Faber & Faber: The Untold Story tells the history of the publisher in letters from Eliot, Joyce, Beckett, Plath, Larkin and many more. Here is a taste… • Robert McCrum remembers his time as a Faber editor

Geoffrey Faber [company founder] to TS Eliot, 28 May 1925

I am very glad to have The Waste Land. You won’t think it unkind of me to say that I am excitedly groping in it. You are obscure, you know! With an obscurity compared to which Meredith at his most bewildering (and he can baffle, too) is the purest ray serene. I wonder if you realise how difficult you are? And alternatively I wonder if I am specially stupid.

TS Eliot [director at F&F] to WH Auden, 9 September 1927

I must apologise for having kept your poems such a long time, but I am very slow to make up my mind. I do not feel that any of the enclosed is quite right, but I should be very interested to follow your work. I am afraid that I am much too busy to give you any detailed criticism that would do the poems justice, and I suggest that whenever you happen to be in London you might let me know and I should be very glad if you cared to come to see me.

This was, of course, only a temporary rejection and Auden was not disheartened by it, writing to Christopher Isherwood: “On the whole coming from Eliot’s reserve I think it is really quite complimentary.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Faber’s founding editor Geoffrey Faber. Photograph: ANL/Rex/Shutterstock

James Joyce to TS Eliot, 18 August 1930

Buy a book in brown paper

From Faber and Faber

To see Annie Liffey trip, tumble and caper.

Sevensinus in her ringthings,

Plurabells on her prose,

Sheashell ebb music wayriver she flows.

TS Eliot to Eric Blair (George Orwell), 19 February 1932

I am sorry to have kept your manuscript. We did find it of very great interest, but I regret to say that it does not appear to me possible as a publishing venture. It is decidedly too short, and it seems to me too loosely constructed, as the French and English episodes fall into two parts with very little to connect them.

Victor Gollancz eventually published Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London in 1933.

WH Auden to Bennett Cerf [Auden’s US publisher], November 1936

Faber invented a bloody title while I was away without telling me. It sounds like work of a vegetarian lady novelist. Will you please call the American edition On This Island?

With WH Auden uncontactable in Iceland, Eliot had had to decide on a title for his second volume of poems, choosing Look, Stranger! from one of the lines in it.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest TS Eliot outside the Russell Square offices of Faber & Gwyer in 1926. Photograph: Courtesy of Faber & Faber

TS Eliot to George Orwell , 13 July 1944

I know that you wanted a quick decision about Animal Farm; but the minimum is two directors’ opinions, and that can’t be done under a week. The other director is in agreement with me that it is a distinguished piece of writing; that the fable is very skilfully handled, and that the narrative keeps one’s interest on its own plane – and that is something very few authors have achieved since Gulliver.

On the other hand, we have no conviction (and I am sure none of the other directors would have) that this is the right point of view from which to criticise the political situation at the present time. […]

I am very sorry, because whoever publishes this, will naturally have the opportunity of publishing your future work: and I have a regard for your work, because it is good writing of fundamental integrity.

In turning down Animal Farm, essentially because it was being rude about our Soviet allies, Eliot was also turning down the unwritten Nineteen Eighty-Four.

TS Eliot to Geoffrey Faber, 26 October 1952

I often feel that any usefulness I have had for F. & F. is a thing of the past. I am no longer in a position to undertake more work: the increasing pressure of outside burdens means a constant fight to get enough time either for F. & F. or for my own writing. But I have been thinking for some time that I am probably being over-paid. I think I might feel happier if my salary were reduced to something like £750 or £600, as representing something nearer my true value.

Geoffrey Faber to TS Eliot, 22 September 1953

Something must be said, and put into our Minutes. But it cannot possibly contain any real acknowledgement of the debt which I owe to you. We are both of us men of reserve. Neither of us finds it easy to down defences and speak our inmost feelings. So let me say, Tom, simply that, poetry and publishing and plays put aside – and that is to put aside something! – nothing better has ever happened to me, short of my wonderful good fortune in marriage, than the meeting with you which [the literary journalist] Charles Whibley planned twenty-five years ago, or thereabouts.

In 1953, Faber editor Charles Monteith would have been in the first few weeks of his probation, when, needing something to read on the train down to Oxford, he grabbed the top bundle from the slush pile of unsolicited manuscripts. Its dog-eared nature was a testament to the number of publishers who had already seen and presumably rejected it and it came with this rather unpromising covering letter.

William Golding to Faber & Faber, 14 September 1953

I send you the typescript of my novel Strangers from Within which might be defined as an allegorical interpretation of a stock situation. I hope you will feel able to publish it.

The Faber reader had already taken a look. Her comments were handwritten across the top left-hand corner of the covering letter:

“Absurd & uninteresting fantasy about the explosion of an atom bomb on the colonies. A group of children who land in jungle country near New Guinea. Rubbish & dull. Pointless. Reject.”

With nothing else to read on the train, Monteith carried on beyond that “rubbish and dull” first chapter, to find something much more interesting.

Charles Monteith [later to become chairman of Faber] to William Golding, 15 October 1953

I am afraid we’ve kept Strangers from Within rather a long time. I am writing to say that we are interested in it [...] and I should very much like to have a talk with you about it.

William Golding to Charles Monteith, 6 December 1953

Here are some bits of the emended version of my novel. Chapter one now begins with the meeting of Piggy and Ralph.

What do you think of A Cry of Children as a title?

Charles Monteith to the Book Committee, 19 February 1954

William Golding’s Novel

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Charles Monteith, Ann Golding, Queen Silvia, King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden and William Golding in Stockholm in 1983, for his Nobel prize in literature. Photograph: Faber & Faber

1) Title. Alan Pringle [Faber editor and board director] has suggested Lord of the Flies. I think this is very good myself.

Charles Monteith to William Golding, 20 May 1954

I have just finished reading the galleys of Lord of the Flies and I’m even more enthusiastic about it than I was before. Though I must have read it through four or five times by now, I still simply couldn’t put the proofs down until I had finished them. It’s had precisely the same effect on several other people here; indeed, in two cases I have had complaints that it resulted in nightmares! What a terrific book it is.

Charles Monteith to Philip Larkin, 5 November 1953

I was enormously impressed by A Girl in Winter when I read it recently.

May I make a suggestion? If you think it is silly or impertinent please forget and forgive it. It is simply this. You mentioned to Alan Pringle that you had started other novels and failed to finish them. Could I, do you think, have a look at some of these attempts? It might be a help to have sympathetic comment.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Faber edition of Philip Larkin’s The Whitsun Weddings. Photograph: Faber & Faber

Philip Larkin to Charles Monteith, 8 November 1953

I think your suggestion that I should show you my failures a very kind and generous one, and if I don’t accept it, it certainly isn’t because I think it silly or impertinent. By the way, I sometimes write poetry, and am submitting a selection (six or seven) to an undergraduate concern called The Fantasy Press, I should say almost certainly for no personal financial advantage. This doesn’t worry you, does it? I think I am technically bound to show you any new book I write, but this is hardly a book.

I am glad you wrote; it did much to dispel my conception of Faber’s as a reproachful father figure.

Charles Monteith to Samuel Beckett, 16 February 1956

Do forgive me for writing again but I thought you would be interested to know that Waiting for Godot is being very successful indeed. The book is selling fast and exciting much interest and discussion everywhere.

By the way, I wonder whether or not you have ever thought of writing a book of personal memoirs and recollections. If you have we would be more than pleased if you would give us the opportunity of considering it for publication.

Samuel Beckett to Charles Monteith, 27 February 1956

It is good news your Godot is doing well. My only regret is that it is not complete. Some passages are quite meaningless because of the holes. They could have been bridged with a little rewriting. Well, there it is.

Afraid my memoirs are unlikely. J’ai moins de souvenirs que si j’avais six mois.

Charles Monteith to ‘MR. ELIOT’, 9 April 1957

The Hawk in the Rain: Ted Hughes.

I wonder if you’d like to look at this? I must confess that the name of Ted Hughes was unknown to me until these poems arrived; but he’s a young Englishman whose poems have been published chiefly in America. This book, his first, has won the First Publication Award in a contest sponsored by the New York Poetry Centre and judged by Auden, Spender and Marianne Moore. The quality seems to me very uneven; but I think there’s some interesting poetry in the book. Though I don’t feel we’d want to take him on yet, he might perhaps have a letter of encouragement.

TS Eliot to Charles Monteith, later the same day

I’m inclined to think we ought to take this man now. Let’s discuss him. T.S.E

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Moreover the Brown family are perfect fools, they leave him, who knows nothing of modern conveniences, alone to bath and nearly to drown’: a still from Paddington, 2014. Photograph: Allstar/Studiocanal

Book report on A Bear Called Paddington by Michael Bond, 28 August 1957

I think the author has missed his mark in this story of a bear adopted by a middle-class family called Brown. Unless I mistake him he means it to be funny but the jokes are all on the bear; the Browns treat him very much as I imagine they would treat a “foreigner” and as one’s sympathies and affections are all with the bear it is difficult to laugh with the author. Moreover the Brown family are perfect fools, they leave him alone to bath and nearly to drown; they twice lose him, once on the Underground and once in a large store simply through inattention. No – frankly the best of the book lies in its title.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The cover artwork for Sylvia Plath’s Ariel. Photograph: Courtesy of Faber & Faber

Sylvia Plath to [her mother] Aurelia Plath, 24 June 1960

Last night Ted & I went to a party at Fabers given for WH Auden. I drank champagne with the appreciation of a housewife on an evening off from the smell of sour milk and diapers. During the party Charles Monteith beckoned me out into the hall. And there Ted stood, flanked by TS Eliot, WH Auden, Louis MacNeice on the one hand & Stephen Spender on the other, having his photograph taken. “Three generations of Faber poets there,” Charles observed, “Wonderful!” Of course I was immensely proud. Ted looked very at home among the great.

Charles Monteith to RP McDouall, Travellers’ Club, 4 January 1961

Thank you for your letter. I’m very sorry indeed that my guest’s dress at luncheon yesterday should have caused complaints.

My guest was Mr. Thom Gunn, one of the most distinguished younger English poets, whose work is published by my firm. When I invited Mr. Gunn to luncheon with me at the Club I had no idea at all he would arrive so bizarrely attired. Since he was educated at Bedales and at Trinity College, Cambridge, I took it for granted that he would be aware of the ordinary social conventions in matters such as this. Mr. Gunn has, however, for the last few years lived in California and yesterday he had just returned from Germany. So I can only suppose that the informality of his clothes is accounted for either by the general informality of Californians – to which perhaps he has become accustomed – or by the exigencies of travel.

Some libraries and bookshops, particularly in the Provinces, do still have fairly strong objections to buying books which contain such words and expressions Charles Monteith to John McGahern

When I first saw what Mr. Gunn was wearing, my immediate instinct was to take him somewhere else for luncheon, but unfortunately I had arranged for another guest to meet us; and he arrived so late that the opportunity for quick action was lost. I was in a dilemma; and decided – obviously wrongly – to brazen it out.

I can only apologise, which I do – most sincerely. I should be most grateful if you would convey this apology both to the Committee and to the members who complained. I should perhaps add that if on any future occasion I entertain Mr. Gunn at luncheon, it will not be at the Club.

Apparently Thom Gunn had been wearing a leather jacket (possibly fringed) and cowboy boots.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ted Hughes and Pete Townshend, then an editor at Faber, outside the flat in Kensington that TS Eliot and Valerie moved into after their marriage. Photograph: Courtesy of Faber & Faber

Charles Monteith to John McGahern, 6 July 1962

I have just finished reading The Barracks and I must write at once to tell you how enormously I admired and enjoyed it. It really is quite first class and I do congratulate you on it. […]

One other thing. We have no objection in principle to printing the word “fucking” which is used occasionally in the dialogue and I don’t think that nowadays there would be any legal risk in doing so in this country. I think I ought to point out to you, though, that some libraries and bookshops, particularly in the Provinces, do still have fairly strong objections to buying books which contain such words and expressions; and more-over the retention of this word would of course almost certainly lead to your novel being banned in the Irish Republic. I am quite happy to leave the final decision about this to you and if you really do insist on the word going in it will go in. But it could have an appreciable effect on the sales of the book.

John McGahern to Charles Monteith, 19 July 1962

I have gone through the “fuckings”! I could eliminate all Reegan’s, indeed every one except three or four in chapter 3, the doctor’s dialogue, used to shock Elizabeth’s awareness into a harsh despairing world of a particular consciousness. I don’t know how I can really leave out these without harming the work.

John McGahern to Charles Monteith, 28 November 1962

The first part of the proofs came today and I was disturbed to see fucking printed f--. Is it that they were printed before the Board’s decision, or some mistake?

Charles Monteith to John McGahern, 30 November 1962

I am frightfully sorry about the printers’ prurience! Do please, when you are correcting proofs, replace f— by fucking in full; and David Bland, our production manager, will get in touch with the printers personally to make sure that nothing goes wrong.

Samuel Beckett to Charles Monteith, 13 January 1964

I am returning to you under separate cover the two Godots and corrected proofs of Play. The Lord Chamberlain’s objections, as well as I can remember, were to button it, pubis, erection, clap, arse, piss, ballocksed and farted, pp. 7, 8, 12, 15, 21, 38, 50 and 52 respectively.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest William Golding’s covering letter and the Faber reader’s response to his Strangers from Within (later, Lord of the Flies). Photograph: Courtesy of Faber & Faber

Matthew Evans [Faber chairman] to Ted Hughes, 17 January 1986

As you know Peter Townshend works at Faber and is also a friend. I had lunch with Pete yesterday and he told me that he would like to have a shot at turning The Iron Man into a musical.

I thought I would write to you at this early stage so that if you hate the idea you can say so now. […]

I have to say that I’m keen to encourage Pete. Not only has he got a good track record with musicals but also since the development of Cats has finished and it’s now showing throughout the world, I do miss the painful excitement of it and I’d love to be involved in another exploitation like that!

Ted Hughes to Matthew Evans, 15 February 1986

If Pete Townshend can make even a rambling kitten of The Iron Man, I’ll be more than delighted. Spur him on.

This is an edited extract from Faber & Faber: The Untold Story (Faber, £20). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99