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About The Republic of Letters
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"The Republic of Letters is of very ancient origin . . . It embraces the whole world and is composed of all nationalities, all social classes, all ages and both sexes . . . All languages, ancient as well as modern, are spoken. The arts are joined to letters, and artisans have their place in it; but its religion is not uniform, and its manners (as in all republics) are a mixture of good and bad. Piety and licentiousness are both to be found . . . Praise and honor are awarded by popular acclaim."

—M. de Vigneul-Marville, 1699.

News from the Republic of Letters, as its motto indicates, has no limits, which makes it unique among magazines. Though it enjoys support from many quarters, It is not sponsored by any institution. From the beginning it has been paid for by the editors.

It is based on first-class writing by first-class writers without regard to form, subject, length, language or time. Its primary function is to offer writers a forum for their writing and readers a rich diet of texts from past and present and from any language.

Each issue consists of texts from both new and established writers. These vary from full-length novellas to short texts called arias, and in the archives it prints texts from the past, often in new translations, that are either forgotten or unjustly neglected. There is no limitation as to form: lives includes biography and memoirs; plays and other forms of fiction and non-fiction are equally acceptable; as is poetry, though the magazine's bias is toward prose. The rear matter includes a full section on recent books, The Reader, and the Editor's column, PB's Notebook.

TroL is affiliated with two European magazines of equal distinction: L'Atelier du roman, edited by Lakis Proguidis, and Sud, edited by Francesco Forlani. It is published at irregular intervals—that is, when sufficient material of quality is available— and can be ordered online from tobypress.com.

The magazine was founded as the third magazine collaboration between Saul Bellow and Keith Botsford, whose editing relationship of more than fifty years included the Noble Savage, ANON, and Editors. TRoL began publication in broadsheet format in 1997 and in bound edition in 2003. Mr. Bellow wrote:

"One of the more attractive oddities of the United States is that our minorities are so numerous, so huge. A minority of millions is not at all unusual. But there are in fact millions of literate Americans in a state of separation from others of their kind. They are, if you like, the readers of Cheever, a crowd of them too large to be hidden in the woods. Departments of literature across the country have not succeeded in alienating them from books, works old and new. My friend Keith Botsford and I felt strongly that if the woods were filled with readers gone astray, among those readers there were probably writers as well.

To learn in detail of their existence you have only to publish a magazine like The Republic of Letters. Given encouragement, unknown writers, formerly without hope, materialize. One early reader wrote that our paper, "with its contents so fresh, person-to-person," was "real, non-synthetic, undistracting." Noting that there were no ads, she asked, "Is it possible, can it last?" and called it "an antidote to the shrinking of the human being in every one of us." And toward the end of her letter our correspondent added, "It behooves the elder generation to come up with reminders of who we used to be and need to be." This is what Keith Botsford and I had hoped that our "tabloid for literates" would be. And for two years it has been just that. We are a pair of utopian codgers who feel we have a duty to literature. I hope we are not like those humane do-gooders who, when the horse was vanishing, still donated troughs in City Hall Square for thirsty nags."

The New York Times, Writers on Writing, 1999



©2007 News from the Republic of Letters All rights reserved.

 

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