RODKER, JOHN

RODKER, JOHN (1894–1955), English writer and publisher. Rodker was born in Manchester to a recent immigrant who then moved to London's East End. In his youth, Rodker associated with other young Jewish intellectuals in London of similar background, including Isaac *Rosenberg, and, from 1922, became a professional writer. Rodker's poems appeared in The Egoist, The New Age, and other periodicals, and in a collection, Poems (1914), printed privately. Deeply influenced by the French poets of the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries, he translated much of their verse. He spent his later years in Paris as a publisher specializing in the avant-garde and then exporting these works to Britain. He became particularly interested in producing translations of works by Freud and his followers. The best known of many publishing houses with which he was associated was the Imago Press.

One of his novels, Montagnes Russes, was first published in a French translation in 1923, and his Collected Poems 1912–1925 appeared in Paris in 1930. After World War i, he devoted himself largely to publishing and in 1920, at his Ovid Press, issued limited editions of poems by T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. Under the imprint of the Imago Press, he published the complete works of Sigmund Freud. Rodker's own writings include The Future of Futurism (1926). A new edition of his Poems and Adolphe (a novel he wrote in 1920), with an introduction by Andrew Crozier, was published in Manchester in 1996.

bibliography:

The Times, London (Oct. 11, 1955).

[William D. Rubinstein (2^nd ed.)]