Holly Swenson
Supported by The William Lind Foundation
Holly Swenson is a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow with the Chabraja Center for Historical Research at Northwestern University. She is a historian of modern Britain and the British empire, with particular interests in media and business history. Her research explores how the business of making, distributing, and selling British media shaped cultural life and political economy on a transnational scale in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Holly was awarded a PhD in Modern European History from Northwestern University in June 2024 for her research on the export of British media to Australia from 1850 to 1990. Her work has been published in Modern British History, Enterprise & Society, and Business History, and she is currently working on her book manuscript, entitled The Business of Culture in the British World.
During her Visiting Research Fellowship, Holly will examine the archives of two publishers of children's literature that operated throughout the British World: William Collins, Sons, & Co and Blackie & Son, Ltd. The former firm began publishing children’s literature in 1900, and shortly after opened subsidiary firms to operate in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. The latter began to specialize in children’s literature in the late nineteenth century, and set up its own Dominion subsidiaries in the 1920s. Her research will explore how these two firms discussed the expansion into children’s literature and the role of Dominion sales in the firm’s overall profitability by consulting directors’ minutes, correspondence, authors’ agreements, ledgers, and balance sheets from 1900 through to 1965.
"I am delighted to have the opportunity to consult these valuable materials through a Visiting Research Fellowship, and grateful to the William Lind Foundation for their support. My working book manuscript explores how the business of exporting British media to the Commonwealth shaped markets and tastes from 1850 to 1990. These archival holdings for Collins and Sons and Blackie & Son are especially helpful as I write a new chapter on the markets for children's literature in the Commonwealth. I will consult correspondence, meeting minutes, contracts, and sales records for evidence of how these two firms saw perceived children’s literature, as an area of growth for their firms, and how they attempted to gain control over these international markets."
