Camden House

Camden House, Inc. was founded in 1979 by professors James Hardin and Gunther Holst with the purpose of publishing scholarly books in the field of German literature, Austrian Literature, and German language culture. Camden House books were published in Columbia, SC until 1998. When the company became an imprint in that year, place of publication moved to Rochester, NY.

The series Studies in German Literature, Language, and Culture was established in that same year and continues to the present; over 350 books in this series have appeared as of 2011 The Camden House areas of interest expanded over the following years under the direction of James Hardin, emeritus professor at the University of South Carolina. German language literature in Austria and Switzerland were added to the purview of Camden House early in its history.

The new series Literary Criticism in Perspective was established in the following decade, and in time broadened to include American and British literature. The aim of this more specialized series was, and is, to elucidate the role of literary criticism over the years, to show how it is subject to varying vogues and philosophical or critical viewpoints, and how criticism itself is a mirror of changing taste and critical bias.

In the late 1980s, Camden House increasingly sought out highly qualified scholars to write or edit commissioned works, especially in its Companion series. It was fortunate in locating and working with prominent Germanists who brought out companions to the works of such canonical writers as Hartmann von Aue, Friedrich Schiller, Heinrich von Kleist, Heinrich Heine, Thomas Mann, Rainer Maria Rilke, Franz Kafka, and many others over the next two decades. In addition, companions to major works were commissioned and published, including books focused on Goethe’s Faust (I and II), the Nibelungenlied, Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan, and Mann’s Magic Mountain. Distinct periods in the history of German literature were treated in companions to German Realism and German Expressionism. Additionally, Camden House established in its first decade of operation a series developed by James Hardin titled Literary Criticism in Perspective which not only provides the reception history of a given German or Austrian literary work, but records the changing nature of literary criticism itself over the years.

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