A chronicle of the love of reading, writing and publishing in the First Czechoslovak Republic.

Literary criticism

The Literary Chronicle of the First Republic describes the most important Czech literary events from 1918–1938. The events from each year are divided into three parts: literary events, literary works and historical context. Thirty-six authors, mainly from the Institute of Czech Literature, worked on the book for over two years. It is a precisely chronicled account of literary culture, the publishing business, a lost form of bibliophilia, and the approach towards literature in general. The publication presents the Czechoslovak Republic as a multinational state, where literature was published and read in five languages. Not only did writers contribute towards the literary scene, but also translators, publishers and readers, while the word of the writer had weight… The illustrated section presents a selection of books which were published in that particular year. It consists of more than one thousand book covers, photographs, advertising material, caricatures, manuscript extracts and other documents.

About the author:

Petr Šámal (1972) is a researcher at the Institute of Czech Literature. He is mainly interested in postwar reflections on literature, the culture of Czech Stalinism and literary censorship. He is the co-author of Dějiny české literatury 1945–1989 (A History of Czech Literature 1945–1989), and he published the book Soustružníci lidských duší, Lidové knihovny a jejich cenzura na počátku padesátých let 20. století (Engineers of Human Souls, Lidové noviny and censorship at the start of the 1950s) in 2009. He has been the editor-in-chief of the literary journal Česká literatura (Czech Literature) since 2003.