De Arbeiderspers is a Dutch publishing company, started as a

socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the e ...

enterprise. The name means 'The Workers' Press'.

History

The company was started in 1929 as a combination of the publishing firm N.V. Ontwikkeling and the Dutch Social Democratic Workers' Party newspaper '' Het Volk''. Currently it is part of a larger media conglomerate, the Weekbladpersgroep, which also includes publishing companies

De Bezige Bij De Bezige Bij ("the busy bee") is one of the most important literary publishing companies in the Netherlands. History The company was founded illegally in 1943, during the German occupation of the Netherlands by ; its first publication was a poem ...

and

Querido Emanuel Querido (6 August 1871 – 23 July 1943) was a successful Dutch publisher as the founder and owner of N.V. Em. Querido Uitgeversmaatschappij, which published Dutch titles, and of , which published titles of German writers in exile from N ...

. Until well into the 1960s, the press was known as a "socialist bastion," and until Martin Ros joined in 1964, literature was regarded with suspicion—the press published regional novels by authors such as

Herman de Man Salomon Herman "Sal" Hamburger (11 July 1898 – 14 November 1946), known under his pseudonym Herman de Man, was a Dutch novelist. Life and work Salomon Herman Hamburger was born on 11 July 1898 in Woerden in the Netherlands. De Man, son of b ...

and . , a well-read and well-spoken man, was hired specifically to "stir the pot," and one of his first acquisitions was

Gerrit Komrij Gerrit Jan Komrij (30 March 1944 – 5 July 2012) was a Dutch poet, novelist, translator, critic, polemic journalist and playwright. He rose to prominence in the early 1970s writing poetry that sharply contrasted with the free-form poetry of his ...

, at the time a young poet with formalist, not socialist, tendencies. Ros is also responsible, with then-director Johan Veeninga, for the ''Privé-domein'' series. joined the company in 1972. Until 1991, Sontrop was the managing director. Ronald Dietz succeeded him, and during his tenure the press lost some of its high-profile writers (

Jeroen Brouwers Jeroen Godfried Marie Brouwers (30 April 1940 – 11 May 2022) was a Dutch writer. From 1964 to 1976 Brouwers worked as an editor at Manteau publishers in Brussels. In 1964 he made his literary debut with ''Het mes op de keel'' (''The Knife ...

Kristien Hemmerechts Kristien Hemmerechts (born 27 August 1955) is a Belgian writer. Life Kristien Hemmerechts studied Germanic philology at the ''Katholieke Universiteit Brussel'' (KUB) and the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KUL). Afterwards, she studied litera ...

, and others). Martin Ros resigned in 1997. When in 2000

, one of the best-known Dutch writers, came under contract with

, pressure on Dietz increased and he resigned his position. Rob Haans became interim director.

Privé-domein

One of the Arbeiderspers's most successful series is ''Privé-domein'' ("private domain"), containing

memoir A memoir (; , ) is any nonfiction narrative writing based in the author's personal memories. The assertions made in the work are thus understood to be factual. While memoir has historically been defined as a subcategory of biography or autobi ...

s and

autobiographies An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life. It is a form of biography. Definition The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English peri ...

. The series was inspired by a similar series of ego documents by Editions du Cap, called ''Domaine privé'', whose title was borrowed as well. The first volumes (containing a memoir by Mary McCarthy and a volume of titillating diary entries by

Paul Léautaud Paul Léautaud (18 January 1872 – 22 February 1956) was a French writer and theater critic for ''Mercure de France'', signing his often caustic reviews with the pseudonym Maurice Boissard. Life He was born in Paris. Abandoned by his mother, ...

) were published in 1966, and in forty-five years almost three hundred books appeared in the series. The "golden years" of the series were the 1980s, when its editors were Martin Ros, Theo Sontrop, and Emile Brugman.

References

Sources

* Sjaak Hubregtse. "Uitgeverij De Arbeiderspers: van ontstaan tot en met ontzuiling" in Marnix Krop, Martin Ros, Saskia Stuiveling and Bart Tromp (eds.) ''Het zevende jaarboek voor het democratisch socialisme''. Amsterdam: De Arbeiderspers / Wiardi Beckman Stichting, 1986, . pp. 132–67
Revised version in pdf

External links

*
Alles over Privé-domein
website incl. reviews, catalog, and interviews.
Collectie Glasdia's Arbeiderspers
at the

International Institute of Social History The International Institute of Social History (IISH/IISG) is one of the largest archives of labor and social history in the world. Located in Amsterdam, its one million volumes and 2,300 archival collections include the papers of major figur ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Arbeiderspers 1929 establishments in the Netherlands Book publishing companies of the Netherlands Mass media in Amsterdam