Donald E. Herdeck (November 19, 1924 – April 20, 2005) was an American academic and publisher, and the founder in 1973 of Three Continents Press.
Biography
Donald Elmer Herdeck was born on November 19, 1924, in
Chicago, Illinois
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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.
He attended
Drake University
Drake University is a private university in Des Moines, Iowa. It offers undergraduate and graduate programs, including professional programs in business, law, and pharmacy. Drake's law school is among the 25 oldest in the United States.
Hi ...
in
Des Moines
Des Moines () is the capital and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Iowa. It is also the county seat of Polk County. A small part of the city extends into Warren County. It was incorporated on September 22, 1851, as Fort Des Moines, ...
, then served in the U.S. Army and Army Air Forces from 1944 to 1946.
In the early 1950s, he traveled in Europe and studied in Italy and France. He subsequently taught at
Girard College
Girard College is an independent college preparatory five-day boarding school located on a 43-acre campus in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The school was founded and permanently endowed from the shipping and banking fortune of Stephen Girard upon h ...
in Philadelphia, while doing graduate studies at the
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
. Joining the US Foreign Service in 1953, he spent some years in Italy, and in 1960 was posted to Guinea in West Africa, developing an interest in African literature. He said: "I started reading African novels.
I was surprised to know there were any. I’d never heard of any. First in English, but then I started buying titles published in French."
However, while in Africa he fell ill with malaria and hepatitis and returned to the US.
He left the State Department in 1963, completed his doctoral dissertation and received his PhD from University of Pennsylvania in 1968.
He began teaching in the English department of
Georgetown University
Georgetown University is a private university, private research university in the Georgetown (Washington, D.C.), Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded by Bishop John Carroll (archbishop of Baltimore), John Carroll in 1789 as Georg ...
,
Washington, D.C.
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, in 1965, and in 1974 became an associate professor of English and foreign service,
eventually concentrating on the literature of the Third World,
and creating a course that addressed world political issues through art and fiction.
He also did some teaching of African Literature at
Howard University
Howard University (Howard) is a private, federally chartered historically black research university in Washington, D.C. It is classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity" and accredited by the Middle States Commissi ...
.
His mission to promote the work of many neglected writers – from Africa, the Caribbean, the Middle East and other regions – led him to found in 1973 a small publishing house called Three Continents Press, which struggled to be profitable yet went on to become one of the foremost publishers of Third World Literature, and of works translated from many languages.
In 1988 one of Herdeck's authors, the Egyptian novelist
Naguib Mahfouz
Naguib Mahfouz Abdelaziz Ibrahim Ahmed Al-Basha ( arz, نجيب محفوظ عبد العزيز ابراهيم احمد الباشا, ; 11 December 1911 – 30 August 2006) was an Egyptian writer who won the 1988 Nobel Prize in Literature. ...
, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, and another future Nobel Prize winner on the Three Continents list was
Derek Walcott
Sir Derek Alton Walcott (23 January 1930 – 17 March 2017) was a Saint Lucian poet and playwright. He received the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature. His works include the Homeric epic poem ''Omeros'' (1990), which many critics view "as Walcot ...
.
After retiring from teaching at Georgetown in 1987, Herdeck continued to head his two-person publishing company, moving it in 1993 to Colorado Springs.
Over the years that he ran Three Continents Press, the imprint published some 300 titles, and he was once quoted as saying: "We've published people from every continent except Antarctica. We don't do anything there, but if the penguins learned to write, we would."
Herdeck suffered a stroke in February 1995, and in August 1996 sold 167 of his titles to
Lynne Rienner
Lynne Rienner Publishers is an independent scholarly and textbook publishing firm based in Boulder, CO. It was founded in 1984 and remains one of the few independent publishers in the US.
It publishes primarily in the fields of international stu ...
, another Colorado publisher; however, he subsequently setting up a new company, Passeggiata Press, for the titles to which he retained rights.
He was the editor or author of the key reference books ''African Authors, 1300–1973'' (1973; revised edition, 1974) and ''Caribbean Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical-Critical Encyclopedia'' (1979, co-edited with his wife Margaret Herdeck, Maurice Lubin,
John Figueroa
John Joseph Maria Figueroa (4 August 1920 – 5 March 1999) was a Jamaican poet and educator.Pamela Beshoff"Obituary: John Figueroa" ''The Independent'', 11 March 1999. He played a significant role in the development of Anglophone Caribbean lite ...
and Dorothy Figueroa, and
Jose Alcantara),
and in 1998 ''Appreciating the Difference: The Autobiography of Three Continents Press, 1973–1997''.
Herdeck died of
congestive heart failure
Heart failure (HF), also known as congestive heart failure (CHF), is a syndrome, a group of signs and symptoms caused by an impairment of the heart's blood pumping function. Symptoms typically include shortness of breath, excessive fatigue, a ...
at his home in
Pueblo, Colorado
Pueblo () is a List of municipalities in Colorado#Home rule municipality, home rule municipality that is the county seat and the List of municipalities in Colorado, most populous municipality of Pueblo County, Colorado, Pueblo County, Colorado ...
, in 2005, aged 80.
Further reading
* Don Burgess (June 1, 1982)
"Three Continents Press: A Blazer of Trails" ''
Journal of Black Studies
''Journal of Black Studies'' is a bimonthly peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes papers in the fields of social sciences and ethnic studies concerning African and African diaspora culture, with particular interest in African-American cultu ...
'', Vol. 12, issue 4, pp. 451–456.
* Donna McBride (1993)
"Profile: Three Continents Press" ''Translation Review'', 41:1, 16–18.
References
External links
"Donald E. Herdeck Records of Three Continents Press and Passeggiata Press: An Inventory of the Collection at the Harry Ransom Center" Harry Ransom Center
{{DEFAULTSORT:Herdeck, Donald E.
1924 births
2005 deaths
American book publishers (people)
Drake University alumni
Georgetown University faculty
University of Pennsylvania alumni