a definitive listing of major British writers. These apart, he also found space in such collections for new, young writers.

Then, midway through the prolific decade of the sixties, Denys Val Baker launched a second run of the Cornish Review. Those were hopeful times, as Val Baker himself suggested: “…There was a new climate abroad and people had come to recognize that artistic ventures such as a regional literary review deserved some sort of practical support from Government…”

How far we have regressed from such optimistic times, with the abandonment of regional literary assistance, now followed by a national neglect of literature, is patent, But the second Cornish Review ran for twenty-seven issues and was never anything less that fulsome. Among poems and stories there were works by such as DM Thomas, now Cornwall’s most prestigious literary son, as well as by Jack Clemo, Charles Causley, Donald Rawe together with such figures of the Penwith literary establishment as Arthur Caddick, Frank Ruhrmund and W.S Graham.

There was also substantial exposure of the visual arts with reproduction of work by Bryan Pearce, Jack Pender, Peter Lanyon, John Miller and many more. The rich fund of material contained in the Reviews has still to be assessed.

Inevitably, Caddick had much more to say about this ‘Second Launching’, using Denys Val Baker’s own nautical connections to good effect:

And it was those Celtic cheques that made the Cornish Review even more authentic, because Denys Val Baker recognized the importance of professionalism in the literary world as in all the creative arts.

From Des Hannigan’s obituary in Peninsula Voice, Penzance, August 1984.

In Cornwall where visual artists enjoy the relative security of a supportive tradition, through established galleries, studios and workshops, to be a full time professional writer is to be something of an unsung hero. Denys Val Baker was such a man.

There are one or two others of course but what made Val Baker unique was his dedication to the writer’s trade and his marvellous and unselfish belief that there should be a “community of writers” in the same sense that there is a community of artists; that the written word should be as much a part of Cornwall’s culture as the visual arts and that both should be extended.

Too often of course writers are their own worst enemies. Introverted and subjective, they lack the gregariousness of the painter and the visual evidence of their work while, for those writers who succeeded, total withdrawal seems to be inevitable.

Denys Val Baker never hit the bestseller lists but had he done so, it’s a fair bet he would have achieved even more for the Cornish literary world and for that community of writers he so believed in. As it was, he did everything he could until circumstances overcame even his spirited support for the written word.

It was ironic that, coincident with his death, opportunities for literature were being further eroded by a philistine National Arts Council.

Des Hannigan. Obituary in Peninsula Voice, Penzance August 1984

They said it couldn’t be done. A new novel that would challenge Dan Brown’s ultimate bestseller. A book of such startling plausibility that it must surely be true.

The Syntagma Code.

The publishing world is abuzz with rumour and counter-claim. Does The Syntagma Code throw real light on the greatest danger facing mankind today: the Algorithm?

Only time will tell.

The British judge, Peter Smith, who presided over the recent Da Vinci “plagiarism” trial in London, has secretly embedded a coded message in his ruling on the trial.

The New York Times spotted this and writes: “LONDON, April 26 — Justice Peter Smith’s 71-page ruling in the recent ‘Da Vinci Code’ copyright case here is notable for many things: the judge’s occasional forays into literary criticism, his snippy remarks about witnesses on both sides, and his fluent knowledge not only of copyright law but also of more esoteric topics like the history of the Knights Templar.’

“The key to solving the conundrum posed by this judgment is in reading HBHG and DVC,” the judge writes in the 52nd paragraph of the ruling, alluding to his code and referring to the two works at issue in the case — “The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail” and “The Da Vinci Code” — by their initials. (In the United States, the book is called “Holy Blood, Holy Grail.”)

If you pluck all the italicized letters out of the text, says the NYT, you find that the first 10 spell “Smithy Code,” an apparent play on “Da Vinci Code.” But the next series of letters, some 30 or so, are a jumble, and this is the mystery that needs to be solved to break the code.

Read the whole article. Login required.

By John M Evans

It was the Chiswick Press which reinvented the book as a work of art in itself. The Private Press Movement, as it was called, was taken up by such as William Morris’s Kelmscott Press, whose contributions to the Arts and Crafts Movement in the 19th century remain a wonder to this day. Others followed: the Dove and and Ashendene Presses were most notable, while the Nonesuch and Golden Cockerel Presses specialized in high-qualty limited editions.

The true heart of the movement, however, has always been the small trade press, producing less than comercial books — more often booklets, or chapbooks — from spare rooms, sheds, barns, and even bedsits. Here surely is the Western equivalent of the Soviet samizdats (the subversive fax publishers of pre–perestroika Russia). They come in all shapes and sizes, from tiny poetry presses using photocopiers, to political pamphleteers — mostly left-wing — some with their own bookshops.

Small they may be, but condescend sniffily at your peril, for their numbers include some of the great names of literature. William Blake, for example, unable to find a publisher who would meet his precise standards, and suffering from a chronic lack of funds, developed his own process for printing his extraordinary illustrations and text.

He went on to hand-produce his great works, helped only by his wife. Bypassing the typesetting and printing trades completely, both for economy and artistic freedom, he developed a method of relief etching — as opposed to the intaglio, or scratching, treatment of the printing plate — which allowed him to etch text as well as illustrations onto a single plate.

The copper plate was painted with a stopping liquid, probably pitch and turpentine, and nitric acid poured over it to eat away the remainder of the surface. He, and his wife Catherine, then arduously printed the individual sheets and bound them, often in elaborate covers. Very few were sold, the best to a handful of wealthy collectors.

Blake’s first book, a visionary expression of his spiritual communion, failed ignominously. His persistence, however, ensured that the next, Songs of Innocence, a small volume of poetry, measuring some 4¾“ x 3”, was published in 1789 with his own hand-made engavings. It did little to improve his financial situation, which was always dire. Far from put him off, though, adversity seemed to energize rather than defeat him.

Blake was the ultimate self-publisher, handling every aspect of the process, from concept to finished book, himself. He even made his own inks, grinding and mixing in a fury of apocalyptic impatiance. It’s a surprise that he didn’t make his own paper as some small presses have done.

Not unnaturally, modern collectors will pay fortunes for rare copies of these strange little books, and bibliophiles handle them with awe.

A more recent example of the little presses of England is The Quince Tree Press, run by the late J.L. Carr from a modest house in Kettering, Northamptonshire. Carr began as a self-publisher after becoming increasingly alienated from the big boys of the book world. His own works included the very individal A Month in the Country — often regarded as his best novel and recently brought out in a handsome edition by The Folio Society.

Later, he took to publishing scores of pocket-sized volumes that readers could easily carry with them to a cricket match (a passion of his). or read on a train journey. His favourites were Extraordinary English Cricketers, printed in two volumes. Carr’s most successful title, however, was a reprint of Jane Austen’s History of England by a Partial, Prejudiced and Ignorant Historian, which she wrote when just 16 years of age.

J.L. Carr was a precise, school-masterly figure, and a reading of his books reveals an extensive, even fastidious knowledge of architecture, as well as cricket. He proved that self-publishing at it’s best is indistinguishable from trade publishing.

In Part 2, we’ll look at Virginia Woolf’s Hogarth Press, John Ruskin and Alfred Wainwright, the Grand Old Man of the Cumbrian Fells.

This website is under construction. It will be the site and blog of Dial Publishing, a new publisher of books and ebooks, associated with Syntagma Media.

The blog should be available soon. In the meantime, you may like to look at out hub website, Syntagma, or our book site, Naked Tales, or even the blog of our writing community, Writers Blog Alliance.

Stay tuned.