Marketing Modernism for Children; or How Joyce’s The Cat and the Devil and Woolf’s Nurse Lugton… Were Made into Picture Story Books in English, Italian, and French

Abstract

This article examines how two stories invented by Virginia Woolf and James Joyce who did not intend to publish them were made into a series of picture story books in English, Italian, and French. Variations on Woolf’s Nurse Lugton… and Joyce’s The Cat and the Devil reflect the reception of Joyce’s and Woolf’s works for adults and the hierarchy established between them by the canon. Their publishing history is best understood in the light of the promotion of their works by Modernist writers. It brings to light more collective structures of production of Modernism. Publishing houses, translators, and illustrators all contribute to the control and promotion of the image of the two Modernist authors bootlegged into children’s literature.